We left Windhoek just before 8am on Saturday morning and Waze said 915 kms and 8 hours to Springbok where we were overnighting. The drive was pretty uneventful with not a lot of traffic and a very straight road for much of the trip. We crossed the border back into South Africa at just before 3pm and arrived at our guesthouse (Mountain View Guesthouse) at just before 4pm. The only remarkable part of the drive was that at one point the outside temperature hit 40 degrees C!

It turns out that we stayed at the guesthouse back in 2008 when we did our first ever road trip to Namibia. The lady at the guesthouse recommended we eat dinner at Tauren Steak Ranch and that given it was first weekend of the month we better book. We duly did but when we arrived for dinner we realised we didn’t actually need to book but it did fill up somewhat by the time we left. We also realised that in 2008 we ate at the same place. They hadn’t updated their decor since we last ate there in 2008. The food was OK and the service was good.

This morning we were on the road again heading home by 8am. It was just over 5 hours and 520 kms to get home and we made good time arriving 1:20 pm. I know you’re all concerned to know whether I made the 200 mark for birds for the trip and the good news is at 1:19 pm before we turned into the estate, I saw my 200th bird for the trip. No detour – just straight home and managed to see number 200 before we pulled into the driveway. H finished on 204 – I managed to close the gap in the end to 4 birds as number 199 was one of the ones she had seen previously which I hadn’t seen yet until today. 18 lifers for the trip – probably best I have done in a trip for 3-4 years. I’m on 529 lifers overall and it isn’t easy to add 18 lifers in 2 weeks anymore so very happy with the trip overall from a birding perspective. As you probably know, we generally end up seeing one bird more than anything else on these trips and H and I concluded that the bird of this trip was definitely a Sabota Lark. Never seen and heard so many of them ever on a trip.

As I usually do when visiting a foreign country, here are my random thoughts about Namibia:

1. It has definitely declined since we last did a road trip through the country – the roads are worse, the facilities are worse – maybe the impact of Covid?
2. The Namibian people outside of the main areas but working in the tourist trade are apathetic, unmotivated and depressed. It seems they are only working because they must and they seemingly have been told that doing the minimum is fine and they will still get paid. For a country that relies on tourism, they are going to have an issue if they continue like that.
3. NWR (Namibia Wildlife Resorts) are a poor second cousin for Sanparks (in SA). Everything about the way they do things is poor. They need to go to SA and visit some of the Sanparks resorts to see how things should be done. It made us appreciate Sanparks a lot more and even though they have declined too (especially in the Kruger Park), they are head and shoulders still better than the NWR resorts.
4. The game viewing in Etosha was poor – if you want to have good game viewing – go to the Kruger Park rather.
5. Windhoek was a bit of an exception for us in that it seemed much more organised and more like a small city you would find in a more modern country. Things seemed to work, people were friendly and efficient and welcoming. The quality of everything seemed better.
6. Namibia is a big country with very little population and massive distances between places. It really made us wonder what some people did in the small towns though as there doesn’t seem to be much happening at all.
7. Despite us being warned to keep your valuables on you at all times and to keep your passport safe, we never really felt unsafe at any time. It seems much safer than many places we have traveled to and safer than SA too.

We did enjoy our time especially because of the birding and despite me getting sick. It was a good 2 weeks away. Doubt we are heading back to Namibia for a few years though as it is just too far and not as rewarding as we expected it would be.

Until next time …

P & H