Rolling down Robert Mugabe Avenue from one set of traffic lights to the next, we made our way through downtown Windhoek, circling the Maerua shopping mall in search of the northern exit to the city. Fully stocked with provisions to last several weeks, we were to head up the central arterial road to the north of the country stopping in the vegetated mountainous heartlands of the Central Plateau to photograph the full spectrum of Southern African wildlife.
The roads were very quiet in the late morning calm - office workers were tucked away and only street peddlers were out on the pavements. We soon found ourselves heading through the industrial head of the city, bypassing the township sprawl of Katatura and quickly out onto the B1 highway going north. Immediately you get a sense of how deserted Namibia is. Minutes outside of the capital you are confronted with silent highways, devoid of settlement or travelers.
A few overladen trucks zoomed past, piled with blue boilersuit-clad workers in that quintessentially Southern African way. Occasional fruit stalls were being crowded by one or two vehicles picking up papayas and tomatoes. Any road junctions we encountered, no matter how far they were from population centres, inexplicably had a few people thumbing lifts optimistically. Though fully laden and unable to assist, we had already been reassured that Namibia lacks the hijacking culture so prevalent in its Southern neighbour.
Crossing feeble rivers over excessive bridges, we drove past the dusty entrance to the contained town of Okahandja - a supply centre for the game farms and workers in northern Khomas region. The road narrowed to single lanes and, summiting a slight hill, we were suddenly staring down what must have been a ten kilometre long straight stretch of tarmac, baked silver grey in the blistering heat and lined entirely on either side by sprawling, flat bushland and thorn acacia trees. This was Namibia's game drive and safari heartland.
The Gooseberg mountains fragmented the horizon. We aimed the vehicle at them and pressed on to the provincial border, blasting a medley of Sub-Saharan music through the radio for hours on end. We stopped for lunch at one of Namibia's iconic roadside rest stops - our first of many in the month to come. On all maintained roads, one can find a stone table and litter bin at irregular intervals. Some have braai grills, occasionally the profound luxury of a wicker-walled earth toilet. Invariably, these stops are afforded shade by a single large thorn tree that, by sheer design of the silhouette, screams Africa from the tip of every spiked branch.
Blue-grey clouds rolled in and the wipers were set going as we crossed the boundary into Otjozondjupa Region ("Odge-oh-zon-jew-pa"). This unassuming portion of North-Eastern Namibia is home to several colossal, country-sized game reserves, the Waterberg plateau and two of the tourist routes into the salt flats of Etosha. The rain had been hard at work softening the ground and water pooled ominously in depressions across the camberless road. The sandy, semi-arid landscape was a porous mush of tyre-deep sand that would instantly delay our trip should we stray off the tarmac.
Peeling off the safety of the solid highway, we began following signs for Omaruru - another regional town just over the border into Erongo Region. Between us and there was the gargantuan Erindi Private Game Reserve - one of the largest privately owned reserves in all of Africa. The unsurfaced road started well, but the looming thunderclouds and churned sand soon required all of our focus. Periodically a soupy brown lake covered the road and we crossed each one with gritted teeth for fear of sinking or flooding the vehicle.
Such obstacles slow progress to a snail's pace and the easy several hour drive from the capital to Omaruru suddenly expanded into a full day affair. Extra caution was needed crossing the watery stretches as violent green and yellow birds would flit across the road demanding your attention, followed by racing ostriches and herds of springbok standing stock-still on the horizon and so requiring one to squint hard to tell which antelope they were.
A chestnut-headed bee eater sitting on one of the low game fences by the road brought us screeching to a halt, only for us to then catch sight of a pair of slender mongooses doing battle in a ball of fists and teeth in the middle of the road, only to throw themselves from one another and bolt into the scrub upon sighting us. Springbok began charging across the horizon kicking up dust despite the damp and thickened sand substrate.
Clouds of dust erupted from the grass next to our vehicle and, true to form, a pair of surprisingly large warthogs burst out of the scrub and chased for a while parallel with the road. Head bobbing up and down as they charged, without warning they would scrape to hold and spin round to stare at our truck before setting off again. In short order these mud-crusted oddities from another time turned and belted back into the unpleasantly sharp thorn bushes and we rolled on towards Omaruru.
Pulling up to the fortress like Omaruru Gate to Erindi, a guard wandered out of his hut, passed in front of the truck to scan our license plate and made of point of turning so we could see the stockless AK-47 hanging from his shoulder. Poaching is a serious problem in many African countries and, unfortunately with increasing severity, sadly blights National Parks, reserves and wilderness areas across the continent.
Namibia has a better grip on the problem than many of its neighbours but vigilance is essential to prevent the easy grasp of the crime syndicates and state-sponsored profiteers that revel in this devastating trade. Poverty is an easy nest for the corruption that drives poaching, and has been at the top of the Namibian wildlife protection authorities agenda for decades. Recent failures in the Kruger National Park and Zimbabwe's once illustrious Hwange and Matusadona National Parks highlight the ever present dangers posed by this omnipresent foe.
Waved through into the muddy green of Erindi, we were palpably excited. The reserve is home to a staggering array of Southern Africa's most iconic wildlife and, though we didn't know what we would see, we knew it would be worth the trip. Almost immediately a herd of South African Giraffes lumbered out of the trees, complete with mid-spring's wealth of juvenile members. Another warthog paused cautiously to drink from a puddle on the road. There's nothing like sighting Africa's huge mammals, and the stragglers that accompany them.
