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I'm about to head back to Namibia, February 2025, and I never made any wildlife posts from my last visit in October 2023 except to scatter some photos through the Friday Photos section. I decided I would at least gather my photos and Friday Photo entries from that trip, particularly from Etosha National Park, into one article you can scroll through for your wildlife fix. I will be going back in the "off-season" for wildlife -- i.e., the wet season when the wildlife retreats to the interior of Etosha where there is plenty of water, rather than gathering around the waterholes that are accessible to tourists driving through the park, like in October. We will look for some wildlife in the far northeast in February, near the Caprivi Strip, but not expecting to find much. So this may be my last African wildlife post for awhile. Have fun with me and my friend, Berrie, on virtual safari as we drive through Etosha over several days. 

Actually, let's begin our trip as I did ... before we got to Etosha we were further east in northern Namibia near Rundu. One night on the banks of Kavango River, with Angola just on the other side of it, I watched a crazy lightning storm for a couple hours. To imagine how long and huge these lightning flashes were, consider that I took these pics with my phone camera, which is extremely slow to click in low light, and yet I caught a bunch of lightning strikes that lasted long enough for the shutter to open and close. Here are a few.

OK now we move onto Etosha. Berrie knows the park well, so the first afternoon we drove in, Berrie beelined for a waterhole that is popular with the wildlife near the Namutoni camp. As we were driving, we saw a herd of elephants walking through the bushes and Berrie predicted they were on their way to the water. So rather than stopping to watch them, we drove on to the waterhole and waited for them. If I recall, we were the only vehicle there, looking like chumps at an empty waterhole. It wasn't completely abandoned ... there were a few springbok, I think. So we were just sitting and chatting for awhile when I happened to glance behind me, and there they all were as if they'd teleported in, walking right behind the car. I can't believe we nearly missed them walking up to the waterhole! 

We ended up spending quite a bit of time here over the next couple days. It was interesting to watch the interaction and social dynamics between different elephant herds coming to drink and the other wildlife like the giraffes. I won't share my field notes of their behaviors, rather, just share some fun photographic moments. In this first photo, the foreground is filled with black-faced impala. Common impala are, well, very common throughout southern Africa. But the black-faced impala were nearly wiped out by humans in the 20th century. They now thrive in Etosha National Park, but that's about the only place. You can find them scattered outside the park in northern Namibia, but aside from private game reserves, they are almost exclusively found in Etosha.

Most animals give way to the elephants when they come to the water, even the giraffes step back. The elephants are clearly the kings (and queens) of the waterhole. In the first pic you can see the elephants entering the scene stage right as the giraffe and zebras gallop away.

The giraffe and zebras get along just fine sharing the water.

Some more elephants. Hope you like elephants.

In addition to blowing water all over themselves through their trunks, elephants also commonly blow dust onto themselves. Mud and dust protect their skin in the sun. 

Every time we drove to this waterhole, we encountered this sweet dik-dik couple along the road. They had their home, apparently, in the bushes nearby. The male is a little smaller than the female -- both under two feet tall -- with his adorable little horns, and the female has beguiling exotic eyes to look at us with. 

I just love the dik-diks, such a precious little antelope species. Perhaps my favorite of the antelopes are the kudu, the males with their corkscrew-shaped horns and the females with their big ears. This male is still pretty young.

Berrie and I were typically just about the first vehicle let into the park in the mornings, as we got up early and were waiting in the pre-dawn at the gates. One morning a park safari guide passed us going the other way and advised us of some lions up ahead, which turn-off to take to see them. They were lying down when we first came upon them and almost missed them. You'd be amazed how easily you can miss huge animals even on a totally flat plain! If you know my fondness for animal tongues you can see I got a double score in this pic! 

After awhile the lion brothers fell asleep, so we continued driving on, and after the dawn spread the pink glow so characteristic of this area, we spied three little lion cubs up in some bushes away from the road. Their coats were the same color as the brown dry-season grass, and again you could almost pass them by, but I am always peering into the bushes and across the plains on maximum alert. So we stopped to watch them. They didn't move from their spot but they weren't sleeping. Gradually we came to see there were four more cubs, a total of seven! We were the only vehicle there to watch them. 

After a time, another car pulled up behind us, then a park guide drove by, his safari vehicle empty, on his way to pick up passengers. He must have called in the cub sighting to all the other guides operating in the park -- in a short amount of time, so many vehicles had pulled up, a lot of them guided safari vehicles, that we were literally trapped. Vehicles on three sides of us and lions on the other. And we were hoping to get back to camp before the breakfast buffet closed. With admirable patience, persistence and skill, Berrie eventually wiggled us out of the jam, and we were grateful for all the time we had alone with the cubs.

I played around a bit with photos of these young giraffes in black and white. 

The most popular camp and waterhole in the park is Okaukuejo, where we spent a couple nights, our chalet just a stone's throw from the waterhole. At night I walked out in my pajamas with a mug of amarula and cookies to watch the nightlife from benches set up behind a cement wall and barbed wire to separate tourists from the animals. The hole is brightly lit at night. There's even a game camera running a feed so you can watch the animals at the hole any time from anywhere in the world over the internet. I didn't take the effort to set up my camera for night shots, this one below is just on my phone, but these are two of the total of eight black rhinos I saw this night. Two were tiny babies. I think the baby giraffe in the background is an orphan. It was there all night by itself. Sad.

When we very first arrived and dropped our luggage off in the chalet, I took a quick walk to the hole to find it encircled by a herd of elephants playing and splish-splashing and soaking and creating pandemonium in the water. Adults, babies, every age in between, about 30 elephants. I took a couple minutes of video on my cell phone and then decided this was the perfect opportunity to use my wide angle lens on my real camera which I’d hardly touched so far, to capture the commotion at the entirety of the hole in one shot. I was anxious not to miss any of the fun action, so I speed-walked this short distance to our chalet, grabbed the camera and sped back with happy excitement.

I arrived at the waterhole incredulous. I felt like I'd somehow skipped over a stretch of time like a needle on a scratched record. How could this be? All but two of the elephants were out of the water stretched in a perfectly straight line across the rocky ground heading back into the trees in the distance. Five minutes ago the hole was a playground and the elephants looked as if they were having a grand time. How did they all get out so fast, line up so perfectly and make it so far across the field in my very brief absence? I was tempted to take it personally – quick, let’s leave before she gets back! Well I stuck around until the front of the elephant line disappeared into the thickets, and then sulked back to the chalet dejected. 

But it was hard to stay mad for long. There were plenty of critters to see on our afternoon game drive, and the elephants really did try to make it up to me, coming back over the next two days to tussle and play and cool down at the Okaukuejo water hole. 

Okondeka natural waterhole lies right along the edge of the vast Etosha salt pan. We stopped to watch giraffes materialize from the horizon. Berrie said he almost always sees lions there but we did not see any. However, there was a lion kill by the spring that vultures were devouring, and jackals were running back and forth waiting to rush in the moment the vultures took a break. If you choose one photo from this post to open in a new tab to view larger, make it this one. You can see the vultures on the carcass on the left, black-backed jackals on the other side of the puddle, lots of oryx, some common springbok, and of course the giraffe. Just off stage left are some ostriches.  

Sunset at Okaukuejo.

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Read more articles about Etosha in Namibia Archive I

Read more articles about Namibia in Archive II