The vast shimmering salt pan of Etosha National Park is one of Namibia's biggest tourism drawcards and offers an incredible and unique wildlife experience as you witness a plethora of wildlife species congregating at waterholes around the edge of this harsh and arid stretch of endless white...

It's the white saline crystals that stretch from horizon to horizon that lie at the heart of this national park and give it its name - Etosha means "great white place" - and that also give it some of the most unusual spectacles in Africa's wildlife kingdom... The "great grey ghosts" of Etosha are the stuff of legend. These are the elephants who come to the waterholes to drink and cool off, bathing in the pale grey mud at the water's edge and dusting themselves with the fine white dust of the Etosha pan. This turns their normally dark grey skin an eery shade of pale grey verging on white.

The game viewing in this 22,935 square kilometre national park is superlative with the highest concentrations of game in Namibia. Four of the Big Five are present, with only buffalo absent from the list. This is one of the last strongholds for desert-adapted elephants and black rhino, and the predator action around the waterholes is gripping.

This area of Namibia is ancient with fossil remains dating back 650-million years - before the land mass of Gondwana broke up into the continents we are familiar with today.