A 'dazzle' of zebra

What struck me about Etosha was its roads. Apart from Windhoek and Swakopmund at the beginning of the trip, just about every ‘road’ we had driven was a dirt track with a constant check on the tyre pressure to make sure they were suitable for driving such terrain. Yet here we were in Africa’s sixth largest national park, roughly the size of Switzerland, and we were driving pristine roads. It is thanks to these roads that make the park so popular with tourists. Simply hire a car and a book on Namibian wildlife and you’re good to go. In fact, on approaching a lion sighting, we decided to drive straight past thanks to the 15 or so cars, vans and minibuses all piled around it trying to get a glimpse through the bush. I’ve always recommended the benefit of local guides and local knowledge wherever you go and was thankful we had Stanley from Ongava. He was very knowledgeable about the species we saw and always checked with us before starting up the jeep’s engine to move it. It was this latter kindness that we gave him the nickname ‘so fine Stanley’ - he would say to us “so fine?” every time we had spent some time with a particular species to check we were happy to continue on. We would reply “so fine” and on we went.