Norway’s West Coast
After leaving Alesund we took the marine highway up the West coast of Norway. This route involves a lot of ferries but fortunately the less used ones are free as they are subsidised by the government.
We were heading up towards the Lofoten islands, planning to drive onto them from the mainland rather than take the ferry from Bodo, which we had heard could involve a substantial wait.
However, first we needed to do some laundry so we headed to a pretty lakeside campsite on the next peninsula along from where we were. The weather wasn’t great so no swimming or kayaking but we enjoyed a day off and a managed to get our clothes washed and dried.
A short drive from the campsite is the trail head for the Troll Church or TrollKirke hike. This is a great hike which heads up into the hills. At the end of the hike are three caves that can be entered – although you need to bring a light.
The first cave is the biggest. Here a long narrow tunnel with a small river leads through into a large chamber which is open to the sky and within which, a waterfall plunges down from the cave above.
The exit from this cave is a climb up just before the chamber and requires a little climbing experience.
Once out you can enter the second cave from which the waterfall comes. This is much smaller and has another smaller waterfall inside it.
These two caves are the main ones that people visit however there is another one up above. A five minute hike takes you to a plateau above and after a bit of searching you can find a small hole down into the ground. This is the entrance to the third cave which has a small underground river in it. The main passage is around 20m long but gets lower and lower as you progress – I stopped before I was crawling in the water!
This was a great fun hike with something a bit different at the end.
Our next stop was at what is considered to be one of the most scenic drives in Norway. The Atlantic Ocean Road is a 5 mile long series of islands connected by bridges and causeways to create a road across the mouth of a fjord.
We didn’t do the drive in the best of weather but it is over very quickly and there are definitely much better drives in Norway.
Shortly after the Atlantic Ocean Road we stopped off at Kristiansund which is a port city. There is an interesting historic port area, which has been kept exactly as it was, including a big workshop that still has a forge and all the original tools. This was fascinating to wander around.
Next on the trip was the city of Trondheim, the third biggest city in Norway but with a population of less than 250,000.
We found a great place to stay just outside the city by a lake that was popular with runners and walkers. While we were staying there we had a bit of drama as a large bin caught fire. The fire brigade arrived and promptly put it out. The full breathing apparatus seemed a bit overkill !
The city of Trondheim itself is quite compact and is easy to see in a day. We visited the Kristiansten fortress and museum, which sits on a hill overlooking the old town with its famous Old Town Bridge that crosses the Nidelva river.
We also enjoyed a wander around the very impressive (inside and out) Nidaros Cathedral. The cathedral was built on the burial site of King Olav II who died in 1030 and is the typical location for the inauguration of Norwegian Monarchs.
The highlight of our visit however, was a tour of Stiftsgarden, the official royal residence in Trondheim. The palace was built in the 1770’s and was the main setting for the celebrations of the coronations of Norwegian monarchs up until 1906.
As royal palaces go it was definitely less ornate and lavish than most that we have seen in Europe and reflects the relative poverty of the Norwegians in this time as the country had been hit extremely hard by the black death and took centuries to recover.
After Trondheim we carried on heading North to the island of Torget which is connected to the mainland by a bridge. This is the home of The Torghatten granite dome which is well known for the big natural tunnel that goes through it. There is a short hike up into the tunnel and down the other side. The tunnel itself is 35 metres high and 160 metres long.
Torget was a stepping stone for us as we caught the ferry from here across to the island of Vega. This is a beautiful and sparsely populated island.
We drove round the island stopping first at the visitor centre, whose boardwalk was being guarded by several very large horned goats that we edged ourselves nervously past, before then visiting the Vega Stairs (vegatrappa).
This is a staircase of almost 2000 steps to the top of Ravnfloget, offering beautiful views across the Northern coast of the island and across to the mountain island of Sola.
We managed to find a lovely spot for the night on the Western shore of the island before taking another ferry heading North to the island of Tjotta and back onto the road network, before very quickly needing another ferry taking us to Alsta, where the seven sisters mountain range stretches across the length of the island.
The hike up the mountain was thwarted by the weather and I eventually stopped before reaching the top as it was shrouded in thick cloud.
From Alsta we carried on moving North via bridges and ferries. There were no real highlights to the route but it was a very scenic drive and we stopped at some lovely spots for the night. The overcrowded south seemed a long way away as this part of the country is definitely not as heavily touristed. Most people stick to the main highway and shoot North to get to the Lofoten islands.
