Etosha

Etosha is an incredibly wide-stretched park with a lot of wildlife. It consists of an enormous salt pan with wells around it. The roads there are extemely good. We had no trouble getting anywhere in the park with our two standard sedan cars. It was really too easy to see the animals. Just touring around a bit made you meet about every herbivore that lived there. Predators are a different story: We just saw the black-backed jackal, and nothing else, even though all the big cats ought to be there.

By contrast, the herbivores walked right in front of your car, you could almost touch them. At a certain point, our car (with Russel driving) ended up in the middle of a herd of elephants. The beasts towered over our cars, and Russell (who had not gotten an all-risk insurance for this hire car) began to fear that the elephants would sit down on the hood at one point.

Then, a little baby elephant crossed in front of us. It thought we were a bit too close and trumpeted toward us. That made mummy flip hear ears, which is a threat display. Russell, already a bit nervous, started to pull up gently. "Stay still, or rather go backwards Russell" I even said to him. But mum-elephant trumpeted again and Russell put his foot down on the throttle. We sped through the herd while the elephants were diving into the bushes to our left and right. Except for mother elephant who charged at us, but only ran into the dust of our car flying past. I had never expected that elephants could react so quickly. Thankfully, both the elephants and we only had an increased heart rate after this incident.