We rolled along at snail's pace for nearly an hour, stopping every few feet in amazement as gemsbok, ostriches and steenbok made their presence known. Warthogs continued to charge back and forth through the greenery and we caught sight of many different individuals on our route to our campground base at Camp Elephant.
The reserve is almost 700 square kilometres in size - big enough to fit small countries inside - and plays host to all the wildlife photographers hope to see when visiting Namibia. The size makes encounters completely unpredictable and every encounter serendipitous, doubly so in the wet season when cut-through views through winter's scraggly thorn trees makes it much easier to see skulking mammals. Even elephants and rhinos can be surprisingly well hidden in the thick summer greenery.
Catching the dying sun as we arrived at Camp Elephant, Namibia's Golden Hour was upon us lighting up each and every corner of the camp in thick orange light. A herd of Nyala and pairs of Damara Dik-diks were our camping companions. Ever present around the vehicle, the not-so-distant roar of lions late in the evening explained why they might prefer the relative safety of a photographer's campground.
Our time in Erindi was everything we hoped it would be, with wave after wave of classic and not-so-classic wildlife sightings - too many by far to detail in one article and so I'll write on those another time. Throughout our stay, without exception, every time we rolled out of camp with cameras at the ready there were some animals we saw each and every time . Warthogs are still sharp in my mind, true to form with almost fingerprint-like unique patterns of crusted mud built up through days of hard work wallowing and digging in the damp sand.
Particularly memorable was an open-clearing early one morning. We were ogling a small herd of gemsbok who had chosen to lope across a patch of bright red sand (oryx on a red-sanded background is the ultimate Namibian cliché as any safari photographer will attest to). Seemingly desperate for attention, a particularly large male warthog stepped deliberately into the centre of this sandy stage before beginning his set.
Running with deliberate movements, chasing a smaller warthog he preceded to perform some sort of dressage spectacle, moving with the relative grace and poise of a porcine ballet dancer. The termite mound backdrop set the scene for some of the more surreal photos I've taken in Namibia. Over as quickly as it started, he finished his presentation with an almighty crash into the dirt and spooned out a pile of sand to decorate himself in.
Leaving Erindi along the long, thankfully slightly drier, dirt road we had come along, sighting Kori Bustards along the way (or, as they came to be known in our very left-leaning household, Tory Bastards) - Africa's largest flying bird. Their bulky appearance and cumbersome walk belies their albeit brief airborne antics. We rejoined the main central highway going north and proceeded up to the equally impressive Okonjima reserve in the heart of Otjonzondjupa - some 200 square kilometres this time but still an absolutely colossal track of wild land.
Distant views of Namibia's iconic Waterberg Plateau could be seen from the higher points in Okonjima and we made our way along the dusty roads up to our mountain campsite stop. Again, among the zebras, springbok and kudu, warthogs darted erratically trying to grab fleeting attention. Spring time is the season for young animals, and warthogs are no exception.
Each sighting was in fact two, three or four sightings - female trundling along the side of the road were always followed by a variable number of mini-replicas, all running with their flag-pole tales sticking straight up like a car aerial. Juveniles are every bit as bold as their parents; turning in a cloud of dust to face pursuers and square off with their miniature tusks.
The central compound at Okonjima - home to the world-famous Africat conservation project preserving leopards, cheetahs and a host of other African animals - is a reliable refuge to sight warthogs at all times of day and, similarly to Erindi, we never ventured far from our campground before we laid eyes on a busy warthog family.
Warthogs are distributed across the whole of Africa, albeit divided into a number of regional subspecies with size, colouration and behavioural variations. In Namibia the Southern Warthog (Phacochoerus africanus sundavalli) is the local subspecies and, as per the frequency of our sightings, is actually doing pretty well from a conservation perspective for a change. As with all Namibian mammals, drought is a major risk factor and the chaos of shifting rain patterns in Southern Africa still makes their future unpredictable.
If you watch them for long enough, you'll periodically see warthogs adopt a somewhat ridiculous praying position, crouching down and "kneeling" on their elbows. This is entirely due to their long spindly legs and giant battering ram heads devoid of neck. To drink, graze or dust bathe they must adopt this slightly reverential posture, the source of many a safari guide being asked by their guests if that particular warthog is sick. Specially evolved hardened elbow pads preserve their skin on the rough ground while they engage in this behaviour.
Adult warthogs are fearsome prey - hunted by the big cats they are nonetheless difficult and dangerous to take down. Their tusks, determined aggression and robust build can leave a lion or leopard seriously injured after an entanglement if they're not careful. Warthog youngsters are a favourite of laser-focused leopards and we were lucky enough at Okonjima to watch a young prudent female leopard gazing at a warthog platter from atop a thorn tree, though her hunt was disturbed by zebra idiocy. Not entirely uncommon out here.
As with Erindi, our time at Okonjima was filled with wonder and sightings too numerable to detail here, but the ever-present warthogs were, again, a definitive feature of the landscape both in and out of these giant reserves. Even along the main highway heading up to Otjiwarongo, warthogs are sighted frequently belting up and down the firebreaks. They are a leading cause of vehicle damage and are a major reason why driving Namibian backcountry roads at night is a terrible idea. Indeed, car insurers universally refuse to cover such foolishness.
Departing Okonjima, a small family stood stock still in the middle of the dust road, staring us down. There's always a flicker of fight-or-flight indecision during these encounters and a primitive sensation half expects even the smallest or weakest of squared-off animals to charge. This family chose to continue and scampered, grunting, off into the bush to allow us to leave. Or at least roll a little further down the road to our next wildlife sighting.
All photography © Chris Milligan Photo. All views are my own. Seek local recommendations before photographing or approaching any wildlife.
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