Our first night in Namibia

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Our first accommodation was Anib Lodge on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. We checked in and were offered the option to go on an evening game drive and sundowner - which we decided to do! We went for a sleep as although we had slept a bit on the night flight, we had not had enough sleep! We woke up in time for the game drive which was great! We saw oryx (gemsbok) which I was very excited about - they are big black and white antelopes with long straight horns. I had seen a lot of these on some of the web cams on www.africam.com but had never seen them in real life (so to speak!). We also saw some ground squirrels, weaver birds and their huge shared nests, a bat eared fox, ostrich and springbok. The part of the Kalahari we were driving through was a mix of dry yellow grass with some trees and bushes, and some deep red earth and sand dunes. I loved the contrast of the red, yellow and green. We stopped on top of one of the dunes and had our sundowner drinks watching the sun go down! It was great - so surreal to be on top of a red sand dune in the Kalahari Desert having seen oryx just 24 hours after we had been in our local pub with my sister, Carol and her husband before they took us to the airport! On the dune there were lots of animal hoof prints - and of course we added quite a lot of human prints too! We drove at speed back to the lodge and as the jeep had no sides or roof, the hot wind was blowing all the cobwebs out of us - it was fabulous! Liberating and exciting! Africa is great. We got back and sat with a drink in the bar - around the fire - it does get a little cold in the desert at night - it was very cosy. The meal was lovely - David never really had a problem the whole holiday with being a vegetarian - some places were better than others though! The way that the menu was announced was once in English, once in German, and once in one of the tribal languages of Namibia that involves talking with clicks - it was fascinating for our European ears to hear. After breakfast the following morning we set off down the B1 (still very quiet even though it was the busy tourist season!) towards Fish River Canyon. We filled up with petrol in Mariental, and bought plenty of water too. We drove by Keetmanshoop, and then turned off the tarred road at Seeheim on to a gravel road. Many of the dots on the map which indicate a settlement - sometimes is just one building, or sometimes there seems to be nothing visible at all - I suppose because the country is so big and there is so much space that the farms and settlements are spread out and don’t have a specific centre.

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