IT'S 1 P.M. WHEN WE lift out of the Hartmann Valley, and there's nothing stirring in the midday swelter except the cloud of red dust the plane kicks up. As we drift higher, the cooling air blows away the heat and desert gives way to savanna—first, dots of scrub begin to speckle the earth, then lone acacia trees, and finally fields of green. Next stop, Etosha National Park. Despite the earlier dearth of game (aside from the grilled and braised varieties), the final days of the Namibian Encounters safari afford the best chances of seeing wildlife.

After Schoeman drops us in Tsumeb and buzzes away toward stacks of billowy cumulus to the south, we throw our kits in a pre-arranged rental car and race westward on freshly sealed tarmac roads—a far cry from the mud-choked dirt tracks that pass as "highways" in many countries on the continent. Just before the Etosha gate, we make a hard right on a dusty two-track and almost mow down a zoot-suit herd of zebra. We've arrived at Onguma Game Ranch.

Once a cattle-and-eland ranch, Onguma has been redeveloped as a tourist lodge on a private game reserve—like Wolwedans, it's another example of the strategy to buffer public parks with privately held reserves. The ranch centers around the new Tented Camp, a half-moon-shaped lodge with a deck surrounding a spring-fed watering hole. As it's once again sundowner time, we order vodka sodas with lime in the main lodge and head for our private "tent": half walls built from rough-hewn limestone bricks, his-and-her stone washbasins, and an elegant stainless-steel interpretation of the zinc bathtub, all set under a 20-foot-tall wave of flowing, cream-colored fabric. We draw a bath and settle in with our cocktails, watching springbok flit nervously around the watering hole.

Over dinner that night, we have our second game encounter at Onguma: a mouthwatering cut of ostrich stuffed with crispy leeks and bacon and drizzled with a garlic-and-sweet-onion reduction. I wash the bright-red meat down with sips of a full-bodied merlot. Juicy and rich like filet mignon, but more dense and substantial in my mouth, ostrich is much preferable to zebra, which I'll sample a few days later at a leafy terrace restaurant in Windhoek. The zebra is stringy and tough, and when I try to place the flavor, all I can conjure is the boggy grasslands the animal traipsed through. Some game, it seems, is better left for viewing.

In Etosha, Jen and I search for that wildlife vibe, gawking at aloof animals from the comfort of a Land Cruiser. Our first morning in the park, we stumble on several elephants—in fact, one nearly bumps into us. Having sighted the behemoth across the savanna, we turn off the car's ignition to watch and are amazed when the old bull barely breaks his stride as he angles around our car, swishing the exhaust pipe with his tail. Considering that the "little rains" have just begun, it's a lucky sighting: With water more readily available, the animals will begin scattering across the park, leaving hapless tourists like me with unfinished tallies.

Luckier still, the next day we happen upon a pair of lions at a watering hole—he lounging listlessly under a tree, she pacing around the veldt with the self-assured swagger of an athlete. The big-game allure becomes clear: Unlike watching smaller, jumpier prey, which can quickly fall into a slightly awkward and tedious I'm-looking-at-you-looking-at-me-looking-at-you routine, it's easy to spend the afternoon studying a trophy animal in its environment. The poise and grace of these large beasts is engrossing.

And yet even this up-close encounter with the mightiest of all animals feels controlled and insignificant compared with the intensity of the constantly moving sands and relentless surf a few afternoons earlier at the Toscanini Mine site. "This is how I want you to remember the Skeleton Coast," Bertus had said evenly, gesturing with both arms to the expanse around us. He continued speaking, but a gust of wind suddenly kicked up and his words were swallowed by the giant stretch of desert and sea.