March 21st 2015, Namutoni to Old Traders Lodge, Erindi Game Park

We were really not unhappy to leave the Namutoni Camp after just one night. Granted, it does get a bit tiring to keep having to pack and re-pack your stuff almost every day, but this camp really did not make you want to stay on. As much as both Dolomite and Okaukuejo were nice, and it was pleasant to sit around your cabin taking in the views, at Namutoni you really did not want to sit around outside your cabin. Other than the fact that it all looked like a dump site, it was also all the bugs and stuff crawling around. So, we put our luggage back in to the car and drove to the restaurant for breakfast.

Already the previous night the steak we had at the restaurant was actually really good, and this morning they had some seriously good croissants. The proper, loaded with butter French style croissants! Since we had a long drive in front of us, and we really didn’t feel like stopping to eat on the way, we stuffed some croissants and fruit in a bag for the road as well.

On the way to the gate out of Etosha, we headed back on a small loop for our last little game drive here. Even though the night before we had seen a dik-dik we still wanted to see one in daylight. It did not take us long before we came across one of the little beauties.

There were a number of giraffes around, as well as some grey louries a.k.a go-away birds. At one point we spotted a springbok carcass in a tree, a typical food storage for a leopard. As the carcass looked reasonably fresh, we had a very close look to see if we were able to spot one more leopard. But it was not to be this morning.

Suddenly a huge group of striped mongoose cross the road in front of us!

We exited through the Von Lindequist Gate on the east of Etosha, after over five days having completely covered the park from west to east. It truly is an amazing game park with all kinds of landscapes. The only thing that is a bit unfortunate is the poor quality of the Namutoni Camp given that this eastern part of the park is probably the most interesting one. For any future visit I suppose it would be worth investigating camps situated just outside the park, or the considerably more expensive luxury camp situated a bit north of Namutoni.

The road leaving the park is properly paved, and it then gets even better. This is one of the only paved roads in Namibia, and is the main road leading eventually to Windhoek. Going is good, with very little traffic, and the road pretty straight. The only thing is to remain vigilant all the time to any possible wildlife at the side of the road, and you are often reminded of the risks by the various warthog, antelope and other cow warning signs. I notice on more than one occasion that the warthog warning is not to be taken lightly as they are quite common along the side of the road. What does surprise me though is the considerable lack of roadkill that I see, and I am happy to also avoid hitting anything.

The road to Erindi takes us through some more important cities of Namibia, the first being Tsumeb. We have no need for stopping, and push on until we reach Otavi. Here we decide to stop to stretch our legs, use the bathroom and perhaps buy some cold drinks. The place we stop at looks like your typical truck-stop, and there is a fair bit of activity going on here. I don’t want to fill up with gas yet as I have more than enough left, and have decided to fill the car at the last place I can before heading to Erindi.

We are quickly back on the road, and heading towards Otjiwarongo. The further south we get, the greener the surrounding gets. There has been some recent rain, and judging by the clouds in the sky it is likely it will rain again. This would actually be a nice thing as it would wash some of the dust from the car which is really starting to look “well-travelled”! However, other than the occasional drop, we don’t get wet.

Otjiwarongo turns out to be a quaint village with clear German influence like witnessed in Swakopmund. Actually, it is a bit of a mix between some old colonial German look and something from the US west. The street names however are all German. We stop at a service station and fill up on diesel. Filling up in Namibia is a more pleasant experience than back home first of all because the diesel costs something like 80 centimes a litre, and the attendant is happy to wash all the windows and even the car lights for a small tip. I am sure if I paid him 2 francs he would wash the entire car!

We are soon driving the last distance to Erindi, and progress continues to be as good as it has been all day. It is a nice change to see the kilometres go by as quickly as they do, after having spent the last five days driving at 10 to 20 kmh. Suddenly I see the sign for the turn-off to Erindi! The paved road ends, and we are back on a bright red sand trail again.

As always, the dirt road is very good, although the red sand here makes it a bit more slippery than previously. What makes this part difficult though is the number of little birds that keep flying right in front of the car. I do notice that a number of them have obviously been hit by earlier cars, and I hope that I manage to avoid them all. We also notice quite a number of much larger vultures on the trees next to the road, and just miss out on a great photo with some five of them in the same tree. As I stop the car, they all decide to fly away…

At the gate to the game park, the guard explains how we drive to get to the Old Traders Lodge. We have something like 40 km to do in the park, which at first does not seem like too much. However we soon discover that the road is not in such good shape, and for the most part is like a washboard. The problem with this is you need to carry some speed to try and smooth things out, but we want to go slow in order to check out the animals. It becomes a bit of a struggle to try and make things reasonably smooth, and so I spend quite some time checking the road surface rather than spotting animals.

Myriam as always does a good job spotting though. We find that the landscape is typical of cheetah land, and reminds us of where we saw a cheetah mom with five cubs all those years ago in the Serengeti. However, in spite of looking carefully, we don't see any.

