Birch

An EXTENSIVE day's drive from Port Saint John to the northern part of the Drakensburg Mountains (probably 9 hours with a number of wrong turns in there), pulled into our guesthouse near the foot of Cathkin Peak near sunset. The Drakensburg Mtns (or at least the area where we stayed) have recently been deemed a World Heritage Site (c. 2001?), they form a good portion of the border with Lesotho (pronounced Le-soo-too), and they're pretty spectacular to look at. You can do as much or as little of them as you'd like: we did a couple short day hikes from near where we stayed, Jonathan, our friend from Capetown had recently done a 10-day hike in the Drakensburg! I keep being amazed at how accessible they've made these attractions all around SA (I have visions of ... read more

After a night up in Franschoek (more winery, lovely dinner at one of SA's finest), headed up and over the mountain pass that dominates the town (starting to feel a little "wined out" by morning), around an hours drive to the pretty little coastal village of Hermanus. Hermanus is said to be the best place in the world to watch whales from the shore, especially during winter (ie. now) as the whales head to the Antarctic to feed during summer, then back up to SA during winter to calve (they're Southern Right Whales which are big, humpy things with balleen for teeth and barnacles stuck all over them). Parked the car, walked over to the shore, and yup... sure enough there was a whale right there (or at least some sign of a thing with swirley ... read more

After a night in Walvis Bay (which included a second walk up Dune 7, and the demise of my second camera of the trip) back to Solitaire, this time indulging in a piece of Africa's best apple strudle (it could very well be true!). Yet another sundowner in the car enroute to our destination. Decided to splurge for yet another night on one of the "luxury tents" at the Sossusvlei Desert Camp ($60/person), since everything in the area is obscenely expensive, but we wanted to avoid driving for hours in the morning to get to Sossusvlei. Figured we'd do the cliche thing of getting up early to watch the sun rise over the dunes; up at 5am, breakfast, pack the car up, get to the gate, aaaaand... gate doesn't open until sunrise (plus it's a good ... read more

Unfortunately it's been a while since I've done a new blog... travelblog's server has been down for a good couple weeks now :o( (and as well it looks like I've permanently lost a couple that I'll probably be too lazy to redo) Anyway, Did the 100kms south from Naua Naua Guesthouse (near Etosha) to Outjo and stopped for breakfast, another 100 paved kms west to Khorixas. Thought maybe we'd spend some time touring around the attractions in the area that afternoon, but then mistakenly made the decision to come back up from Uis the next day to see them; trudged onwards south another 150kms on dirt road to Uis. The whole way down kept passing by local Himba women all dressed up in their traditional clothing (which in fact looks quite strange as it's derived form ... read more

Left Walvis Bay shortly after lunch, stopped in Swakopmund briefly knowing we'd be back to the coastal area after our tour through the north, did the 400kms to Windhoek (pronounced "Vindhook"), Namibia's capital city, arriving shortly after dark. Windhoek is likely the nicest, cleanest, safest capital city we've been to, possibly on the trip. Surrounded by mountainous, scrubby desert, only around 250,000 people, plenty of good shopping and restaurants... all very much like home, really. Jen and I tend to be pretty bad at planning ahead and therefore booking ahead (we haven't really needed to on the trip, and is almost impossible to do on a trip like this anyway), and so ended up having to stay in 3 different rooms at 2 different places because we kept getting booted out! First night found some sushi, ... read more