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...

We came to Windhoek to do some end of trip birding at two places - Daan Viljoen Game Reserve and Avis Dam. They are both birding hotspots and we hoped to get some of the birds we have so far not seen on the trip. City Centre Windhoek is also a known place to see Bradfield's Swift but as we managed to see that already earlier in the trip, we no longer needed to get that...

We packed up, had breakfast and then started to head south out of the Etosha and toward Windhoek. We had 17 kms of road before the gate but failed to add either birds or animals to our list despite our best attempts. Another paper form to be filled in as we exited the gate but I think I could have written whatever I wanted to and no one would have cared at all. There is a...

Lack of WiFi and cellphone signal has been the cause of no post over the last day or so. We are also experiencing an issue in that emails go out to some subscribers but not all of them and we can't figure out why. The blog is posted on templetravels.co.za if you didn't get it. Last night we also had a large thunderstorm and that seemed to further disrupt any connectivity we did have. Yesterday we...

It was overcast and raining lightly this morning which is never conducive for birding. H and I did a short walk before we packed up and headed for breakfast. We only added one bird to our trip list on the walk. I also didn't want to walk too far or uphill because I definitely still have some virus/infection still lingering. At least today I felt better than previous days and I was able to do all...

We had a 5 hour drive to do on Friday as we headed to the Waterberg Plateau Park. It is north east of Swakopmund. Unfortunately I have managed to contract a virus/infection of some sort and really wasn't feeling well at all on Friday morning. That meant H had to drive the majority of the way. The first few hours of driving had heavy traffic as we took the road between Windhoek and Swakopmund. Lots of...

The only reason we came here was to do some birding at Walvis Bay. The birding along the salt pans is one of the best places to see waders in the world. We visited here when we just started birding but we didn't identify any of the specials of the region (as we just didn't know what we were doing then in comparison to now). We were not disappointed with our 3 hours of birding this...

H & I did our own walk this am. They offered us their radio but given there are no serious predators and a jackal is going to be more scared of me than me of him/her, I didn't think it was necessary. We just walked on the road out of the camp and down to the helicopter pad and then on the road toward the staff village. We saw a few birds but nothing new for...

Today has been a relatively relaxed and easy day. We woke up at around 6am when the sun was rising. Coffee, biscuits and some fruit and then we headed off to the dunes to do an hour of quad biking on the dunes. It is about a 30 minute drive to where the bikes are stored. It was just H & I and the guide (Denvil). They have definitely improved the Quad bikes since we were...