Vacation! I Visit Etosha for the Third Time and am Never Once Bored Even a Little

Looking back to September 2016:

I first visited Namibia's Etosha National Park in November 2013, for two days and one night.  I met two wonderful game guides, saw a rhino munching and lions mating and giraffes, springbok, oryx, elephants, gnus, zebras, jackals and more all gathered at a waterhole at the same time, and leapt briefly and maybe illegally from our van to pick up some trash by the road.  Adventure!  Then Lysias drove us through in October 2015, and we saw so many elephants!  And springbok and zebra and ostriches and many, many gnus.

When Kit and Karen proposed spending three days there, I concurred enthusiastically.  I think I shall always be willing to spend time at Etosha.  We stayed in a fancy waterfront chalet at Okaukuejo Rest Camp, inside the park near the southern gate, for two nights, and at the even fancier Mushara Lodge near the eastern gate for our last night.  This part of the trip is best told in pictures, so that's how I'll do it.  The only experiences of note that didn't have to do with critters were the blown tire: Karen saying, from the shotgun seat, "I think we might have a flat," and being right -- and thank goodness she perceived it, I don't know how, before we'd done real damage -- and then some German I think tourists helping us figure out where we had to put the jack as the official instructions were wrong; and maybe the very fancy dinner by torchlight at Mushara.

Otherwise, it's all about the animals.  You can see all my photos here if you like.

Our first-night rhinos, at the waterhole right outside our chalet.

Ground squirrels use their tails for shade.

A beautiful bee-eater.

Probably adolescent males, goofing.  Or practicing for adulthood.

That's a social weaver birds' nest.  Sometimes they get heavy enough
to pull a tree over.

Mongoose, right at my feet as I watched the waterhole for bigger critters.

You see photos like this all the time, because giraffes pose like this all the time.

Oryx, one of many kinds of antelopes.

You know this one

Elephants coming up on the left, springbok down front.

Drinking giraffe

Babies and everything

We spent hours peering intently into the brush because rhinos hide shockingly well, and then we just drove past this
open field, and this beauty was ambling along with some branchy thing laced into her horns, and we thought
someone had tied them together and spent several minutes staring in grateful amazement and wondering why
anyone would tie a string to a rhino's horns, and then the branchy bit fell off.  So okay.  She walked across the road
probably no more than five meters or so in front of our car.

Red hartebeest; we saw, I think literally thousands of springbok, but only
these two (maybe there was a third one?) of this breed of antelope.

A dik dik; very small and almost always seen in pairs.

Everyone loves baby pictures!

Kudu; another antelope and a popular game meat.  The most amazing horns.

This was an amazing spot by Kit and a very rare sighting:  three cheetah with a freshly-killed springbok.
Cheetah camouflage very effectively in this dappled sunlight.  They also usually live and hunt alone, although
females keep their cubs with them for up to two years.  Males sometimes hunt with a brother or two, which is probably
what this group is, though it could be a mama and two kids.  We were the only vehicle stopped for ten minutes or so;
when another car stopped they had to ask what we saw.  That's how well camouflaged they were!  By the time
we drove away, there were about a dozen bakkies, buses and cars full of thrilled spectators.

A lot of my Namibian friends have never been to this park.  I've got to figure out a way to take some.  This place is so very worth seeing!