DIY: Safari

Look at the sparrows; they do not know what they will do in the next moment. Let us literally live from moment to moment.” –Mahatma Gandhi

This chapter of the trip felt a bit like starting a new adventure.  Before this,  nearly everything was planned and it felt more like a vacation.  Starting now, we are planning as we go, basing a lot of our decisions on input from fellow travelers and locals that we meet on the way.  The kids have found their groove.  They love this lifestyle right now, (although they miss home a lot too) and they are quite independent with their stuff and managing their daily lives.

So, once in Windhoek we spent our first day researching and planning our time in Namibia with the very helpful people at Chameleon Backpackers. The kids swam endlessly in the hostel pool and practiced gymnastics on the lawn.  We wanted to do a combo of guided tours and self drive.  Public transportation doesn’t really exist in Namibia due to the sparse population and vast territory, so these really are the only two options. We chose to start with a self drive tour of the country and rented a Toyota truck with rooftop tents for eleven days. The hostel safari center helped us with arrangements, an itinerary, and tips for where to do our shopping for food to take along.

Before we knew it we were on the road in our new (to us) truck learning to drive on the left hand side of the road (while sitting on the right side of the car). Our first stop was only a couple hours away at Erindi Private game reserve (recommended to us by someone we met at the hostel who happened to work there). We took a main road for half the way and then a fairly remote dirt road the last hour. Our first realization that we were in Africa happened on this road when we looked to our left and saw two Giraffe not too far off the road. Erindi offered us a bit of luxury and expertise to get us started. We stayed in a very nice lodge, meals were gourmet and included, the restaurant overlooked a watering hole for wildlife viewing, the pool also overlooked the Savannah, and we did a guided game drive.  It was a perfect start.  We saw some amazing animals, filled up on sensational food, and bought a great wildlife guide to help us identify animals on our own.

Namibia is really, really dry.  Which makes it an appealing safari destination.  It has a very wide variety of animals and in the dry season they are easy to spot because if you wait at a watering hole, they are bound to come for a drink.  We are here at the beginning of the green season, when the rains start.  However, we were lucky.  It had been dry the last week and the watering hole at Erindi was a hopping spot.  We saw African Wild Dogs, hyena, two herds of elephant, giraffe, crocs (including baby crocs), and hippos. Each time we went we saw something different.  The highlight was certainly after dusk, when a herd of 14 elephants came with a big bull, a few mommas, and a bunch of little ones.  Seeing them all lined up to drink in all sizes was so fun.  After they left it was a little while and another group came of about 7 elephants.  This group got into the water and played around.  After a while the herd moved on but 3 stayed in bugling, splashing and rolling around in the water for about 30 minutes.  I called it a Pool Party.  They were having such a good time.  To see animals feeling joy in their natural wild habitat is just so amazing.

From there we went to Etosha, the major national park for wildlife viewing.  We spent 3 nights in the park camping at different campgrounds.  The tents on the car are pretty easy to setup.  We remove the cover and flip open the platform and they pop up.  A few poles attach on the outside for the rain flaps and voila.  The mattress is already inside and it’s ready.  It was cool to sleep to the sounds of the wilderness, although it was hot!  They fence in the campgrounds to keep folks safe from the carnivores, but at one site a leopard was sighted within the campground two days prior so we stayed alert.  In between game drives we would relax in the pool to keep cool.  Each campground had a pool fortunately.

Our Etosha wildlife drives were “All or Nothing”.  We were super lucky with viewing Rhino (both white and black) and Cheetah.  These are all endangered species so we knew we were really fortunate to see them over and over.  We also saw a large variety of antelope, giraffe, zebra, bat eared fox, and lizards.  But sometimes we would drive for an hour without seeing anything but Impala, the most prolific antelope.  In one of our “All” moments we saw a very interesting Rhino encounter at a watering hole where they were fighting for territory and we could hear the boom of their horns ramming into each others.  Another time we saw a Rhino next to the road.  He decided to cross in front of us and did a mock charge at the vehicle before moving on.  That got our attention!  For cheetah we saw them a few times.  Usually sleeping under the shade of a tree, but we saw two walking around which was great!  And one was calling out to his companion and the cheetah sounds like a bird!  Who knew?  That was fantastic.

The freedom to stay with an animal as long as we wanted, return to camp when we wanted, and do our own wildlife spotting was very cool to us.  Once we were coming around a bend that was lush with trees and bushes.  To our surprise a huge giraffe was in the middle of the road and Chad had to quickly apply the brakes.  To have an experience like that while driving is pretty unreal!

We are now in Swakopmund on the west coast of Namibia (it is pretty much directly across the Atlantic from Rio).  To get here we drove south from Etosha and started to appreciate the incredibly diverse landscapes that Namibia has to offer. After Etosha we spent one night at a very cool lodge near The Brandenberg (tallest mountain in Namibia and home to a rock painting done at least 2,000 years ago). We enjoyed our short time camping there, especially with their resident tamed animals…a dog, tortoise, parrots, and a meerkat – definitely the highlight.  The Brandenberg area had great rock formations, which the kids enjoyed climbing on, and as we headed for the coast it slowly turned to flat desert.

Our days in Swakopmund were focused on the desert… to be continued…