The Hidden Gems of Africa (part 4)

On top of their landscape gems, Namibia and Botswana also revealed their wildlife wonders, and, for a first trip to Africa, it was quite a treat! Both countries are known for their wildlife watching. Namibia was the first African country to incorporate protection of the environment into its constitution - the country has remarkable wildlife conservation areas, which have led to the significant recovery of critically endangered species like the black rhino. The best time of the year for wildlife watching is during the dry season between May and October when animals are easier to spot as they congregate around the rare water sources - waterholes, swamps and rivers - which are at their lowest level. Also, during the rainy season, some roads might be closed and entire parts of the countries become inaccessible due to flooding.

Safaris are the quintessence of Africa, and both Namibia and Botswana are dream come true safari destinations! There are different safari options but, if like us you appreciate your independence and want to decide where and when to go, the self-drive safari should be your choice.

In case you wonder, like we did, whether it is possible to organise your own safari, the answer is yes. Both countries rank amongst the top 10 safest countries in Africa, and it is easy to book campsites and lodges on the Internet.

We decided that it would be too tiring to sleep every single night in our rooftop tent and booked rooms in some lodges in between to vary the experience. Even though the tent was very cosy and comfortable, it was nice from time to time to sleep on a real bed and take a long shower in our room! 

Wild camping is not allowed in both Namibia and Botswana, so even though you sleep on the top of your 4WD, you still need to book a campsite. The good news is that both countries have some of the most luxurious camping sites we have ever stayed at, sometimes with private toilets and bathrooms, and even a private kitchen sink at your campsite! There were of course some surprises like no hot water or a "donkey" heating mechanism where you need wood to heat the water, so a couple of times we took cold water showers or no showers at all, but these are the risks of any trip into the wilderness!

Also, if you decide to opt for a self-drive safari, bear in mind that African time is very different from Western time when you are on the dusty roads in the middle of nowhere. The best advice is to take your time and not to rush it, as this is how a flat tyre usually happens! From the moment you land in Africa, everything will slow down, whether you like it or not - the melodic languages, soft steps and dancing movements of the African people, and the feeling that they do not have a single worry in the world… 

Every inch of Namibia and Botswana is a potential wildlife spot. You can see animals along the road, and sometimes even on the road, which explains the advice from your rental company to always drive way below the speed limits. We barely avoided a collision with a couple of antelopes crossing the road literally in front of our car and out of the blue! It was so sudden and quick that had we been driving faster, we would not have been able to stop the car and this encounter would have been fatal. Breaking too harshly can be dangerous on the sandy roads as it can make you get off the road! 

There are a few parks like the Etosha National Park in Namibia and the Chobe National Park in Botswana where you can go for a safari with your own vehicle.

In some of the campsites and lodges, we went on organised game drives with local guides, which allowed us to spot more animals and learn a lot about them. The quality of the experience depended on the guide, and it was a hit or miss. Some guides were incredibly knowledgeable and passionate, others were great at spotting animals we would never have spotted on our own, especially in the darkness of the night safaris, but there were also those who either lacked passion or were terrible drivers. And believe me - being a good driver is one of the requirements for a good guide! The roads in the parks are so bumpy and dusty that it can change your entire experience! Even with a good driver, you will always get plenty of dust and "enjoy" some "African massage", as a game drive is usually called.

Each guide started the drive by asking which animals we wanted to see and stating the obvious - there was never any guarantee! But whoever our guide was, the animals always cooperated and each safari was the occasion to spot a new animal (even though not always the one we wanted to see at any cost)!

Wildlife watching in Africa is a whole new art to master. In addition to the best time of the year, you need to be aware of the best time of the day for spotting wild animals. Even though dawn and dusk tend to be the most productive periods, we saw our first lions resting lazily in the shadow of the trees next to the road at lunchtime. The moral of the story is that all wild animals are unpredictable and the most important ingredient you will need at any game drive is luck! 

Besides prioritising the early morning and late afternoon game drives, you can improve your luck by learning more about the tracks, bones and other signs such as the pee and the poop that various animals leave behind, and trying to interpret and follow them, but this one might be tricky for newbies! For example, hippos have four toes, while rhinos only have three.

