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A long time wish of mine to visit the Etosha National Park, the jewel of the Namibian crown finally became a reality as we spent 8 wonderful days in Etosha. We started in the west of the park and moved right across to the east spending two nights in each of the four campsites, Olifantrus, Okaukuejo, Halali and Namutoni.

Until a few years ago the west of the park at Olifantsrus was out of bounds to the general public, this area has unfortunately been hardest hit by the drought in Namibia and game viewing in this area was not as good as in the rest of the park. Okaukuejo is the main camp in the park and had excellent game viewing, however it is also the busiest in terms of visitors and seriously under developed in terms of facilities. Both Halali and Namutoni were great in terms of game viewing and were areas worth returning to.

Our highlights were seeing black rhino for the first time, two exceptionally good leopard sightings and another first was seeing black faced impala which we had never seen before. Overall impressions of Etosha were somewhat mixed. The park lends itself to excellent game viewing with very large numbers of game and many wide-open areas to view the game and very productive waterholes. The plains animals, springbok, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, black faced impala, red hartebeest, eland, ostrich were abundant and could be found all day long in vast numbers, we were also very fortunate to see plenty of rhino both black and white, numerous lion sightings, two leopard sighting and even an African wild cat. Bird sightings were pretty good although we were disappointed in the raptor sightings. It was incredibly hot with temperatures in our caravan reaching 47 degrees during the day, fortunately the last three camps all had decent swimming pools.  We had some very windy days which in a very sandy environment spoilt game viewing at that point in time. If game viewing was great there were serious negatives about Etosha. The roads were good in places and very poor elsewhere, the campsites were very tired and the facilities were often filthy mainly due to ablutions that were inadequate due to numerous visitors particularly the over landers. Whilst staff at campsites in the rest of Namibia were excellent and very welcoming of visitors to Namibia the staff at NWR (Namibian Wildlife Resorts) were amongst the rudest we have ever encountered. We were surprised that with about 250,000 visitors annually this was allowed to happen, it is apparent that the funds raised from the park does not appear to be channelled back into the park for either staff training or facility enhancement/maintenance. We would return but we would probably spend time in only Halali and Namutoni and we would just have to ignore the staff and facility issues. Our cat pictures are shown below, I’ll post birds and other animals in a separate post.

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After Brandberg we moved onto Madisa Lodge at Twyfelfontein. Twyfelfontein is an area well known for rock carvings, similar to the rock paintings at Brandberg but these people chose to carve their images rather than paintings. Carbon dating has placed these as having been done 6,000 years ago, astounding how well these carvings have survived. In addition to the carvings Twyfelfontein is known for the strange rock formations occurring in a local river bed and these rocks resemble organ pipes as can be seen from the photographs below.

Our next attraction that we wished to see was Epupa Falls on the Kunene River but too far to travel in one day so we had a one-night stay in Opuwo was required. Opuwo is a strange place as it resembles a high-density suburb in Harare and on a hill overlooking this eyesore is a magnificent lodge that includes a couple of campsites. We couldn’t wait to move onto Omarunga Lodge and Campsite on the banks of the Kunene River, the border of Namibia and Angola. This pretty much meant we had travelled Namibia from the Southernmost point to the Northern Border. The attraction at Omarunga is a waterfall on the Kunene River. The falls, Epupa Falls are dependent upon the release of water from a Hydro Electric scheme further upstream. It was impressive but having seen Vic Falls so many times all else comes far short.

We spent two nights at Kunene River Lodge after leaving Epupa Falls. Kunene is a birder’s paradise with a huge variety of birds a few of which are limited to that part of Namibia. Our aim was to see the Cinderella Waxbill, a bird only found in that section of the Kunene River and nowhere else in Southern Africa. My eagle-eyed wife found it, there were only 3 known in the area. While we were at Kunene we also saw and managed to video a monster leguaan fighting and killing a 2 metre python, the video is on our FB page, I can’t work out how to put videos on this blog. We have now moved on and are in the middle of an 8 day stay in the Etosha, I was going to place Etosha with this post but we have seen so much in Etosha that I will place Etosha in a post of its own later this week, internet allowing.

