Around Namibia - part 2

Swakopmund was our next port of call. The drive was rather surreal as it was flat and moonscape like for several hundred kilometers, with the occasional ostrich to remind us we were still on earth! We stopped off at Walvis Bay Lagoon, as a reknowned wetland site. Here we saw plenty of flamingos and other wading and sea birds. This turned out to be quite a strange place due to a salt works being next door to it! Weird and artificial salt flat one side and lagoon the other.

Swakopmund is an old German colonial seaside town. German still appears to be the first language here. It’s a quite pretty town with lots of German architecture as you’d expect and more very helpful people. Our highlight here was the “living desert tour”. The guide was quite the character, passionate about the environment and very knowledgeable. He drove us into the dunes, which were stunning and brought the desert to life by showing us a number of reptiles and insects which you’d never see it exploring alone. These included skink (legless lizard), a sand adder, the white lady spider, a beautiful translucent gecko and a rather moody chameleon! It was a really cool experience to meet these desert dwellers up close.

Hey, what you looking at?

Put me down!

Another strange creature lurks in the dunes

After a lovely meal in a converted tugboat on the water’s edge, it was off to our next destination – Brandberg. We were only here for a night – it was a stopover than anything else. We didn’t see the elephants who occasionally frequent the campsite where our chalet was, and it was one of our least favourite places in terms of the accommodation and atmosphere. So it was off early the next day to Grootberg. This was more like it! Our lodge was in a conservancy run with the local people to give them career opportunities. The lodge was situated at the edge of a high plateau, overlooking a 300m deep valley. We would later discover what lives down there…

Our chalet was luxurious and the pool, lodge and staff were all great. We umm’d and ahh’d about going on the rhino tracking excursion due to the 5:30 start, the fact it could take hours of tracking them on foot in the heat and the low chances of successful sightings this time of year. But we put on our lucky pants and went for it – and boy, were we rewarded! Within 2 hrs of bouncing around on top of the Land Rover in the valley below the lodge, we chanced upon a pride of eight lions. This area is one of the few outside of Etosha that still has wild lions. As we watched and photographed, 2 black rhino walked past behind the lions, to the utter amazement of us and the guides & trackers. This gave us an unusual problem – how to track the rhinos on foot, because by now the lions were getting very curious about our car and started stalking us! We drove on for maybe 1km, in the direction the rhinos went. Then we all got out (despite still being able to hear the roars of the lions in the not very far distance) and tracked the rhinos on foot for a few minutes. They have poor eyesight, so we were able to get pretty close before they got spooked and took off. We were all relieved to find the Land Rover was still empty when we returned. What we would have done if the lions had been sitting in it, I have no idea!

Not a bad place to meditate

Family of lions

Endangered black rhino

Because we’d seen both lions and rhinos by 8:30am, we still had time to take a look for the desert elephants too. These live in the other direction, towards the farmland, so more riding on the bucking bronco Land Rover ensued. Again we were lucky, finding a herd of about 15 elephant after a tip-off from a local. Making sure we approached them from the downwind side, we got to about 80m away from them without disturbing these magnificent beasts.

We can't all get in the shade of that one tree

All in all it was an amazing day, and we would be sorry to leave Grootberg. Our last night there was Christmas Eve, and for the first time on the trip, we felt a bit Christmassy. It’s so strange being in a hot environment at this time of year, and without all the usual pre-Christmas preparations and traditions that it hadn’t felt like Christmas at all. But there was a Christmas spirit that night with the staff (and the German guests) signing Christmas carols, and everyone wishing each other a merry Christmas as they went to bed. Our final surprise of the day was finding a scorpion – luckily only a small one - on our bedroom wall. We plucked up the courage to put it outside before getting some well-earned sleep.

Next day (Christmas Day) we were off early to Etosha, one of southern Africa’s biggest national parks. This is rainy season (despite all the river beds being bone dry and us having seen no rain) which is the worst time of year for animal spotting, as they have plenty of water all around, they can avoid visiting the water holes where they congregate in winter. Despite this we were both excited at the prospect of more wildlife. We had to look hard for it and cover a lot of ground, but Etosha didn’t disappoint. We saw two different groups of Lions (one rather randy couple and one couple with a cub), two more elephants, a black rhino, a spotted hyena, tons of giraffe, oryx, kudu, springbok, impala, and even a tortoise! We also saw quite a few different birds, including a Marabou stork, various eagles and a vulture. It was great to see all these creatures in their natural environment, but also not scared of our car. We had a particularly lovely experience with the first elephant, watching it walking along beside our car, then taking a long mud-bath.

Sparring Impala

Showing off in the mud bath

"Now get back into position, and let's practice the dance again"

King & Queen of the jungle

Thirsty work being a rhino

The park itself was also beautiful, varying from a vast salt pan (probably 50 miles across) to forest and grassy plains. We even witnessed a huge thunderstorm first hand at the end of the day. Our Christmas dinner was an evening buffet of barbecued Kudu, Turkey and Beef, eaten outside, with a choir and a camel thorn tree decorated with Christmas lights. No Christmas pudding, no mince pies or chocolates, but a great, unusual Christmas day, rounded off by a beautiful sunset over the watering hole.

Merry Christmas from Etosha

Our final stop on the first part of our trip was at the Erongo mountains. Here we stayed at yet another beautiful lodge, with luxurious permanent tents nestling in the hillside amongst the giant granite boulders, with hundreds of Hyrax (the closest living relative of the elephant) and rock agama (brightly-coloured lizards) for company. We swam, trekked to the top of the tallest hill for a sundowner (sunset drink), enjoyed the view and had a relaxing time, before returning to Windhoek the next day to drop the car off and prepare for part 2 of our trip, volunteering at a cheetah release project and an animal sanctuary. That’s the subject of the next installment…

A little bit of luxury - it's actually a very grand tent

Rosy cheeked lovebird

Happy New Year everybody!