Kota Kinabalu-Mt Kinabalu-Sandakan We finally arrived in KK at 1 am after a somewhat delayed flight with Air Asia. Fortunately had a Terry Pratchett audio book on my MP3 player to pass the time. Woke up to a bright and sunny day in KK. We didn't spend more than a few hours in the town as we will be returning there after about a week. Took a mini-van out to Mt Kinabalu National Park. We had to sit and wait in the hot van for some time whilst waiting for it to fill up, the young Russian women in front were getting quite frustrated. More Terry Pratchett helped pass the time. The van driver very kin idly dropped us right at the front door of our lodge, the D'Villa Hotel. A little tired but a good ... read more

Starting the blog again for this summer’s holiday. Again I'm not sure how often I'm going to find internet services. We leave for Kota Kinabalu in a few hours’ time. Tomorrow we will go to Mt Kinabalu for a few days. We've not been able to book a tour to the top of the mountain, we've been amazed at the bureaucracy and expense involved in that, so we're staying just outside the park and going to walk on the lower slopes. Can't wait!! We're anticipating rain and leeches.... read more

Sossusvlei We had saved up to the end of the trip a visit to the iconic Sossusvlei sand dunes in the huge Namib-Naukluft Park. Our last week was initially marred by the comfy air mattress deflating increasingly rapidly during the night. We finally found the hole and were able to plug it with chewing gum and Elastoplasts, amazingly that worked perfectly for our final two nights under canvas. At the dunes we stayed in a campground in Sesriem Oasis, just inside the park. There’s a 60 km long drive with stunning orange sand dunes on either side leading down towards the main area for visitors. Here you can park your car and take a 4 by 4 shuttle a few km across deep sand into the Sossusvlei dunes. On our first day there we walked a ... read more

Fish River Canyon, Namibia After leabing Maun in Botswana we drove west and south for three days to take us to the stunning Fish River Canyon. The driving was easy but tedious; long, long straight roads that seem to never end. The towns in Namibia are small and seem quite soulless, fortunately the stunning scenery in places makes up for them. The canyon is absolutely beautiful, supposedly second in size to the Grand Canyon in the US and bears a lot of similarities. You're not permitted to do day walks into the canyon but the walks along the top, stopping to take inthe views were excellent. Spent a whole day there, watched the sunset over the rim, lovely. That was at the north end of the canyon, at the south end there is a very nice ... read more

Central Kalahari Game Reserve The day after our 11 hour nothing journey we spent some time in Maun seeing if we could use the spare time to visit the Kalahari. The options boiled down to spending a lot on hiring a 4WD and camping or spending not too much more and staying in a luxury all expenses paid lodge. We decided to go for it and spend the money on the latter option. So we spent 2 nights, one full day and two half days in this lovely lodge out in the central Kalahari. It was all excellent and we're very glad that we went. We flew into the lodge, 40 mins in a 5 seater plane. We were fortunate enough to be the only guests in the lodge for the whole of our stay and ... read more

Maun and the Okavango Delta Due in part to things going all wrong early on in the week we have spent in the Maun area, part of this time has been an amazing experience. We had planned to spend a few days relaxing at a community based camp north of Maun in an area called the Pan Handle of the Okavango Delta. The delta area is renowed for its beauty but is also quite exclusive and expensive so this was going to be an affordable way for us to see the delta. We drove the 400km north to the ferry crossing near the Namibian border, all relaxed and excited about the next few days. The ferry pulled up, we drove down and the steep angle of the ramp plus the steep angle of the boat's ramp ... read more

Chobe National Park and Nata Bird Sanctuary Chobe National park is in the North East corner of Botswana. We stayed outside the park, near the entrance, in the town of Kasane. Camped in the grounds of a top end lodge. The main attraction here is visiting Chobe Riverfront, part of the national park. We visited three times over the three days we stayed there, the first day we managed to hire a 4 by4 truck just for one day, the following fternoon we did a river cruise and the last day a late afternoon game drive through the lodge. The day in our own vehicle meant we could spend many hours driving up and down the river front tracks, on the other two we learnt a lot from the informative guides, all experiences in the park ... read more

Victoria Falls Victoria Falls are absolutely stunning. They are so huge with a massive volume of water cascading over such a long canyon edge. We hired full length raincoats, as recommended by some people we'd met at Popa Falls, and were very glad we did. We visited from the Zimbabwe side and you walk for around 1200m along the opposite side of the canyon with these amazing falls oppposite you. As the wind changes direction you're alternately soaked and then in sunshine. We were lucky as for the dry season there was a lot of water (so we were told). It was the vastness of the falls that was so stunning, 100m drop for over a kilometer, then round the corner into Zambia (that we didn't visit). Victoria Falls town is a very small place, completley ... read more

Waterberg to Popa Falls Waterberg Plateau National Park is a stunning sandstone rock plateau standing 200m above the surrounding very flat landscape. You see it looming ahead of you for miles on the drive there. It was a great place to go after Etosha's "Don't get out of your car" warnings everywhere and be able to do some hiking. The big animals area all on the top of the plateau leaving hikers free to amble around the lower slopes. The rocks are a beautiful colour in the afternoon sun, just like the warm red sandstone back home in Worcestershire. The only mammals we saw at Waterberg were mongoose (or is it mongeese?) and baboons, but the birdlife was excellent, lots of lovely colourful small birds. On leaving the park we had a very special few hours ... read more

Etosha National Park Spent 5 wonderful days camping and driving around Etosha NP. It's a 20,000 km2 park, 2/3 open to the public. We travelled from the Western gate to the eastern staying at the 3 campsites attached to lodges at each end and one in the middle. The lodges were in lovely settings and well maintained and each had their own waterhole. We developed a routine quite quickly of getting up early , into the car, heater full on and drive to a waterhole. Have breakfast there watching the wildlife. Then spend around 4 hours driving around from one waterhole to another. The raods were good gravel roads and good signage everywhere. Then back to the lodge for an excellent buffet lunch (smoked salmon and grilled prawns one day). Then back out to sit at ... read more