Arriving at the lodge we do see a huge elephant, almost greeting us there. The place looks very well organized, and I go to complete the check-in. We look to sign up for a night-drive that very night if possible, but we are told that a night drive is charged a fixed CHF 200 regardless of how many people join. It turns out nobody else has signed up, and so we would have to pay the full fee if we want to go. We let them know that we will go if at least another couple signs up.

We unload the car, and settle down in our cabin for a rest. As there is afternoon cake and coffee being served at the restaurant, we head over there to check it out. The place is beautiful, with a huge terrace overlooking a dam. The deep water is populated by hippos and crocodiles, and as we sit and watch for a while, the place is visited by your regular giraffes and various antelopes.

Later for dinner it becomes clear that there will be no night drive that evening, which is actually not such a bad thing. We are quite tired from the long day on the road, and getting up at 5 every day for a week is taking its toll. There is also a bit of a storm blowing. So after dinner we head back for a reasonably early evening, after having been able to benefit a bit from the wifi coverage at the restaurant.

March 20th 2015, Okaukuejo to Namutoni, Etosha

Having gotten all our stuff packed in the car, we did the check-out before heading for breakfast. We figured this would save some time as there would likely be a bit of a check-out rush after breakfast.

As we then had a fair distance to cover this day, and we knew already there was not a lot to be seen in the nearby places, we set off at a pretty swift pace. With the wide open spaces, it was possible to spot animals from afar, and so speed was less of an issue.

At one point, we took a road that lead right up to the shores of the salt lake. The view was truly impressive, with what looked like a beach landscape and a white sea. This is a huge salt lake, and it appears that during heavy rains certainly the part we were at becomes fully flooded. Not so now, even though we had seen a number of thunderstorms in the area the night before.

Having not seen any yet on this trip, we then finally came across our first secretary bird. Right nearby there was another of lilac breasted roller followed by a purple roller.

Getting close to Namutoni, Myriam spots a small group of lions resting under a lone tree. They are looking very lazy as usual with lions at this time of the day, and so we decide to leave them to their nap. We do see some more wonderful birds as well.

We decided to push on so as to get to the new camp and check-in because time was going by pretty fast. We completed the formalities, and signed up for a night drive again. Although the camp looked quite nice at the entrance, getting to the bungalow area produced a different site.

The place literally looked like a dump site. There was some sort of tall fencing around the bungalows, but it had collapsed at some places. Getting the car to our bungalow proved difficult as there was no real road to it, and after a bit of a struggle we did manage. There were broken concrete pipes all over the place, with termites and other bugs crawling around.

Luckily once inside the bungalow things got a bit better. The room was clean, and there was a functioning air-conditioner and a fridge. However the way things had been designed and installed really left you thinking. There was no door or curtain leading to the bathroom and toilet. The double sink looked nice at first, until you realized that the faucets were so low you couldn't quite get your hands under them. Then the bathtub was sunk down in to the floor, and there were two shower heads above it that you could change the spray on…if you could reach them! They were well over two meters up! It was all kind of funny though, and since everything inside was clean it didn’t really bother us. Besides, we were only staying for one night.

There was still time for another quick drive, and we had seen at the sighting book at the entrance that there had been several leopard sightings recently. We noted the spots and headed straight for the first one just minutes outside the camp.

This was at a very nice natural waterhole, and we closely scrutinized the area. No leopard. Oh well, it was time to go for the second spot, but just as we were driving out I spotted an amazing paradise wydah. This is one of those birds you always see in bird books but never expect to see for real. Well here she was!!

At the next waterhole we stopped again to check out the scene. There were a couple of jackals by the water, and a few springboks and stuff. I thought I noticed something in the bushes in the distance, and upon zooming in with my camera it was confirmed as our first leopard!

I set the car up for a perfect view and switched the engine off, as we expected to sit here for a while. The leopard was looking towards the water, and we thought he might get up to get a drink and maybe make a lunge for a springbok. It didn’t take long before he did get up and walk to the water.

The view was incredible, as by the time he was by the water he really was not far from us. The jackals were all howling their warnings, and the leopard seemed a bit annoyed and too lazy to do anything else. After a drink, he headed back towards the bushes.

We followed him for a while longer, together with an English couple in another car, but in the end we lost track of him in the bushes.

Near to the camp we saw a couple of cars stopped at the side of the road. We headed there to see what was going on, and saw a group of three lions relaxing beneath a tree. Time for some quick photos, and then it was back to camp for some dinner before our night drive.

Arriving at the camp, I decided to fill the car. The following day would be the longest drive of the whole trip, and although I knew there would be a few service stations on the way, it was better to be safe than sorry. I saw that they accepted credit cards, which is unusual in Namibia as most service stations are cash only, and so I decided to pay by card so as to save the cash for when there is no alternative. The attendant first got out one remote machine, and I put my card in and entered the pin code. He then told me that machine wasn’t working properly, and got out a second one and completed the transaction.

