The Etosha Park is one of the most amazing concentrations of wildlife in Southern Africa. Here, the fauna has managed to adapt in one of the driest and seemingly inhospitable environments on the African continent, drawing sustenance from the minerals of the immense Etosha Pan depression and a vegetation reduced to the bare essentials, which awakens around the numerous waterholes, or with the arrival of the seasonal rains. It’s a boundless and desolate landscape, but also surprisingly rich in animals.
In the Oshivambo language, Etosha means ‘white earth’. White is the blinding colour of the clay, saline and limestone soil that covers the immense depression of the Etosha Pan, the heart and focal point of the park, an ancient dried-up salt lake, so vast that it is possible to see it from space. Seasonally it fills with rainwater and colonies of flamingos, while for the rest of the year its limestone dust is carried by the wind, whitening the surrounding savannahs. If, during the rains, the landscape of Etosha changes radically, dotted with greenery and birds, during the summer months it is a vast wasteland of semi-desert and dusty glades and hills, with occasional acacias, mopane trees and drought-browned brushwood. This is the season of the most amazing sightings, between June and October, during which animals gather around the main pools that have not completely dried up.
114 mammal species, 340 bird species and 120 reptile and amphibian species inhabit an area of approximately 23,000 km². A high concentration of black rhinoceroses and the increasingly rare white rhinoceroses, a multitude of elephants, gazelles, wildebeests, impalas, hyenas, lycaons, giraffes, zebras and, of course, the complete big cats, lions, cheetahs and leopards.
Not counting the numerous private reserves surrounding Etosha, which are also rich in wildlife, once past one of the four main entrances, a vast network of easily passable dirt tracks opens up, winding their way through the park’s various pools and restcamps that are its main landmarks.
If the lions are mostly unpredictable and constantly move around the entire park area, preferring shady vegetation during the peak hours, each sector with its pools is the favourite of one or more animal species. Thus, it is easy to spot entire families of elephants in the southern area of Okaukuejo, near Nebrownii waterhole, where they do their spectacular daily ablutions and where from Camp Okaukuejo it is possible to admire them at night near an illuminated waterhole. At Halali and Sueda, you will sharpen your eyesight at dawn or dusk to spot the shy cheetahs or leopards prowling around the Goas waterhole. If you are looking for giraffes, your destination will be rather to the east at Klein Namutoni.
Don’t forget a good pair of binoculars, which will help wherever you go, to spot some sly, shy lion resting in the distance under an acacia tree, waiting to attack its prey at dusk.
