Etosha National Park

Etosha National Park Map

The Etosha National Park is regarded by wildlife aficionados as one of Africa's greatest and most intriguing wildlife sanctuaries. Dominated by an enormous shimmering white pan, the park's open grasslands and mopane woods are packed with game.

Despite being in a semi-arid area, the park is home to over 340 species of bird, 110 reptile and 100 mammal species, including close to 3 000 elephant, 300 black rhino - one of the biggest populations in Africa - 27 000 wildebeest, 7 000 zebra and rare antelope species like black faced impala, Damara dik dik, suni and roan antelope. Lion, cheetah and hyena are relatively common sightings and leopard often lurk in the tangled vegetation around waterholes.

For such a large wildlife destination Etosha is easy to visit: the main lodges in the park - Namutoni and Okaukuejo Resorts offer reasonable accommodation or camping while more upmarket lodges are found just outside the park borders.

An excellent network of good, well-marked roads makes Etosha an ideal self-drive destination. Ordinary sedan cars will cope well with the roads, although in the short rainy season (between December and April) some tracks become very slippery.

It was once the biggest national park in the world, covering almost 100,000km², but in 1967, when Namibia was under South African rule, the apartheid authorities reduced it in size to its current 22,275km² as part of a tribal resettlement scheme.

Those are not the only huge numbers associated with Etosha: the vast, white calcrete pan (seasonal lake) was once the biggest lake in the world, until climate changes dried up the feeder channels and changed the vegetation from lush forest to the yellow grasslands of today.

It's a great place for photography; one's first impression of the park is of a vast expanse of dazzling white pans which, in the harsh light of midday, are painful to look at without sunglasses. But in the early morning and late afternoons, the pans, through tricks of refracted light, glow and shimmer as they go through an astonishing range of colour changes, from orange through pink and purple to inky, deep blue.

As for wildlife photography it's hard to beat Etosha. The lodges have brilliantly designed rows of seating that overlook waterholes which attract jostling crowds of zebra, gemsbok, elephant and impala.

In good rain years, the pans fill with a food-rich, soupy water that attracts thousands of wading birds, including huge flocks of flamingos, turning the strongly alkaline water a deep pink in the mornings and evenings.

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