My first full day at Etosha National Park

The following morning I was woken up by birds chattering in the bush outside. I opened up the flaps of my tent and sat in bed enjoying the morning air with a cup of coffee. The tent was flooded with light from all sides, and it felt like I was sitting in the open air in the middle of the bush.

After breakfast I set off again to the park. There are two ways to visit Etosha – one is in your own car, making your own itinerary, and one on an organised “game drive” in a truck with other tourists and a guide. The organised tour offers better chances to see animals, since the guides know where to look and communicate their sightings to other guides by phone. But having invested in a big 4×4 I wanted to keep my independence and drive myself. Serious visitors enter the park at its 06.30 opening time to have the best chances of spotting the less easily seen game – particularly the big cats. After my three days of travelling I did not have the energy for another early start and reached the park at around 9, when some of the organised groups were already returning.

Despite my late start I was very lucky. First I spotted – very briefly – a leopard, one of the most elusive animals in the park, but I was a little too slow to get a really good photo.

October was the end of the dry season in Etosha, and the once abundant water brought by the rains had reduced to a few waterholes where the game comes to drink. This makes for the best time for spotting wildlife. My first visit to a waterhole did not disappoint; a group of oryx and springboks were drinking, soon to be followed by zebra and some kudu.

On my way to the next waterhole, I had a stroke of luck and noticed a lion, sheltering from the late morning sun under a bush. Sadly my lack of mastery of my new camera caused me to mess up my photo.

The final waterhole of my morning visit was home to a small group of elephants, who had come to drink and cool off by spraying themselves with water.

Watching the giraffes drink was the most interesting. They would approach very slowly, then look around for several minutes. Then they would slowly splay their legs and lower their necks to drink. I suppose that their caution is because they is only ever vulnerable to predators in this rather awkward drinking position.

It was now one o’clock, and the hottest part of the day had arrived. This meant that animal sightings would be much harder, so I drove back to my lodge to relax by the pool. At 4pm I set off again for my evening “game drive”. I visited a couple of waterholes without luck, before setting off along a remote track.  At first the landscape was empty and dry, and I began to regret my choice of route. But then I bumped into an old, grey wrinkled elephant just standing by the side of the track. He looked a bit crumbly, and like many elephants in Etosha, had broken tusks (apparently a lack of minerals means that few Etosha elephants have big healthy tusks).

The old elephant, isolated and maybe rejected by his herd, made me feel rather sad, but transformed my feeling about my drive, which became a big adventure. I drove off onto a flat plain. In the distance, I could see the silhouettes of other lumbering elephants and tall giraffes; occasionally the track would bring me face to face with one. I’d stop to let the giraffes run away, but slow down and pass the elephants carefully – my guidebook had a whole page devoted to what you should do if an elephant charges your vehicle. I felt that I had landed on another planet, or gone back to some prehistoric time on earth, before the rise of man. I was enjoying the feeling of total detachment from the modern world when I stumbled upon the highlight of the afternoon – a rare white rhino. I stopped and we looked at each other with curiosity, whilst I took more photos.

I noticed the sun was sinking on the horizon, so looked at my watch and checked the map. I was a long way from the entrance and I had an hour to reach the gate before it closed. I hurried off, initially pursued by the rhino. I raced the sun as it dipped down to the horizon and cast long shadows of trees over the plain and the road. I didn’t want to have to find out what happened to people that miss the gate’s closing time, and made it there exactly at the 19.02, to be the very last vehicle to leave. As I drove off I heard a guard say “Right, home now!” to her colleague.

Back at my camp, I had another excellent dinner (fish this time – how did they get it here, so far inland?) and then collapsed into the bed in my tent, very happy with day’s game spotting. Out of all of the larger animals at Etosha, I had been lucky enough to see everything except the eland (Africa’s largest antelope) and the cheetah.