The Great White Place

Covering an area over 8,000 square miles, Etosha National Park is a wildlife sanctuary like none other, at least as far as I’ve been fortunate enough to see.  Etosha sits in the Northern region of Namibia – a very dry, very dusty place where seemingly nothing would live.  But, in fact, a lot lives there - from cheetahs to lions to elephants to rhino to numerous other mammals and birds.  It’s an oasis of life. 

 

The Etosha salt pan is made up of millions (probably billions?) of these little clay polygons.

The name Etosha means “Great White Place,” and although the entire park is not one huge salt pan, the main point of interest in the park is the Etosha salt pan, which measures slightly over 30 miles across by nearly 80 miles wide.  When the park was originally established in 1907 its area covered over 34,000 square miles from the Skeleton Coast to its current location, but after many size adjustments the park was reduced to its much smaller, current size; which is still seven times the size of Rhode Island.

My friends and I traveled to Etosha for one reason: the wildlife.  In particular we wanted to see cheetahs and desert elephants, and although the cheetahs eluded us over the four days we were in the park we were able to see plenty of elephants.  

Some of the 16 elephants that we saw at the watering hole in Halali.

The elephants of Etosha are a wondrous bunch.  These elephants belong to a special group of elephants found only in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola.  The elephants are taller than their counterparts from other parks, yet lack the large tusks that distinguish the elephants of Southern Africa and Eastern Africa due to a deficiency of minerals in their diets – causing smaller, shorter tusks.

A mineral deficiency (probably calcium) causes the elephants of Etosha to have smaller husks, although the elephants are the tallest in all of Africa.

Calves like this are at the center of the herd's attention and although this is the time they're most likely to be killed by lions, the entire herd will make a very intimidating wall of bodies and legs should a predator be found nearby.

Living in Etosha’s arid environment comes with other challenges aside from a lack of particular minerals.  Namely water is the limiting resource for these large consumers and because of this their numbers hover between two to three thousand in total for the park, whereas Chobe National Park (a park of similar size) just some few hundred miles away has an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 elephants.  

Luckily, the lack of water sources lends itself to increasing the numbers of elephant sightings due to the fact that elephants must drink water nearly everyday, so to see them a person only needs to go to a watering hole and wait.  Patience will bring the elephants.  During my time in Etosha we saw over 40 elephants, but at a waterhole in Halali we saw 16 at once.  

In Etosha National Park, water is the most limiting factor in why such a large park only has two to three thousand elephants, where as Chobe National Park in Botswana has at least 50,000.

What makes elephants so interesting to watch is that elephants exude many of the same mannerisms that humans do, while other animals – impala for instance – just go about their time grazing and walking around.  Elephants are far more interesting because they’ll play with each other, chase other nearby animals, actively reach out and touch one another, are inquisitive, and even coddle their young.  

 

Watching these 16 elephants at Halali for a couple of hours was the highlight of my time in Etosha.  We saw two male rhino fighting one another, lions stalking springboks, but the elephants - in my opinion - were the best.

I’ve seen plenty of elephants during my time in Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania but I would have to say that the elephants of Namibia’s Etosha National Park were my favorite.  It can’t be an easy task to scratch out a living in a park that’s known for 2,400 square mile salt pan and allows nothing to grow.  

Overall, I would go so far as to say that Etosha as a park ranks second on my list of parks that I’ve been fortunate enough to visit (it would be second only to Kenya’s Maasai Mara Nature Reserve).  And to have the opportunity to stand in the middle of a “Great White Place” where the air is as dry as anything you could imagine, while having lunch with friends, is a memory I won’t likely forget anytime soon.  

In the middle of Etosha Pan.  From the left: Jacob, Team, Caleb, myself.