M Because once they have staked out their place by the pool no one else is getting look in! The following short series of photos is of a family of lions (mother, father and two younger daughters) enjoying a lazy afternoon by the pool (man-made watering hole) before dad decides to take a stroll. In typical lion style he totally ignores the tourists cars and walks straight between the them. As usual they also totally ignore the other animals who themselves want to take a drink. You can see the wildebeest, antelope and zebra looking on in the background just waiting for the lions to get bored and leave th ewatering hole so that they can get a look in. As every british tourist knows - you need to put your towels on the loungers by ... read more

M – To date our camps have been pretty cozy affairs with toilet blocks and showers and hot running water etc. It all changed at Spitzkoppe. The local camp site there is run by the locals with the money going to the villagers. Once inside the camp you are virtually left to your own devices. We like to put money back into the local economy whenever possible so we headed into the bush to find the site. Unfortunately we arrived a little late in the day (a lesson learned). Although we were just in time to catch a great sunset we were not early enough to bag one of the better pitches amongst the sandstone rocks. After about 30 minutes riding round and round the rocks looking for something we settled on what looked to be ... read more

M – If there is one image that dominates tourism images for Namibia is the Red Dunes at Sossusvlei. There are actually huge sand dunes that stretch up most of the coastline of Namibia but only at Sossusvlei are the sands bright red. It is believed that these sands were deposited here 5 million years ago having been washed down to the sea in the Orange River from the Kalahari. The highest dunes are some 200m high. Guess what, too get the best view you need to climb them! Climbing in sand is exactly what you would think it would be – hard work! Nevertheless we both climbed to the top of Dune45. Dune 45 is gets its name because it is 45km inside the park. The park stretches a further 100+km to the coast. The ... read more

M – Back again. Getting on line in Namibia when you are camping, although possible, doesn’t really fit with the flow of the whole thing. As such I have been ‘off-air’ for longer than normal. To catch up the next few blogs will be short and hopefully sweet with the ‘story’ told by the photos. Day 1 - Rather than risk delays at the border and arrive at night at our first camp site we played safe and drove 750km North from Cape town to the Orange River which forms the boundary for the South Africa and Namibian from the West Coast inland several hundred km. The landscape began to change into desert a couple of hundred km from the border. We were told to keep a look out for the desert flowers. We couldn’t miss ... read more

M – The last few days have been real hard – NOT. Our friends truck that we are using for our overland trip through Namibia and Botswana has been delayed in the garage so we had a few days to kill. We decided to hit some of South Africa’s wineries. The main wine region is only about an hour from the center of Cape Town although there seem to be wineries scattered all over the Western Cape. We stayed in probably the largest wine town, Stellenbosch, but also visited probably the next largest towns Paarl and Franschhoek. Each about 30kms away from Stellenbosch. Franschhoek is the prettiest as it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. Paarl is know for being the birth place of the Afrikanas language and holds the jail that Nelson Mandela was ... read more