Day 5 + 6 + 7 Palmwag

We decided to treat ourselves for three days (this is our pre-wedding honeymoon, after all!) and stay at quite a nice lodge in Palmwag. It was absolutely worth it! On our way to the lodge, shortly after leaving Skeleton Coast National Park, we saw (desert-adapted) elephants on the side of the road!!!! I have been waiting to see elephants since our first trip to Etosha!

After we left the elephants, and before we arrived at Palmwag, it began to pour! It was seriously raining so hard that René had a hard time seeing where we were going and in addition to that, all the little ditches we had to drive through began to fill with water. Good thing our trusty truck has four wheel drive!

Palmwag is a really nice lodge. We stayed in quite a nice room (they called it a bungalow with a thatched roof) with a porch on the back that overlooked the river. We were told many stories of animal sightings in the camp during the dry season. Everyone told stories of elephants roaming around in the camp and one guy witnessed a leopard killing a springbok and dragging it through the camp to the water hole to eat it. Since it’s the rainy season, we didn’t see any animals come to the waterhole. But we did some oryx (René’s favorite) in the distance. We also took advantage of the porch where you can get a great view of the waterhole while also enjoying a sundowner or two.

Overall, it was really nice to have three relaxing nights at Palmwag. Everyone there was really nice and our meals were very relaxing and tasty. We swam in the pool when it got too hot and we enjoyed reading in our room when it was too buggy.

These elephants are supposedly gray, but they roll around in the dirt and mud, which is reddish-brown, and spray it up on their backs so often that they are actually the same color as the dirt. I really like the in action shot of this big male spraying dirt on his back out of his trunk.

This male was right next to the road. It was a bit disconcerting because he's so huge!

The elephants were in a group of about 12 or 13. They also had a few little ones in the group, as you can see in the next picture.

Baby elephant! So cute! (Also pictured, two elephant bums.)

This was two days after the initial elephant sighting. We decided we would drive by ourselves and try to find the elephants again. After an interesting side trip to Wereldsend while on our way back to the lodge, I managed to spot this group of elephants off the side of the road! So we watched them as long as we could (as long as we could stand the heat!). This time there were five or six elephants. We're not sure if this was part of the same group, though we assumed it was.