All the way to the other side of the park

With our spare tire on the car, and the flat one in the back, we set off this morning to drive the now familiar 90km road to Outjo and Jan of Outjo Highway Services to get it fixed. Jan even recognised us, but welcomed our arrival with the mentioning that the tire was beyond fixing and needed replacement. So, there we go. Tire number 2. With both new tires fitted in the front of the car, and about half an hour later, we drove back to the gate of Etosha for a slow but steady drive through the park.

We decided to let even more air out of the tires, and go with a very low pressure to avoid another flat. We fuelled up at the first camp, got rid of the unwanted air, and away we were.

As Etosha is really vast, water holes are the place to be to see animals, and therefore we were sad that our time constraint would not allow us to go to all the water holes we wanted to visit today. So we chose the ones we thought would prove to be good, and went with it. Today, no amazing sightings of Lion or other big cats, but we found a massive herd of Elephant crossing a plain straight in our direction. Naturally, we stopped and just waited for the leader of the herd to choose the way across the field and eventually the road. Seeing a large herd of 25 animals pass by is just very soothing. 🙂

We are staying at Onguma Tree Top, which is a small luxurious camp of 4 elevated rooms surrounding a water hole in the Onguma Game Reserve. This is a gated reserve neighbouring Etosha NP, and they accommodate 4 black rhinos from Etosha to guard them from poaching. This reserve does not have Elephant, but there are two males who regularly push over the fences to cross into the National Park during mating season and go back afterwards. They are not supposed to, but as they are big Bulls, who’s going to stop them?

We only stay here one night, and are destined to drive a long way to Rundu on the Okavango River and the Angolese border tomorrow. No flat tires today, so this was a good day!