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Following our last update on 29 September we have visited Aus (desert horses, Kolmanskop, Luderitz), Sesriem (Sossusvlei, Deadvlei and Sesriem Canyon), Swakopmund (seals, relaxation), Spitzkoppe (unusual mountains in the middle of nowhere plus rock paintings), Brandberg (desert elephants and rock paintings), this is part one of this post. Part two consists of Twyfelfontein (rock carvings rather than paintings), Epupa Falls (on the Kunene river bordering Angola), Kunene River Lodge (birding paradise) and are currently in the Etosha.

It appears that I was a bit premature in my earlier judgement of Namibian gravel roads where I mentioned how good the roads were, we have travelled some of the worst roads I have ever seen however the scenery and sights have compensated for the roads. We discovered that Namibia is probably the largest beach in the world, sand, sand and even more sand, interspersed with rocky mountains. We have loved the trip, will hopefully return before ending our time in Africa and we haven’t even completed Etosha yet. Linda’s knee continued to give trouble and walking was a major issue particularly on uneven surfaces, this severely constrained some of the things we had planned to do as we weren’t able to walk anywhere. We visited a doctor in Luderitz who was very good, he gave Linda crutches and referred her to an Orthopaedic Surgeon and x-rays in Walvis. The x-rays showed no break but the Orthopaedic chappie had no idea what had caused the problem however he prescribed a metal leg brace which made walking much easier. The knee has improved dramatically in the last week and Linda is pretty much 100% recovered.

Aus was a convenient stop to hopefully see some of the desert horses which we saw on the first day there and were lucky enough to have them visit our campsite on our last morning, they literally walked up to the side of our caravan. Whilst there we also got to see Kolmanshop, an old diamond mining town that has been abandoned and overtaken by the sand dunes. Driving home from the Dr at Luderitz we went through an awful sandstorm that threatened to sandblast my car buit fortunately I had been warned of these and the over-riding advise is to drive very slowly, we emerged unscathed.

Sossusvlei, a collection of enormous sand dunes was amazing spectacle but we had to look at it from close to the car as Linda’s knee was at its worst by this stage, difficult to describe or even photograph the dunes, amazing that sand can be so beautiful. Sossusvlei consists of a canyon which is great in its own right but having seen Fish River Canyon a few days earlier it was a bit of an anti-climax for us. We weren’t able to see Deadvlei as it required a significant hike and there was no way the knee would cope, Sossusvlei itself was great and we were able to hobble around the important places.

Swakopmund was a really great place to recharge batteries as the campsite was really posh and we were able to do lots of housekeeping. We did travel to Cape Cross on one of the days to visit a seal colony, this was pretty astounding with thousands of seals basking on the rocky beach but the smell was awful, it was a worthwhile trip if you had never seen seals before and we thoroughly enjoyed the outing. We were also able to visit a sports bar to watch the Boks klap Italy which improved my mood considerably. We met up with Kate and Dave again, the folk that we had such a good time in Richtersveld with and caught up with one another’s travel tales, Dave is far more adventurous than me and they visited some really remote areas.

From Swakopmund we travelled to Spitzkoppe which is a wonderful area with a massive rocky formation rising out of flat plains. My geology is pretty hopeless so I have no idea what caused the phenomenon so we just sat back and enjoyed the splendour of it all. There are no developed campsites just longdrop toilets and rough concrete slabs to use for braaiing. No other campsite is visible from where you stay so there is a real feeling of isolation, very different from anywhere we had been before.  

Our next stop was at Brandberg White Lady Lodge, the two major attractions here are bushman paintings and the chance to see desert adapted elephants. We have seen plenty of rock paintings in Zimbabwe and at Spitzkoppe and as the viewing of the ones at Brandberg required a 2km hike over uneven ground this was a non-starter with Linda’s knee (I wasn’t complaining). The desert adapted elephant were however a special opportunity, we were lucky enough for them to wake us up at 1.30am one morning as they passed through our campsite, a bit frightening as they were only 5m from the caravan when we woke up. It was difficult to appreciate them in the dark and we went on a guided tour the following day and were able to find and see them at very close quarters. They are the same species that we know from Zimbabwe but they have longer front legs than those we know and their feet are larger than what we are used to. I have broken this report into two parts due to all we have done, the following photographs are pertinent to the text above.

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We travelled from Richtersveld to a campsite in Namibia called Canyon Roadhouse. The border crossing was very casual and relaxed, a little bit of smiling and lighthearted banter in Africa generally goes a long way rather than bitching and complaining. The only major delay was a very thorough search by a police officer on the Namibian side of the border. The Richtersveld is a diamond mining area and the policeman searched our car very thoroughly for about 30 minutes, no talk of a bribe just doing his job. The roads that we travelled on in Namibia to reach our destination were all gravel but very good gravel, streets ahead of the South African gravel and Linda thought better than the Zimbabwean tarmac!!

