Tue Aug 04 2026
Birthday Safari
Mima's birthday, and Etosha.
Today was Mima’s 12th birthday! As we were coming to Namibia, Mima had been given her presents mostly before we left, but she did get a nice pair of earrings to put in her pierced ears (her main birthday present!)
We woke up early and headed to the water hole for sunrise, but discovered the mornings were not nearly as fruitful as the night times (at least for us!), so after drinking our early morning coffee, tea and hot chocolates, we headed back to camp for breakfast and to pack up ready for our next destination.
Today was about the journey though, as we travelled East through the park on the South side of the salt pan, a total of about 100km.
We left the campsite around 09:30, and didn’t have to wait for long before stumbling across a bunch of cars stopped in the road - a good sign on a self-driven safari! We looked in the same direction as them, and sure enough, we spotted another cheetah! Just sitting under a tree about 30m from the road. Luckily I had a memory card in my camera this time and a big zoom lens! A great birthday present for Mima!
We carried on, and those that have been on safari will know that your expectations grow higher and higher - at first we were happy to see a springbok, then a zebra, then we wanted to see elephants away from the water hole lights, but now that we had seen not one, but three cheetahs, what we really wanted to see were some big carnivores. A lion or a leopard. But unfortunately it wasn’t to be. They were all just too elusive in such a big game reserve. We did see some more elephants up close by the road though which was cool.
Once we reached the far side of the park, we didn’t need to travel far (about 100m) to get to our next destination - Onguma - a private reserve that shared a boundary with Etosha, and as a result, also many of the animals.
We got to our campsite - considerably nicer than the one inside the park, with our own amenities block, and a lovely restaurant overlooking another small waterhole. As it was Mima’s birthday we decided to do something a bit special and booked on to a sundowner game drive in our quest to see more animals!
The girls loved sitting in the back row of the safari truck, getting flung all over the place on the rough tracks, and we made our way through the park to start looking.
The guide was great but explained that this is nature so we really couldn’t predict what we would see. He showed us some black rhino poo explaining how to tell based on the small sticks chopped at 45˚ angles caused by the dental pattern of the animals.
We kept driving and out of the corner of our eyes, spotted movement. It was two black rhinos (probably mother and child) about 5m into the foliage, but they heard us and scarpered, so we didn’t get a really good look.
We carried on, still hunting for the elusive cats and we were shown an impala carcass hanging in a tree belonging to a leopard, but sadly the leopard was nowhere to be seen.
Then we spotted another two black rhinos, this time getting a much better view, but again they were skittish and ran off before I could get a photo!
The sun was getting very low in the sky so we went to search for a pride of lions that had been spotted in the morning and the guides were convinced were still in a fairly small area of the park. We circled back and forth along with several other safari trucks, but again, it proved fruitless, so we had to go home without having seen a lion in the wild.
Now it was dark, the temperature plummeted and as inexperienced safari goers, we hadn’t brought coats, so we spent the rest of the journey shivering in the back of the truck!
Once back at base we went for a birthday dinner at the restaurant. Louise and I had Kudu steak, which was lovely, but the chicken burger that Mima had wasn’t great, but they made up for it as all the staff brought out a birthday cake and sang an African version of happy birthday!