Tame but never lame
Namibia offers awesome sights for seasoned safarigoers and neophytes
ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK, Namibia -- I never thought I'd play chicken with an elephant.
But there I stood in an open-roofed safari jeep, square in the path of the world's largest land mammal. The thirsty, tusked behemoth was en route to water and we were in its way.
(Courtesy)
All six of us in the jeep watched silently as it lumbered closer, stopping a few feet short of the vehicle.
Hoisting its wrinkly trunk high in the air, it unleashed a few loud snorts, which my elephant-to-English dictionary translated as: "If you don't move, I'll kick you like a soccer ball to the other end of the park."
Our safari guide threw the jeep into reverse. The animal plodded over to the nearby watering hole, where we spied on it slurping and showering for the better part of an hour.
Namibia isn't the first place that comes to mind when Americans think "African safari." In fact, Namibia rarely came to mind at all before Brangelina had a baby here in 2006.
This sparsely populated, arid country in southwest Africa isn't where you come to check off the Big Five in one afternoon or witness a "Battle at Kruger," the buffalo-lion-crocodile bloodbath that's one of the most popular You Tube videos of all time. This might be why Namibia tends to be more popular with seasoned safarigoers than newbies wanting the most wildlife bang for their buck.
But on that April afternoon in Namibia's sprawling Etosha National Park, it felt like the six of us and that elephant had the planet to ourselves. And that was thrilling in its own way.
One of the biggest national parks in Africa, Etosha means "Great White Place." It's named for the large salt flat that blankets what had been a lake many centuries ago.
This tapestry of saline desert and grassy plains is the country's best place to view wildlife, especially during the dry season from May to October. Temperatures aren't as hot then, and animals are easy to spot congregating around Etosha's watering holes.
I saw zebra, crocodile, ostrich, springbok (gazelle) and kudu (antelope) before I even left Namibia's capital city, Windhoek. Granted, they were on my dinner plate at the perennially popular Joe's Beerhouse, not in the wild. In Namibia, they eat game like we eat pizza. We stopped by a family's olive farm for lunch one day and sat down to a feast of homemade warthog. For the record, it doesn't taste like chicken.
Namibian safaris typically start in Windhoek, a small, laid-back city with strong German influences -- echoes of the country's colonial past.
Windhoek is where we met our guide from &BEYOND, the new name of one of the continent's leading safari operators, CC Africa.
Our guide drove us north on dirt roads through the Kalahari Desert, past monolithic termite towers and thorny acacia trees. Desolate and dramatic, the bush was, in a word, beautiful. And we were about to spend three nights camping in it -- something that sounds a lot more rustic than it was. That's because our tents, set up and taken down by &BEYOND staff, came with twin beds and private flush toilets. (These portable toilets can handle three flushes before the tank needs changing -- another task that's handled by staff, thankfully.)
Meals were multicourse affairs, served on tables that looked like they should be on display in a Pottery Barn but were under the vast African sky instead.
Shortly after sunrise, we left the comforts of camp and drove into Etosha, home to 114 species of mammals, 340 types of birds and 100-plus reptiles.
For safety reasons, visitors are supposed to stay in their vehicles while in the park. This wasn't a problem, especially since &BEYOND limited this trip's safari guests to six, meaning everyone had a window seat.
Our guide drove around the massive park while we stood in the jeep, passing the binoculars and searching for giraffes' faces above the tree line, springbok bouncing through the grass, and the jarring sight of black and white zebra stripes against the muted colors of this surreal landscape.
With our heads and shoulders poking out of the top of the jeep, we must have looked like a mobile box of chocolates as we pulled up to a pair of lionesses lounging lazily by the side of the road.
One gave a big yawn, showing us her massive teeth. We sat there for a long time in silence and solitude -- just us and a couple of killer cats. It was like watching our own private Animal Planet show.
The sights in Namibia may be more subtle than watching a sea of wildebeests cross the Serengeti. But to this safari rookie, they were no less spectacular.