Our accommodation in Namibia for the first two nights were at a place doing a very good impersonation of an American Roadhouse from the good old days. The resort was full of very old vehicles from a bygone era and was set up as a sort of service station, difficult to describe but Linda took a few photos which will be posted at the end of my ramblings. Staff were excellent but prices generally quite a bit higher than South Africa, however that never stopped these retirees from savouring the Savannas and wine plus a couple of good meals. We were based 25kms from Fish River Canyon and arrived there at about 9.30am as we had to get back to camp by noon to watch the Boks playing Namibia. I’m not certain what our expectations of Fish River Canyon were but wow were they exceeded!! The views of the Canyon were spectacular, as mentioned yesterday the canyon is regarded as the 2^nd biggest in the world behind The Grand Canyon, there is some debate as it is difficult to know where and when a Canyon starts and ends but that is immaterial. We were concerned about how much walking we would have to do with Linda’s buggered knee but we needn’t have worried as the car was able to be driven right up to the viewing platform. It is difficult to describe, the Canyon is about 160kms long, up to 27kms wide and at the deepest 550m deep. There is a terrible drought in the area so the Fish River isn’t even flowing but that didn’t diminish from the spectacle. Rather than trying to explain what we saw I’ll let the photos do the talking, unfortunately it is difficult to fully capture these in a photo but hopefully these give some idea.

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As highlighted in my last post it was time to move into unchartered territory and oh boy did we do just that? We travelled from Springbok to the Richtersveld and the last 70 odd kms was some of the worst corrugated gravel imaginable, it made the Harare potholes look reasonable!! The Richtersveld, for those that do not know is a mountainous area of the Kalahari Desert lying in South Africa and Namibia and resembles an area of the globe that the creator only half finished. The aforementioned corrugations were just an appetiser of what was to come once we entered the national park. I had, unfortunately, watched Youtube of some of the mountain passes in the park and this old accountant was way, way out of his comfort zone. We were lucky that the day before entering the park we had met and befriended a couple from Howick (ex-farmers with lots of 4×4 knowledge) that looked sympathetically on me and travelled with us giving me a few quick lessons on how to tackle the one exceptionally intimidating mountain pass, the Akkedis Pass. An Akkedis is a lizard and the road moves sharply from side to side much like a lizard moves, difficult at most times and made worse when towing a caravan. The biggest danger was numerous sharp rocks which cut the sidewalls of your tyres, avoiding them was difficult due to the extra length pulling Kamba, fortunately we managed to avoid these and we had no hassles but more due to heavy prayer and good luck rather than good judgement. The other hassle is if you meet another vehicle pulling a caravan in the opposite direction, there are limited opportunities to pass, reversing would have been a nightmare and not sure what we would have done, fortunately we never had the problem. The pass is only about 4kms long but takes 30 minutes to traverse, 30 very, very long minutes.

The Orange River, the border between Namibia and South Africa runs through the park and we camped on the edge of the river for 9 nights. It was great to chill out for a change rather than driving around every day. Linda and I went for long walks daily and I did a fair amount of fishing. I caught quite a few Yellowfish, nothing of great size and some large barbel, I wasn’t geared for fishing and had to use valuable biltong for bait!! Unfortunately, on one of our walks Linda twisted her leg and has torn the meniscus of her left knee and is in a lot of pain. Research says this may take up to two months to heal so our moving around is now somewhat hampered. We also spent a couple of nights in other campsites within the park, the highlight is of course scenery of all the different mountain types, quite unlike any other place we have ever seen. We both thoroughly enjoyed the experience but agreed that it is off the bucket list and we would be unlikely to return, too much else that we want to do in our time in Kamba. Yesterday morning we were carried across the Orange River on a motorised pont and entered Namibia where we will be based for the next 5 weeks. We are currently at Fish River Canyon, 2^nd largest canyon in the world, we will visit it later today. Until next time………

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My poor record of updates continues, almost three weeks since the last post. Despite being retired we seem to be busy most of the time and seldom sit back with nothing to do. I think moving forward we need to stay longer at each destination rather than moving as often as we are doing. Unfortunately our plans for the next 7 weeks are already planned and they include many 1 and 2 night stopovers. We are currently in Springbok, one night fortunately as it is frigging cold here in the Northern Cape and move towards the Richtersveld for 11 nights (4 camps), thereafter it is Namibia for 5 weeks in what should be an amazing time. Then it is Kgalagadi for 6 weeks before returning to Zimbabwe for 10 days.

