Namibia Trip - Okonjima and Etosha

My mom has settled in to her life in Namibia and the Peace Corps. A few weeks ago, my sister and I packed up our bags and made the (very) long trip to go see her for the holidays. For those that don't know, Namibia is in southern west coast of Africa. It's neighboring countries are South Africa, Botswana, and Angola. Namibia is roughly twice the size of the state of California and actually has a similar landscape. It's the second least populated country behind Mongolia and you can drive for long stretches without seeing other people. Namibia is not known for it's food (salty meat, millet, ketchup and mayonnaise on everything), but what they lack in culinary prowess, they more than make up for in beautiful landscapes and interesting wild life. Since my mom wasn't allowed to leave the country yet, we spent our time driving all over the country and seeing almost everything Namibia has to offer.

To break up the drive between Windhoek and Rundu, we spent one night at the Okonjima Lodge. Okonjima is the home of the Africat Foundation where injured or mislocated cheetahs and leopards are taken to be rehabilitated and reintroduced to the wild. We did a cheetah tracking mission which took us through their vast territory and we managed to get up close and personal with a cheetah that had just made a kill. It was beyond amazing to see.


The cheetahs and leopards are collared and tracked with devices that look like this.




Before you see the cheetah, you see a lot of other wildlife like warthogs (which are everywhere in Namibia), various antelopes, and giraffes.




Score!

After Okonjima, we headed to Rundu a few days. Rundu is where my mom lives and works. There isn't much to do there and I got a cold so those couple of days were spent laying around trying to get better quick (which I did). From Rundu, we made our way to Etosha National Park. We spent one night at the gorgeous Namutoni Lodge and two nights at Okaukeujo. There is a ridiculous amount of wildlife in the park and we spent our days there driving through looking for animals. We saw everything from springboks (which are also all over Namibia) to lions, but sadly, the weather was too warm to see any elephants. We also had a fun (well, not so fun for my mom) moment when our 4x4 got stuck in the mud of the Etosha Pan. Thank goodness for German tourists who got us unstuck!


Zebras


Wildebeast


Ducks


Side-Striped Jackal


The ever present springboks. The blurs in the background are lions!


Giraffes


White Rhino


Sunset at the waterhole in Okuakuejo

After Etosha, we visited Swakopmund and the Namib Desert. Stay tuned to find out more about what we did in each of those places.