Getting there wasn't quite so easy. I was squeezing this in between Ecuador and an Archaeology Field School at the end of June, and many tours were already booked because it was so last minute. Plus, flights were CRAZY expensive. I ended up flying from Quito to Madrid overnight on Monday, then sleeping pretty much all of Tuesday in an airport hotel in Madrid. Wednesday morning I had an early flight to Lisbon, from where I connected to Cologne. Once in Cologne, I got my back, rechecked in and was on my way. Except for one thing. I had 2 blank pages left in my passport, and the EU exit immigration agent used one. I got to Namibia pretty sure I wasn't going to be leaving the country again with the same passport. I emailed the embassy there, who were nothing but helpful, but also starting their Memorial Day long weekend. In the end, I had to get an emergency passport once I'd finished my tour in Namibia, and fly back to the US to get a real one before Field School started. It seemed convoluted, but it was the cheapest way for me to keep moving. Go figure.
Anyway, after the passport drama was somewhat resolved, I began my adventures in Namibia. I had thought I was booking a group tour but it turned out that for the first week, it was just me and the guide. That seems to happen to me a lot. I was disappointed- I've made some great friends along the way on these group tours, and being alone meant I was more likely to fall asleep in the car and miss things. My guide was very nice. His name was KK and he'd lived in Namibia his entire life. He knew so much about the history and wildlife in the country.
I wasn't sure what to expect in Namibia. I'd read about the Skeleton Coast, sand dunes, and animals, but I was wholly unprepared for the amount of wildlife that I'd be seeing during the next week. The tour started at Mt Etjo Safari lodge, a lovely spot right on a huge waterhole. There were a variety of antelope there as we drove up, and more came and went throughout the day. I was told there was a hippo, so I staked out a spot by the water the first afternoon trying to find out. I saw a lot of birds but no hippo. Before dinner, we went to a Cheetah feeding. They have a rescue cheetah and her two children on site. They have free run of a large enclosure (I couldn't see the ends of it) but aren't able to live in the wild. They were much taller than I'd expected, and so sleek and powerful. They devoured a hunk of giraffe (why did it have to be giraffe??) pretty quickly, and then the vultures finished the rest of it.
The next day I got up early still looking for the hippo, but didn't find any. Alas. As we were driving away though, out in the distance, there were two in the water. You could only see the top of their heads with a good zoom lens. Then as we came around the corner... hippo butt! There was one standing up on an island in the lake. So I got to see 3 hippos, at varying angles, which was pretty cool. I hadn't even known there were hippos in Namibia!
Day 2 was a long day of driving to get up to Etosha National Park. We arrived in time for a late lunch at Mokuti Lodge. It was a nice place to stay, but I was way more interested in the park! Once we drove in, the action came quickly. A few impala crossed the road, then a giraffe walked across right in front of us! It was unbelievably cool. Wild giraffe.
We went to a watering hole, where there were more animals- giraffes, springboks, impalas, and a lot of vultures eating a dead elephant. Sounds great, right? It smelled pretty bad. It was pretty amazing to see all of the animals just milling around together though.
We drove through several different sections of the park, seeing a flock of ostriches (one male and three female!), more varieties of antelope, and then stumbled upon a watering hole just behind a huge herd of elephant. There were more than 30 of them, from babies to young adults to adult females. It was spectacular. They drank, splashed, doused themselves with mud and dust, and then at the signal from the lead female, disappeared almost silently back into the bush. As they left, zebras came in, a mass of black and white taking their turn at the water. There are SO MANY ZEBRAS in Northern Namibia.
It was late as we were leaving, but we stopped to see another watering hole with some giraffes, and then encountered more elephants on the road. They were eating from a tree and very decidedly NOT MOVING out of our way. Knowing that the park was closing we were getting pretty anxious, but it was so very cool to be that close to these animals. Eventually they moved aside so we could drive by, and we looped our way back to the entrance the exact minute the gates were closing. Safe.
The next day, we started at the same waterhole. That dead elephant- completely gone, scavenged overnight. But in the field nearby were lions! There was a male and a female. We couldn't get too close to them, but it was still great to check another of the "Big 5" off the list. We drove around a lot that day, stopping at one of the lodges in the park for lunch. We lucked upon a leopard crossing the road in front of us, then turning and walking parallel so we could follow him for a ways. We saw one rhino at a distance, and I saw another at the lodge watering hole that evening. I believe the one at a distance was a white rhino and the one at the waterhole was a black rhino.
Driving out the next day was less exciting. I was hoping to see more lions but my guide really just wanted to get on the way. We saw some beautiful giraffes, more zebras, and some baboons. We saw a new type of zebra, Hartman's Mountain Zebra. The stripes don't go under their bellies.
That night I stayed at the Hobatere Lodge. I did an afternoon game drive with a German man and three delightful ladies from Florida. I had such a good time with them that I paid to do the night drive too. We stopped at sunset for a drink with the zebras and sprinbok. While we didn't find lions, we did find secretary bird, which was new, and some mighty elephants storming through the bus. The night drive found more elephants, several small cats, and an owl.
The only animal I really wanted to see and missed was the hyena. But I was more than impressed with the variety and abundance of wildlife in Etosha and Hobatere. I WILL be back here. I hope to come with friends. I hope there are still rhinos when we make it.
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