Where have we been for the last 3 weeks? We spent a week at Tshipise and loved it there, it is a special place in our lives as both my folks ashes are spread on the kopje overlooking the resort. Whilst there I had the car serviced as we have already travelled almost 10,000kms since leaving Harare. There was a minor hiccup as the wiring for the diff lock had been damaged while my long range tank was fitted but that was resolved by excellent service at Toyota Musina. Linda (with her Parkinson’s) and I (with my suspect knee) climbed to the top of the kopje (Mount Tshipise) and were very proud of ourselves until we discovered the following day that an 82 year old neighbour of ours also climbed to the top. From Tshipise we moved to Klein Kariba (just outside Bela-Bela, formerly Warmbaths). The resort was superb, part of the ATKV group of camping/chalet resorts. The highlight whilst there was meeting up with my father’s 89 year old sister, Auntie Margaret is in amazing condition, wish that I could be like that at that advanced age.

Next stop was a farm type campsite near Delareyville, the less said about that place the better, we won’t return. We then spent two nights at Sanparks Augrabies Falls campsite. That was great and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. The Falls are on the Orange River and although there isn’t a tremendous amount of water at this time of the year the views were still great. I learnt another new skill whilst at Augrabies, I became a hairdresser. Our trip doesn’t allow Linda many opportunities to visit salons so it was hubby to the rescue with a Wahl No 4, it was at Linda’s insistence as showering in communal showers continually meant her hair wasn’t given enough time to dry, she still looks damn good though.

As mentioned at the start we are now in the Northern Cape as our next stop was the Namaqualand flowers where we based ourselves at the metropolis of Kamieskroon. Where is that? Well an indication is that the telephone number of the local grocery store (the only supermarket) is 604!! It was our first time seeing the Namaqua flowers, this year was not particularly good as rain fell at the wrong time and also we arrived about 10 days too late. However they were still impressive and we were glad that we included it in our itinerary.

With us moving to Richtersveld, then Namibia and then Kgalagadi future internet availability will be limited and not certain when I will be able to next post to the blog. Hope you enjoy the following photos, till next time………..

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Regrettably our time in Kruger has now come to an end, despite having booked an additional 7 nights at our final camp, Punda Maria. I’ve been very slack in keeping the blog up to date, I need to become more disciplined. Our final 21 nights were spent at Maroela a further night, Tsendze 3 nights, Letaba 4 nights, Shingwedzi 2 nights and Punda Maria 11 nights. It was with heavy hearts that we left Kruger moving to Tshipise as we had such a fantastic 38 nights there, we could very easily extended our stay by a further 2 weeks but bookings have been made and we have to keep to the timetable, we did take 7 of our Tshipise nights and use them at Punda Maria but we probably need more flexibility, we live and learn.

Difficult to choose a favourite experience as there were so many. One of the best things is the number of “friends” that we have made along the way. Language is a minor barrier as almost everyone here seems to have Afrikaans as a first language however as soon as they realise that we are Rooineks from Zimbabwe they are happy to speak to us in English, surprisingly enough some genuinely struggle with English but they are exceptionally accommodating and willing to try, their English is far better than my Afrikaans!! We already have a diary full of names of folk that have asked us to stay with them when passing through their home areas. We have also met a number of people with similar agendas to Linda and I and they have given up/rented out their homes and travel in caravans, the longest we have met are 4 years and 3.5 years on the road, we certainly aren’t pioneers in this undertaking.

