We have gotten into the habit of favouring Anderson’s Gate to enter Etosha National Park. It is the “central” gate on the southern boundary of the park near Okaukuejo. I am not sure why or how it happened, but habit is one of the most prolific of human behaviours.

When the Western part of Etosha was opened some years ago, its wild and unreaped bushlands called me. So then, from Okaukuejo we headed north to Okondeka and then west. Habit. The furthest east we would wander was our favourite campsite at Halali. Spending a night at the Moringa waterhole the resort is famous for. An early morning loop north, then turning west again, past Salvadora, Charitsaub and Sueda along the pan, back toward Okaukuejo and on to the wilder west.

Imagine my surprise, when a recent venture to King Nehale led us as far east and then as far northeast as the park’s roads and boundaries allow, to a prolific route of sightings galore.

The first thing I noticed when we neared the park boundaries of Etosha after the four-hour journey from the capital were the white frosted-looking tips of the bushland all around. In the summer months the trumpet-thorns celebrate the rain with breathtaking white blooms. The namesake of the bush. On a late-afternoon nature walk with our guide at Ondili’s Etosha Oberland Lodge we inspected the soft petals up close. Such a delicate flower perched at the tips of spiky branches. As the sun set and the dense bushland around us melted into a seemingly indistinguishable hue of green veld-scape, the crisp white trumpets of Catophractes alexandri, reflected in stark relief, like raindrops dripping off the very edge of the thorn. White blazes reflecting the sun’s last rays.

Early the next morning, after entering (you guessed it) via Anderson’s Gate, the white trumpets of Catophractes alexandri were replaced by the small yellow spheres of the nebrownii bush. Vast open landscapes intermittently dispersed with herds of springbok, blue wildebeest and the odd towering giraffe were the order of the morning. Most of the game seems to move off the main throughways and away from the popular waterholes during the summer months. There is enough water all around. We take a left turn off the main road on the pan loop towards Sueda. This is my favourite drive in the park, to my husband’s irritation. Unfortunately for him, he has never spotted anything of note on this route, while I have the most incredible souvenirs embedded in my memory banks. Of lions resting under Etosha’s most famous tree (the umbrella thorn that stands sentinel at the edge of the pan at Salvadora), a cheetah in stealth-mode just a short distance from Sueda, and lion cubs playing along the waterhole’s edge all by themselves at Chartisaub. Their mother had hidden them in the tall grasses to go hunting. So we take the left turn each and every time, and Sean bemoans it, but I insist. “One day this route will endear itself to you and you will never not want to turn left again.” Around a bend on the pan loop we go, and lo and behold – a rhino. A white rhino in both species and visage. The bull completely caked in the quintessential white clay of Etosha. The ominous build-up of dark thunderclouds as his background makes for an even more dramatic display. Bidding adieu to the white white rhino we head further east. Before the Sueda-Charitsaub-Salvadora loop ends we happen upon another white rhino and I gleefully send an “I told you so” eye roll towards the driver’s seat. Turning left is going to be much more fluid in the future.