GuideKunene, NamibiaAug 24, 20269 min read

Etosha's Waterholes: A Self-Drive Guide

Sit, wait and let the animals come to you

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Kagiso Molefe

forPublisher Wildside Expeditions

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Zebras and springbok drinking at the Okaukuejo waterhole in Etosha National Park — Okaukuejo waterhole in the late afternoon. Photo: Christoph Strässler

In Etosha the game comes to the water, not the other way round. How to plan a self-drive around the park's best waterholes.

How Etosha works

Etosha National Park surrounds a vast white salt pan, 120 kilometres long, that holds water only briefly after good rains. For most of the year the wildlife depends on a string of springs and boreholes along the southern edge of the pan. That makes Etosha one of the easiest parks in Africa to self-drive: the roads are good gravel, the waterholes are marked and the animals come to them.

The trick is patience. Pick a waterhole, turn off the engine and wait. In the dry season, from June to October, a single hour at Okaukuejo, Halali or Klein Namutoni can bring elephant, giraffe, zebra, springbok, gemsbok and, if you are lucky, a black rhino or a lion pride. The floodlit waterholes at the three main rest camps keep working after dark, when rhino are most often seen.

Gates open at sunrise and close at sunset, and you must be inside a camp or outside the park by then.