As mentioned earlier we extended our stay at Punda Maria camp by 7 nights as Punda has an excellent waterhole directly in front of the camping site, we were lucky enough to befriend a couple that had one of the prime spots with uninterrupted views of the waterhole from their front awning, they invited us to take it over when they left and we moved in after 3 nights in a less prestigious spot. We were only about 40 metres from the waterhole and the waterhole was almost like a zoo with a never ending trail of animals there we even saw leopard there twice, both times at about 9.00pm at night. Our sightings in the last 3 weeks were not as frequent as the first 3 weeks but somehow they were just as special. We saw leopard on about 5 occasions and numerous lion sightings, we even saw cheetah which is most unusual. We saw Roan on three separate sightings which was special for me, we have been trying to find Roan for 4 years and only had success once in Hwange where we saw a lone bull. We looked everywhere for Wild Dog and were finally rewarded when we saw a den near Pafuri picnic site, they were pretty well hidden but I managed to get a few poor photos as evidence of the sightings. Our top sighting was probably 3 lioness standing guard over a waterhole with a herd of approximately 500 buffalo anxious to drink. There was a standoff for the better part of an hour until the buffalo managed to chase the lion away from their lofty position, the sheer force of numbers won the day.

Kamba? Need I say more, we couldn’t have chosen a better caravan. We have had multiple visits from fellow campers wanting to take a look at our setup. Kamba isn’t huge but at no time have we felt claustrophobic, the van ticks all our boxes. There is a lot of friendly rivalry particularly from owners of Conqueror caravans and there is a fair amount of chirping but it is all in good spirit. We have learnt that generally speaking campers are a pretty good set of people and in the main are like minded. At this stage we think we will mange the 2 years that we initially set aside and if our health remains good we may even look at a longer period, who knows?

There are a whole lot more photos that follow, hope you enjoy these.

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We are now officially on real retirement. We dropped Kel at Skukuza airport on Friday, 2/8/19 in order for her to return to Ben on Thursday Island in Australia. Having Kel with us was pretty much like a holiday rather than retirement and we ate drank and laughed all day long. Kel is so full of energy, she can’t sit still (or keep quiet), she is like a tornado hitting your lives. She sorts out all your problems, even though we didn’t know we had any and then like a modern day Mary Poppins she disappears. As you can tell from the above description we absolutely loved having her with us for the 2.5 weeks that she was here and I’m not embarrassed to say there was much snot and tears as we bid Kel farewell at Skukuza. Thanks to Ben for allowing Kel to stay with us for the first part of our trip, we can’t wait to see you both on TI on Christmas Eve. The only bonus of not having Kel with us any longer is that Kamba is specifically setup to accommodate two people and the extra space following Kel’s departure makes Kamba seem so much bigger.

We have now been in Kruger for 17 days, 3 at Berg en Dal, 5 at Skukuza, 3 at Lower Sabi, 5 at Satara and 1 so far at Maroela, therefore two weeks to go. The game viewing has continued to be fantastic, today is the first day that we have had a cat free day, every day until now we have seen at least one of the three large cat predators, but today we have decided to take it easy and chill out and sit in camp foregoing the evening drive. As stated we are at Maroela, a satellite camp falling under Orpen and we have a fence in front of the caravan and a dry river bed in front of that. There are four Hyaena that regularly patrol the fence, on the outside of course, unfortunately they associate visitors with food and appear to be well fed by those wanting a photo of themselves feeding the animal. Our bird photos exceed our animal photos as there are so many more varieties of bird than there are of animals and many of their colours are truly spectacular.

Our assembly and disassembly time of Kamba is improving, even without Kel here to assist and we are down to about 25 minutes to assemble and 50 minutes to disassemble. Things like groundsheet placement and putting protective nose covers onto Kamba all take time as does making the bed, something requiring two people and an area that I previously had no experience in. And as Kel repeatedly reminded us we are in our retirement now and so what if it takes an extra 5-10 minutes, we are not in a hurry to go anywhere, it’s early days but I’m starting to learn patience!!

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We are now well and truly settled into Kamba and thoroughly enjoying having Kel with us. After three nights at Berg En Dal we have moved onto Skukuza where we have five nights. It took us about 60 minutes to break up camp when we left Berg En Dal and about 30 minutes to set up camp at Skukuza so pretty impressed with that. However that was with Kel’s help, at 27 years of age she operates a little faster than Linda and I. To offset that a lot of what we are doing is aimed at three people rather than two, Kel didn’t travel very lightly!!! In addition we are setting up things we wouldn’t normally set up just to get into the swing of things, I think moving forward we would try to stay wherever we are for a minimum of two nights, three where possible. The game viewing has been superb with four leopard sightings already, three lion sightings and a very special cheetah sighting. Rhino and ellie sightings in the south have been plentiful. Birds are not as prolific as we have previously experienced in the north but as the following pictures show we have done pretty well.

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