Kalahari and the Namib

JUNE - JULY 2016

After a couple of weeks back in the Europe, including a quick visit to France and a catch up with friend and family in the UK, we were on our way again. The next phase of our journey started with a flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg, South Africa, on an Airbus A380. A pretty comfortable flight as we each had spare seats to spread out onto. For this part of the journey, our good friend and regular travelling companion, Rob, had joined us.

At Johannesburg, the efficiency of South African officials meant that we sailed through immigration and check in, but had a longer wait than expected for our internal flight, but mustn’t complain. Our next leg was the flight to Upington; this was aboard a 50-seater aircraft and took no more than 90mins.

Upington is a small town on the edge of the Kalahari Desert and would be our starting point for our ventures into the desert. It also had one of our favorite restaurants in South Africa, which unfortunately had closed down, but luckily had been replaced by one equally as good, so all was well.

Our second day in South Africa was one of collecting our wheels, a Toyota Land Cruiser Series 76 4x4, buying provisions for our four-day adventure and heading out into the desert.

We had two bases from which to explore this amazing region Twee Riverien Camp and Nossob Camp, with about 200km of sand roads between them. At each camp we had a chalet and was able to cater for ourselves. For such an arid region the wildlife is plentiful, and we were treated to some incredible views. Probably the highlights were a female Cheetah with four cubs and family of Spotted Hyena, but there was so much more to be amazed by.

Kalahari Cheetah

Blue Wildebeest

Eagle Owl

Springbok crossing

Springbok close up

Desert Mouse

Oryx

Spotted Hyena

Hyena Den

Blue Wildebeest joust

Kalahari landscape

Hartebeest

With our Kalahari adventure over, we returned our Land Cruiser and picked a more moderate set of wheels in the form of a Honda CRV. It was now off to Namibia and our first stop in a tiny settlement called Grunau. Here we stayed on a guest farm and took the opportunity to explore some of the local landscape; scrubland covered in massive boulders.

Namib Desert

The reason for our stop at Grunua was it gave easy access to the natural wonder that is Fish River Canyon. Fish River Canyon is the world’s second biggest canyon, after the Grand Canyon in USA, where an overnight stop allowed us to explore it fully, from it rim to its floor.

Fish River Canyon upper rim

Fish River Canyon

In the Fish River Canyon

With most journeys in Namibia requiring you to travel on sand or gravel roads, covering the kilometers takes longer than in other parts of the world. It is for this reason that it required an overnight stop in Mariental before we got to our next destination.

Quiver Tree Forest

Quiver Trees

Sociable Weaver's nest in a Quiver Tree

That next destination was the Namib Desert and the area of Sossusvlei, with its amazing dunes, the highest in the world. For our two-night stay here we treated ourselves to a bit of luxury and stayed in the Kulala Desert Lodge. The scenery was as spectacular as we remembered it; we were there 10 years ago, and made even better by our luxurious accommodation. However, not all went to plan. Our visit to the dunes was affected by strong winds, almost a complete white out at times, but it was something new to experience and quite fun really. More unfortunate was that our Balloon ride for the following day was cancelled because of those same strong winds.

Dunes of Sossusvlei

The climb up the dune

Sand storm at Sossusvlei

Oryx on the dune

Deadvlei

Sand blasted wood

Dune climb in a sand storm

Home in the Namib Desert

But this wasn’t the end of our time in the Namib, for we had a two-night stay at a lovely guest farm sandwiched between the Desert and the Naukluft Mountains. Accommodation was a large two bedroom house with amazing views of the desert one-way and the mountains another. We didn’t even have to drive anywhere; we had mountain walks on our doorstep.

Desert Tree

Our house at Solitare

The Namib

It was then time to leave the Namib and head north for something different. However, this wasn’t as simple as we had planed. The direct route over the mountains was supposed to take around 3 hours, but a flooded road about 45mins in meant a long detour and journey of 6 hours. Fortunately our overnight stop at Oanob was in beautiful surrounding and helped us relax after the long drive.

The next day we continued north to the Erindi Private Game Reserve. Set in 72,000 ha of reclaimed scrubland, this reserve has been restocked with all the wildlife that originally roamed here, before white settlers messed thing up. We had a beautiful bungalow overlooking a waterhole and spent three days exploring as much of the 72,000 ha we could. The wildlife was amazing and plentiful with many highlights. Those highlights included; a female cheetah with the family provisions (a recently killed Springbok), a pack of African Wild Dogs with 16 puppies (our first ever sighting of Wild Dog), and young Brown Hyena in its den (again another first sighting), to name but a few.

Elephant at waterhole

Thirst quenching sip

White Rhino

Cheetah with lunch

Hippo at waterhole

Brown Hyena

African Wild Dog pups

African Wild Dog

Shaded Lioness

Giraffe

Elephant bum

From Erindi we briefly returned south to Windhoek. For Rob’s time with us was almost over, and he would take a flight home to the UK on the following day. With him went our cook, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

Personal Observations & Interesting Facts

Brexit
The outcome of the UK referendum and our exit from Europe reached the remotest part of Southern Africa, we learned of the result whilst in a remote camp deep in the Kalahari Desert. South Africans, Namibians, Americans were all shocked and feared the fallout would effect their own economies. On the other hand the Europeans we met avoided the subject. For us of course, this result was very bad news. The pound fell dramatically against other currencies (which had been predicted) which suddenly made our five year travel plans much more expensive, and Anne’s status as a UK resident much more uncertain.

Mice
It’s amazing how you can develop an interest in spotting mice when you are on one of those game drives when the larger animals and birds appear to be elusive. Mice became our new pet subject on just one of those occasions. We now know that there are over 100 different species in Africa, but we were only able to spot one, the 4 striped. There should have been a single striped mouse in the same area, but it eluded us. There is a very rare mouse living in northern Namibia and south Angola, who know, maybe one day we will organize an expedition to search it out.

Supermarkets
Don’t expect to find a lot of dairy products in Namibia. UHT milk, a few imported cheeses, some butter and a couple of yoghurts and that it. On the other hand, with chicken you can buy everything, including feet, head and intestines. Each bagged individually or in a mixed pack with the cuts we are more used to. When it comes to essentials, such as Maize, Rice, Paste, etc., you can buy big 10kg bags as the norm, with some places stocking 25kg bags. Now they may not have much in the way of dairy, but they do have a lot of chocolate bars to choose from.

Driving in Namibia
Most roads in Namibia are either gravel or sand, so you encounter one or the other where ever you go. What we had to learn by experience though was that when a Namibian tells you that his sand road to camp was passable with a high clearance two-wheel drive car, as was ours, you shouldn’t always believe him. We learned this to our expense as we got stuck twice on his 3km stretch of sand road and required a push from kind people to get us moving again. Fortunately on both occasions it was only for a few meters.