NAEtosha National Park, Namibia
The waterhole at Okaukuejo
You do not look for the animals. You sit still and they arrive.
Watch it live firstWhen the light is best
March, November, December
Computed from five years of daily cloud, rain and temperature at -19.18, 15.91. Some cloud is what makes a sky burn, so this is not the same as the driest month and often disagrees with one.
- Cloud then
- 39%
- Wet days
- 7
- Daytime high
- 31°C
When to actually go
May to October, the dry season, when the pan is empty and the waterholes are the only water for a hundred kilometres.
This is the window for the reason you are going, and it is a different question from the light. Where the two disagree, this one wins. An empty river under a perfect sky is still an empty river.
- Nights
- 6
- Getting in
- Windhoek, then five hours north by road
- From, per person
- $4,600
Why here
Etosha is a salt pan the size of a small country, and in the dry season every living thing in it has to come to water. The waterhole at Okaukuejo is floodlit all night and you can sit at it from dusk until you give up. Rhino, elephant and lion at the same water in one evening is a normal night, not a lucky one.
What you actually do
- The floodlit waterhole after dark, which is the camera's own view
- Self drive the pan road at first light
- Halali and Namutoni, the other two rest camps, each with its own water
- The night sky, which in Namibia is as good as it gets anywhere
However many of you
On your own
Namibia is the easiest self drive safari in Africa. Roads are good, the park is signposted, and nobody minds you sitting alone at the water all night.
Two to six
One vehicle, four people, six nights. Book the rest camps directly and early, because the waterhole rooms go first.
Seven or more
Two vehicles and a block of chalets. Etosha handles groups better than a private reserve does, because you are not sharing a single guide.
Book it
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