You will learn that elephant poop contains both grass and branches based on their food diet, while hippo poop only has grass as hippos do not eat branches. You can even use the poop you come across to know whether you are looking for a male or female elephant as males pee and poo one meter apart, while females do both in the same place. Furthermore, by looking for broken branches, you can know whether the elephant was tall and therefore an adult, or a shorter youngster.

In addition to giving you tons of clues, elephant poop is also a precious source of biodiversity. Since elephants only digest 40 % of their food, they bring fruits and plants from far away and spread the seeds thanks to their poop, which explains the random unusual plants growing at some places. Also, other animals such as monkeys feed on the elephant poop! Finally, locals use it for medicinal and other purposes. For example, they put chili in the elephant poop and spread it around their fields and gardens to prevent the elephants from destroying their crops, or burn elephant poop to deter mosquitos. 

The golden (and most obvious) rule you need to keep in mind if you want to see animals is to follow the food and the water! The waterholes, swamps, rivers and lagoons are the best places for spotting wildlife, in particular during the dry season, in the early morning and in the evening! Also, the impalas are known as "the McDonald’s of the Bush" - chances are that wherever you see herds of them or any other types of antelopes, predators such as lions, cheetahs, leopards or crocodiles are not too far away, stalking their prey.

There are tons of similar tips depending on which animals you are looking for! For example, the so-called "sausage tree" (the name comes from its fruits which look like huge sausages) is known as "the leopard trap". Waterbucks love the tree’s flowers that they consider as delicacies, and it is easy to spot leopards on such trees as they often wait hidden in the branches for their prey to come feed on the fallen flowers beneath. In other words, if you want to see waterbucks and leopards, look for a sausage tree!

Another sign to watch out for is the agreement some animals have made to ensure their survival. For example, zebras and wildebeests usually hang out together as the former have good eyesight whilst the latter have a good sense of hearing. Both are grazers and prefer open plains but there is no competition for food as zebras prefer tall grass while wildebeests would rather opt for short grass.

The last (but not least) tip that you need before setting off on your safari experience is that you need good binoculars, which are even more important than your camera. Sometimes, the animals you will see are quite far away and your perfect eyesight might not be enough!

The goal of each visitor in Africa is, of course, to see as many new and unique African animals as possible, and in particular the "Big Five" - an old hunting term to name the five most difficult and most dangerous animals to hunt, or nowadays to track. They are the lion, the leopard, the rhinoceros, the elephant, and the African buffalo.

Both Namibia and Botswana are home to all Big Five, but the sneaky leopard kept avoiding us for more than a month! Unfortunately, we will need to return to Africa to complete our Big Five bucket list… On the positive side, there are still animals that we have not seen, and the leopard is a great excuse to go back to the Mother Continent for another magical safari experience! 

You know that you are somewhere in Africa when, without any warning or even expectation, a few giraffes pop up along the road immediately after you have landed at the airport of Namibia’s capital - Windhoek. They felt like a mirage and the light of the setting sun made the experience even more surreal! We almost wanted to pinch ourselves to make sure what we were seeing was real!

The giraffes were also the first animals we spotted at the Lapa Lange Game Lodge in the Kalahari Desert. We spent the evening and most of the day next to the waterhole, mesmerised by the fabulous parade of various antelopes coming to drink water. 

We saw them for real, and even heard about some of them, for the first time in our life. 

We spotted our first gemsbok - this symbolic animal of Namibia's arid landscapes and striking beauty. It is the largest of the four species of oryx and the only one that can be found in Southern Africa. Namibia is actually known as "The Land of the Oryx" as its people consider themselves adaptable like this beautiful animal, able to live in an incredibly harsh desert environment.

The gemsbok appears on the Namibian coat of arms, is the national animal of the country, and even has the word "gems" in its name! The oryx as a national animal might ring a bell if you have flown with Qatar Airways (the image of the oryx is on their planes) but it is another species of oryx than the one you can find in Southern Africa - the Arabian oryx. 

Next to the waterhole at the Lapa Lange Game Lodge, we also saw our first impalas, waterbucks, sable antelopes and springboks, as well as the cute tiny steenboks with huge ears, and the world’s largest antelopes - the elands. 

