What Etosha costs
Etosha is one of the cheapest big safaris in Africa: no guide, no chauffeured vehicle, just €15 entry per person and the car you hired for the whole loop anyway.
- Camp inside the park
- An NWR bungalow or camp site
- Lodge outside the gate
- Prettier and dearer
- The car
- Part of the price of the whole loop
Etosha has no guide and no chauffeured vehicle, so it does not carry the biggest line of every East African safari: you drive your own hire car, pay €15 per person for twenty-four hours, and sleep in a camp inside the fence or a lodge outside the gate.
Below is the arithmetic for two people and three nights in the park, in Namibian dollars, with the car already hired for the whole loop. Camp prices peak in July and August and around Christmas.
Why this is cheaper than Kenya and Tanzania
Because there is no guide and no chauffeured vehicle, and in East Africa that is half the bill. In Etosha you drive yourself, on tar and good gravel, and the only compulsory line is entry. Three days in Etosha for two cost less than one day in the Masai Mara in August — and a rhino is more likely.
A camp in the park or a lodge outside the gate
- An NWR camp inside the park — the only one with the floodlit waterhole by the fence, and that is the reason to put up with a plainer room. Booked months ahead for the dry season.
- A camp site with a tent — the cheapest, with the same waterhole and the same morning; power and bathrooms are there, the gear is hired in Windhoek.
- A lodge outside the gate — nicer rooms, a pool, and an hour's drive to the first waterhole in the morning; no night waterhole, and you feel it.
- The west of the park, Dolomite — dearer and emptier, with a view from a hill; for a return visit.
The same comparison for 143 places: hostel, hotel, getting into town and a day pass. Travel costs →
Before you go
Short answers to what people ask most before setting out.
What does Etosha cost for two?
Three nights with a camp site and entry come to about NAD 3,700–4,600, with a bungalow inside the park NAD 7,300–11,500. Entry is €15 per person per twenty-four hours plus a small vehicle fee, paid by card at the gate.
Is Etosha cheaper than a safari in Kenya?
Considerably cheaper: no guide and no chauffeured vehicle, which in East Africa can be half the bill, because here you are the driver, in a car already hired for the whole Namibia loop.
Is it worth sleeping inside the park?
It is, and it is the one real difference: the NWR camps have a floodlit waterhole by the fence where rhinos and elephants come after dark. A lodge outside the gate is nicer, but in the morning you drive an hour to the first waterhole.
Ready for Etosha?
Where to next
The best time to visit Etosha
→In Etosha you do not watch the weather but the water: in the dry season everything comes to a dozen…
Skeleton Coast · 368 km
→Five hundred kilometres of coast where the desert enters the ocean, with shipwrecks in the sand, a seal colony and a salt road driven through fog — and a gate decorated with skulls
How well does Etosha suit you?
→Six questions: a score for this place and others like it.
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