I didn’t think anything really about this until two days later. In a shop I tried to pay with my card, and the transaction was refused. At the same time I received an sms from Swisscard informing me to contact them. Since I had a mobile phone connection, I called them right away. It turns out there had been several illicit cash withdrawals done with my card, and they had blocked it.  That was when it hit me that the attendant in the service station had made a copy and recorded my pin code with the first machine. This information must then have been sent to accomplices in Windhoek who had right away begun withdrawing as much cash as possible from ATM machines.

Luckily the card had been blocked quickly, and the illicit transactions are taken care of by MasterCard, but you can never be too careful. After some research on the internet, this seems to be a scam that is becoming quite common, and in Namibia is run by a Nigerian gang.

After getting fuel and resting a short bit in our cabin, we got all our gear together, with jackets and all, and went to have dinner. The thing is we wanted to be ready as quickly as possible for the night drive, and with the camp being pretty big the restaurant was half way between our cabin and the gate.

There was just another couple joining the night drive, so we were able to get comfortable in the jeep. It was warmer than the other night, but it was really nice to put our jackets on nevertheless. We headed first towards the Etosha exit gate, and turn off towards a nice trail that went past a big waterhole. The name of the trail is Dik-Dik trail, and indeed we soon got to see a tiny dik-dik. Getting to the waterhole, we saw right away a spotted hyena and asked the guide to stop. He was more interested in following a black rhino just a bit further up, which was fine especially as we then got to have a good look at the hyena as well.

Unlike the night drive we had done from Okaukuejo, this time there was a driver and a guide, and so they were perhaps a bit more efficient in spotting animals. So, after visiting this first waterhole, we headed towards the area we had seen the lions earlier in the day. There were some in the same spot as before, but we also saw another lion over on the other side of the road. What was interesting here is that there was a hyena calmly walking towards the lion, and she did not seem to have noticed the lion. Given that these two are enemies, we stayed still expecting to see some action.

The hyena then noticed the lion, but about then another lion had shown up, and the hyena was in between the two. After a short while of assessing the situation, the hyena then came towards us instead, and walked right up to the jeep! She was so close we could have easily touched her, but that would probably not have been such a good idea. She then turns around, and suddenly heads straight for one of the two lions! This hyena certainly does not seem scared of anything, because she would really be in a lot of trouble if the two lions decide to attack. In the end, she probably thought the better of it, and heads of in another direction.

We continue on a bit further, and meet up with the leopard from earlier in the day. This time he is stalking some springboks, and we stop to watch how things play out. There is a sort of intimacy when observing things on a night drive, because the darkness makes you feel somehow in a closed space with the animal. We are all very quiet while we observe the leopard, and you even try to breath calmly in order to make as little noise as possible. As the leopard creeps closer, suddenly the stillness of the night is broken by another car arriving. The noise and the lights end up scaring the springboks, and so the leopard decides to call it quits. 

Since it is close to 23:00, our guides decide to head back to the camp. As we get there, we quickly make our way back to our cabin, and stumble in to bed.

March 19th 2015, Okaukuejo, Etosha

It was a short night for sure, but I slept very well. Myriam was not as lucky, and having gotten up in the middle of the night got to see an elephant come and have a drink at the lit waterhole in front of our cabin. But this did not stop us from getting up as usual in order to be out of the gate as early as possible.

We decided to go back to the place we had seen the lions the previous night. Chances were obviously very small that they would still remain around the same spot, but you never know. Turns out we didn’t get lucky again as there was absolutely no trace of them this morning.

Nearby there was a waterhole that we went to check out just in case there was something. But, after carefully looking around, there really were no animals there at all. So, we decided to head off in another direction. There was a car coming the other way, and I slowed so as to see if they had spotted anything. The guide told us that there was a hyena heading in our direction, and that it should appear soon by the waterhole we just left. So, we headed back and shortly after a lone hyena appeared. She looked very thirsty, but there was not really any water to be had, so she was soon on her way again looking for water elsewhere.

We decided to head in the direction of the camp as it was not far away so as to benefit from the toilets before going back out. Just before arriving at camp, we saw the black rhino again that had been at the waterhole the night before! So, this time we were able to get some good daylight pictures.

Heading back out, we took a new route heading further east. The landscape was getting increasingly dry and barren, making it fairly easy to spot animals. The problem was that there were not many to spot!

We pulled in at a small waterhole at one point, and there was a huge white rhino sleeping there! Just next to the rhino, there were also two blue cranes, and since we had seen a poster back at camp that these were very rare, we took some pictures as proof of having seen them. That was pretty much all, and as we were pretty tired, we decided to go back to camp for lunch and a nap.

Awaking from the nap, the first thing was obviously to check the waterhole again. This time there had been an elephant invasion! They were everywhere, and after having all had a drink, they began heading back out again. I tried counting them, and got to 28, but there were probably a few more. An amazing spectacle for sure!

This excitement had the adrenaline flowing again, and we got back in our car for an afternoon drive. Unfortunately the excitement began to wear off as there really was not much to see. The only real noteworthy spotting was a beautiful yellow billed hornbill.

It certainly was nice then to get to bed at a reasonable hour having arranged our stuff for the following morning as we would be changing camp yet again.