Etosha National Park

Etosha National Park, One or Two Day Tour

 

A tour of Namibia would be incomplete without a visit to Etosha National Park, our most popular excursion destination and one of the world’s greatest game reserves.

A one-day visit is possible due to the park’s close proximity to Ozondjahe Hunting Safaris, leaving early in the morning, with an hour and a half drive to the Southern gate and returning late into the night.

Although a two-day tour of Etosha, with an overnight stay at one of the four lodges within the park, is preferable for those who wish to experience the exceptional night game viewing. At the floodlit waterholes it is common to see Elephant, Black and White Rhinoceros, Lion, Leopard, Hyena as well as rarely seen nocturnal species, certainly worth the overnight stay.

This huge sanctuary is home to over 100 mammal species including many rare and endangered animals and is some 8,598 square miles (22.270 square kilometers) in extent with a network of 435 miles (700 km) of gravel roads. Closed on some days. We need to make prior reservations for this excursion.

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Facts About Etosha:

  • The Etosha Pan is a vast, bare, open expanse of shimmering green and white that covers around 4,800km², almost a quarter of the beautiful Etosha National Park. At 130 km’s long and up to 50km’s wide in places, it is comfortably the largest salt pan in Africa and is the park’s most distinctive and dramatic feature, visible even from space. The pan was originally a lake but over time the earth’s climate forced the rivers that once fed the lake to change course and flow into the Atlantic Ocean. If one were to try find where the lake once lay today, only the dry baked alkaline clay marks would give you a clue.
  • In the language of the Ovambo tribe, Etosha means “great white place”.
  • It is believed that this natural mineral pan was first formed over 100 million years ago. About 16,000 years ago, the Kunene River in Angola would have flowed all the way to Etosha, forming, for some time, a huge and deep lake. But the river would later change its course due to tectonic plate movement and head for the Atlantic, causing the lake to slowly dry up and leaving the salt pan behind.
  • There is very little vegetation existing in the pan, only some soft tolerant grasses exist.