Our trip started in Windhoek the capital of Namibia, which we reached via the British Airways flight to Johannesburg, followed by a short South African Airways connection to Windhoek. Leon, our guide for the next 3 weeks, met us at the airport and took us to the Arebbusch Travel Lodge, where we stayed for one night before beginning the tour proper.
The next day we travelled through the Komas Hochland Mountains and the Spreetshoogte Pass on our way to the Hoodia Desert Lodge in Sossusvlei. The pass provided spectacular views across the Namib Desert.
Passing through the desert we made a number of stops to do some birding, with highlights being the southern African specialities of Great Rufous Sparrow, Lark-like Bunting, Bokmakierie and the slightly more well-distributed Familiar Chat.
We spent two nights at the Hoodia Desert Lodge, which was very comfortable accommodation in the middle of the Namib Desert that also had excellent food and facilities. We stayed in a very nice rondavel a couple of hundred metres from the main lodge building, with the walk between the two buildings affording us amazing views of the stars in conditions of very little light pollution. On our second night at the lodge we were taken to an escarpment to see the sunset and have a ‘sundowner’.
During our full day in the Namib Desert (3 August) we visited the spectacular Namib-Naukluft National Park, famous for its sand dunes and ancient dead trees preserved in the dry atmosphere. On the drive into the park we saw a range of birds, mammals and snakes, with a major target being the Dune Lark, which is endemic to a tiny part of Southwest Africa.
One of the highlights of the day was visiting the remarkable site known as Deadvlei, which is a clay pan containing a number of dead camelthorn trees and surrounded by sand dunes. The site used to be an oasis but the river that fed the area changed course and the trees died, and were then preserved in the very dry atmosphere.