In addition to being the spot for our first wildlife watching next to our first waterhole, the Kalahari Desert was where we went for our first sunset safari, and it was magical… 

We saw dozens of different antelopes, a few giraffes, but also our first plains zebras, and our first blue wildebeests which looked like they came straight from some prehistoric times. 

Our guide was very knowledgeable and was pointing at one animal after another, giving us more and more details about their size, food, ways to distinguish them and so on. There were so many different species at one single place that it felt overwhelming!

We learnt that while both male and female giraffes have "horns", actually called "ossicones", the males have larger ossicones which they use for fighting, causing all the fur to rub off leaving grey bald spots on top of them. Since the females do not fight, their ossicones are thinner and you can see the fur standing up on them. 

Also, the giraffes’ tongues are so strong and muscular that they can use them to remove leaves and shoots from even the thorniest of plants. No, they do not stick their tongues out at you (or maybe they do…)!

Another great thing about giraffes is that adults can sleep standing and getting to a state of half-sleep which keeps them aware of the surroundings while resting for a few minutes. Finally, a fun fact is that a giraffe's neck has seven vertebrae, which is the same number as a human's neck. However, an average human neck is a mere 10-12 centimeters in length, while a giraffe's neck is 1.8 meters long with vertebrae that can measure more than 25 cm each!

We were totally immersed in this whole new world of information and it was simply fascinating… The game drive finished - like any game drive we were going to enjoy in the next five weeks - with some cold beer and snacks, topped with the magnificent sunset colours on the horizon!

This experience set our hopes so high that not seeing many animals in the following days brought disappointment and frustration. We were only able to spot a few birds and the occasional gemsboks, common elands, greater kudus and other antelopes.

We also saw a few beetles and lizards in the Sossusvlei region of the Namib Desert, and the Hartmann's zebras, also known as the mountain zebras, in the Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park. The park was also home to some huge scary-looking baboons who hung out next to our bungalow - they were the reason we chose a bungalow instead of a campsite as we read that they were able to open car doors and steal all your food in a couple of minutes if you had forgotten to lock your vehicle…

We were starting to wonder whether we were going to see any new animals, and in particular any big cats or other predators, before our African journey came to an end…

We got our hopes up again when we approached Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. We could not resist stopping our 4WD many times to admire the thousands of flamingos feeding in the many saline desert pans and coastal lagoons along the road - it was pure magic! 

On the following day, we went to Pelican Point for some kayaking next to a colony of cute seals and their babies!

It was incredible to be so close to them and watch them playing or popping their adorable snouts out of the water to stare at us! 

We were warned that sometimes they would jump on the kayaks and we were given instructions on what to do if this happened in order not to hurt them! Luckily, it did not happen! 

On the way to Pelican Point and back, we also saw tons of flamingos, pelicans and even some jackals, unfortunately feeding on a dead flamingo… The laws of nature!

There are two types of flamingos in the area and our guide explained how to distinguish them.

The greater flamingo is whiter with a light pink beak and eats algae and shrimps, while the lesser flamingo - the smallest species of flamingos - is pinker with a dark pink beak and is a “vegetarian“ as it only eats algae. 

At the end of the day, we stopped at the Flamingo Lagoon in Walvis Bay for more flamingos…

We simply could not get enough of these beautiful birds and their gorgeous reflections on the water…

On the following day, we saw even more seals at the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, which is home to the world's largest breeding colony of Cape fur seals. 

More than 200,000 seals are present in the sanctuary during the breeding season in November and December. 

When we went there in September, the number was probably lesser but the seals were still everywhere along the boardwalks and on the surrounding rocks and beaches! 

Cute babies were wandering around looking for their moms. The sound, but also the smell, was something! If you have a sensitive nose like me, take a handkerchief to cover it and breathe through your mouth only while you are walking around. You will thank me later! 

In the following days while we were driving through Damaraland, we did not see many animals, except a handful of birds, antelopes, and local lizards, as well as the cute local marmots - the rock dassies. We started getting desperate again… 

But then our luck turned again at the Hobatere Lodge, next to the Etosha National Park!