It rained heavily overnight. The tin roof of our accommodation no doubt made it sound like it was raining harder than it was but it really did sound like it was bucketing down. It woke us up at least twice during the night. The thought crossed my mind about flash flooding, crossing the low lying bridges and rivers on the way in and it seemed to cross a few others minds in the group as well....
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We went for a (bird) walk before breakfast at 7am and S & B added 2 lifers to their list. A coffee stop at the Lazy Lizard and then back to our guest house for breakfast, pack the cars and hit the road. We took the Swartberg Pass which (not surprisingly) runs over the Swartberg mountain range. It was completed in 1888. The dry-stone retaining walls that are in place today are still the original ones...
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In some ways it feels like a long time since our January Namibia trip but in others it feels like only the other day. It was only 2 months ago so you might be surprised that we are 'on holiday' again (my Dad asked me 'How much leave do you get?' with a surprise in his voice when I told him we were heading off on a road trip today). This was a long time planned...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Today was our last day in Etosha as we are leaving tomorrow am as we slowly start to make our way home. We are currently 1926 kms from our home in Cape Town so a long way to drive over the next few days. We went out again this morning heading west and repeated our route from the first day we were here. We probably saw less game but have added some more birds to the...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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