November 2018.
Hi, it’s been a while since my last post….here’s why.
Before I left Montreal in May 2018, my family and I decided it would be nice to get together for a family trip in Africa, starting in Cape Town, where my mom and sister would come join me, we’d then fly to Namibia to meet my dad where we would then drive to Botswana and Zambia. My sister and mom flew back home from Zambia after 18 days and I continued with my dad to Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa.
I will eventually have another post up about Cape Town and Western Cape.
The complete album for this trip is here.
This is the approximate route (Google is missing a lot of roads in the area) we drove in that month starting in Windhoek, Namibia. More then 5000km.
On the way to Sossusvlei, we came across the Tropic of Capricorn, always have to stop to take a picture when you cross this:
Then we stopped in Solitaire, this is juste a gas/food stop area with old cars exposed as art:
This is an areal view of Oasis Camping in Sesriem, it’s right by the parks gate:
Some fun with the clear sky in the region:
The next morning we drove into Sossuvlei straight to Deadvlei, this is where you can see the petrified trees:
On the way back we stopped at the dunes, I am not sure which dunes these are anymore, I think this one is Dune 40:
Friend:
Time to eat, and sleep:
The next day we drove up to Swakopmund, we had a tour booked to visit the Sandwich Harbour from Walvis Bay. Here’s a picture of the red sand of Swakopmund beaches:
Before our tour, we drove to “salt works” where you can see amazing man made ponds for salt extraction, the salt evaporation ponds get pink due to a bacteria, looks pretty nice from the ground but the effect is just spectacular from the drone:
There’s also many flamingos around there:
A little later during the day we did the tour, which is about 5 hours around the Sandwich Harbour, here’s some shots of it, the Land Rover wasn’t our ride but it was photogenic :
Here’s a break form the usual program to ask people to please stop throwing shit in the ocean… here’s the consequence of a fish net abandoned in the sea, Close up here. A little gore :
Ok let’s keep going… lots, and lots of sand on this coast:
Ostrich came out of nowhere running down the dunes:
Our driver, the Cowboy of Swakopmund, Andre, who went out to save this guy that was self driving with us and got stuck:
Crazy dunes to drive in, wish I was driving:
Stopped for lunch and had a little visitor, actually there was 3 of them, jackals:
The next day we drove up to Cape Cross, the seal reserve, stopped on the way there at “The Zeila” boat wreck:
Went on to visit our funny friends at the seal reserve:
Mood….
The only baby I saw, it’s not the right time of the year for babies:
We then continued to our camping site, not before getting two flat tires on our truck, the road was very rocky, the camping was close to Palmwag, the next day we visited the Palmwag concession where you are suppose to see game but we didn’t see a thing, had some fun at the camping site with the drone and astrophotography :
We then left the area and drove to a Cheetah farm, they have wild Cheetahs in a large area and you can go drive around and watch them as they get their daily food ration, there was also some cubs separated from the group, which were very curious:
The next day we went to Etosha National Park, about 30 minutes in we were greeted by an amazing scene, 2 huge elephants, they are the biggest species in the world, with them you could see zebra, impala, gnu, ostrich, oryx and even a lioness walked by at some point, there was hundreds of animal, very impressive sight:
The secretary bird:
We saw many animals at the park, mainly at the waterhole of the camping site, where I didn’t take pictures, it’s not very photogenic out there but very nice experiences nonetheless.
We then went north to Divundu, on the way there we stopped in a village to give stuff my sister and mother brought from Canada and other things from the local store, this kid was ready to be a model:
Happy kid rocking my old Habs hat:
We stayed in Divindu and took a little evening cruise where we saw some hippos:
About 100 meters away from those hippos, kids playing in the water… not a care in the world:
This looks like a landscape from Canada but it’s really in the northern part of Namibia:
We drove around Bwabwata National Park in Divundu but we didn’t see much, we then went on to Kasane in Botswana, the lodge we stayed at had a waterhole which attracted many animals, mostly elephants:
Went for a game drive at the Chobe National Park in the morning, we came across two lazy lions, here’s one:
We then went to Livingstone, Zambia where we visited Victoria Falls, I didn’t bring my camera, sorry, after 2 days out there, my sister and mother left for Canada, my dad and I went back to Kasane, Botswana and after a day off we decided to drive to Zimbabwe, we wanted to visit the Hwange National Park for some days.
The next day we left, cross the border, drove to the park, we got in from the north entrance, it looked very sketchy and abandoned. The prices were also very high for a national park. We kept driving, saw some elephants but not much else, the elephants in that area have huge tusks, the one on the picture below was average compared to some we saw:
The roads were horrible in the park, we drove from the north entrance to the south entrance, about 80km of abandoned tar road, it was horrible, we got to the south gate and camping was very overpriced, we camped outside the park in a private camping. We were very disappointed with the park. We decided to leave the next day and go back to Botswana to visit Kubu Island and Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
We drove to Bulawayo, then Francistown, then Nata, two days after leaving Zimbabwe, we started driving to Kubu Island, what happened next wasn’t scheduled… we basically got stuck for 2 days in the pan, click here for the full story, it’s a long one… here’s a drone picture to get you curious:
After that crazy ordeal, we went to Maun, we needed new tires, it was Sunday, everything was closed, on Monday we had the tires changed and drove down to Central Kalahari. We didn’t have anything booked and that park can get busy, we were lucky enough to get a camping site, they call it a camping site but it’s basically just a place where they removed some trees, there’s no water, no bathroom. nothing, just nature.
It looked like all the animals left the park, here’s some of the ones we saw:
Even the giraffe was bored:
We decided to leave the park and go visit Khama Rhino Sanctuary, we saw many rhinos and others:
After that it was time to drive in the direction of Johannesburg where we had to return the truck and fly back to our respective destinations, we stopped in Sun City and visited Pilanesberg National Park where we didn’t see much, again:
Many more rhinos:
A gnu that wasn’t scared of us, unusual:
And just before leaving we had a very close encounter with two elephants:
What a month, for sure I was hoping for more wildlife but you can never know what will happen with wildlife.
I am now back in Cape Town and preparing for my next adventure… no idea what that will be!