ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK

In central-northern Namibia the flat landscape is dotted with a number of large salt pans, slight depressions made by wind action. The most famous is Etosha Pan, which resides in the eponymous Etosha National Park, a vast area of over 20 000 km2 that protects a wealth of wildlife.

Etosha means “great white place” and indeed its immense salt pan stretches blinding white across 5000 km2 (120 km across and 55 km from north to south). Once an ancient superlake, today a few rivers and occasional heavy summer rains fill the pan (in good years attracting more than a million flamingos to its salty waters), but for the most part it is parched and dry. On its edges however there are a number of springs and waterholes which during the dry months attract the wildlife. Even during the wetter summer months they remain productive drawing elephant, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, black rhino, springbok, gemsbok, the endemic black-faced impala and their predators lion and hyena. Bird life is prolific with 340 species to be seen, amongst them 10 of Namibia’s 14 endemic bird species.