Flying Adventure: Namibia Tour – Day 9 (FYEF – FYOA – FYMO):

We are leaving the Epupa Falls already. Our next destination is the Etosha National Park, another Namibian highlight.

As he has mentioned in the previous post, the Epupa Falls airstrip provides little room for error. The available runway is relatively short, and the surrounding terrain mountainous. With 5 people, luggage, emergency equipment and nearly full tanks we are fully loaded. Temperatures are already close to 30 degrees in the morning as we depart, and we are at over 750 meters above sea level. This all reduces the available aircraft performance. He therefore takes a walk down the runway to identify the abort point. That is the point where in the event we have not reached sufficient speed, we can still safely abort the take-off and bring the aircraft to a standstill within the remaining available runway.

The C206 is an amazing machine. With a short field take-off procedure, we safely rotate and pick up speed in the ground effect to reach the climb out speed. We then route along the Kunene river to the Ruacana dam and then onwards to Ondangwa.

The problem with being on holidays is that you forget what day of the week it is. When there was no response from the Ondangwa tower, he realized that it was weekend, and the airfield closed. As we needed fuel, we had no other option than to land anyway and deal with the missing formalities on the ground. It took a little while for an official to come out to the airfield and assist with the paperwork. That call out was obviously added to the bill. Once everything was settled we depart for our last leg, over the eastern parts of the Etosha salt pan to the Mokuti Lodge.

Etosha National Park

We spend day 10 on safari in the Etosha National Park. The Etosha salt pan makes up about a quarter of the national park itself. With a size of 4 760 square kilometers, it is one of the largest salt pans on earth, and even visible from space. Etosha has an abundance of wildlife and is an absolutely stunning safari experience.

Mokuti Lodge also has a very interesting reptile park on the premises. It gives insights into a large variety of species, which you would not necessarily see on a normal safari. If you do stay at Mokuti, he would highly recommend to visit the park.