There was one real highlight though as we got closer to Bodo which is the Svartisen glacier. This is visible from the highway although to get to the trail head you have to get a ferry 15 minutes across a fjord and then to avoid a 4km boring walk you can hire a bike to the start of the hiking trail to the glacier.
From here it is a hike (pretty steep in parts) up the terminal moraine of the glacier. The trail is well marked and takes you to a viewpoint about 400m from the glacier. From here it’s possible to strike across the rocky terrain and make it right to the front of the glacier.
The views from the top of the moraine are great and it’s certainly a more impressive glacier than those that we had visited further south.
As you drive North from the glacier a long tunnel takes you through the mountainside and to a different fjord. From here there are roads that run up into the mountains and to two big dammed mountain lakes – the Holmvasdammen and the Storglomvassdammen.
We visited both – travelling through a 1km, single lane pitch black rough hewn tunnel that was something of an adventure. We couldn’t quite drive to either as despite being July there was still thick snow lying on the road – but we could get within walking distance.
The views across the snowy frozen landscape were great and well worth the challenging drive to get up here.
Back down the mountain there was no sign of the snow and beautiful wild orchids grew around a lake where we spent the night.
After exploring the mountains we headed back to the coast and carried on northward coming to the bridge over the Saltstraumen which is a narrow strait with one of the strongest tidal flows in the world reaching up to 20 knots. We timed our visit with an incoming tide and although you can definitely see the strength of the current from the bridge above, it’s not the most spectacular show.
This was our last stop before reaching Bodo, the gateway to the Lofoten islands. We drove through the town and passed the lengthy ferry queue, as most people take a ferry from here to the end of the Lofotens islands. However, we had decided to drive around to get to the Lofotens so we still had a little way to go.
First up though we headed to the pretty island of Kjerringjoy, a popular weekend jaunt for the locals but not many tourists. There wasn’t much to see on the island except lots of lovely coastline and one of our favourite park-ups of this trip – a large grassy area on a beach with a pair of nesting sea eagles on the cliff opposite us. Finally the sun blessed us with its appearance and we enjoyed our first BBQ of the trip after over one month on the road.
Fjords, snowy landscapes and glaciers
After parking in one of the big lots right next to Bergen airport we boarded our plane for Palma, Majorca via Oslo. It was all very straightforward flying with Norwegian Air and the views over the Fjords were spectacular.
On landing in Majorca it felt like summer had finally arrived as we moved from a cold and grey 12 degrees in Bergen to 30 degrees and blue skies in Majorca. This was a very welcome improvement.
We had a bit of time on our hands before everyone arrived so rather than jump in a taxi, we decided to take the bus instead, to Port de Soller, where we were meeting up with some friends. This proved easy enough and took just over an hour.
After leaving the bus it was only a short walk to the harbour where two of our friends were waiting for us, already happily ensconced in a bar. And that is exactly where we stayed until we were al kicked out at closing time. Two more friends had arrived in the meantime and one or two drinks may have been consumed!
We had a lovely long weekend sailing around the coast back to Palma with this motley crew and with the beautiful weather it really felt like a proper holiday.
Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and waving our friends goodbye, we flew back to Bergen via Oslo. In our absence the weather had not improved and we returned late at night to a very cold and wet Norway.
We found somewhere to park-up for the night and, due to more heavy rain the next day, we skipped visiting Bergen itself and drove until we reached Gudvangen, a beautiful valley with many waterfalls pouring down the sides (this much rainfall has its benefits). It rained continuously for two days so we just hunkered down and caught up on some lost sleep from our weekend away.
There is a popular tourist ferry from here, down a narrow fjord to the small town of Undredal, although we decided to drive there instead. It really is a tiny town with just a small church and a smattering of buildings but it’s very pretty and when we arrived first thing in the morning there was almost no one around.
At the end of the Fjord from here is the town of Flam, which is a very popular tourist stop. It is mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide as a must stop. The reality seemed a little different. It’s a tiny town and when we arrived there was a massive cruise ship moored alongside it, dwarfing the town and on the dock were hundreds of cruise ship passengers. We left pretty sharpish as this really wasn’t what we were looking for.
The obvious way to leave Flam is to go through the Laerdal tunnel which is the longest road tunnel in the world at 24.5 kms. However we decided to take the scenic route via the old road which goes over a pass in the mountains instead.
The first stop – which again is a very popular spot with the cruise ship passengers – is the Stegastein viewpoint, where a modern platform has been built off the side of the mountain to give amazing views of the Fjord below.
Thankfully it isn’t long until you leave the crowds behind. As we climbed further up into the highlands the temperature continued to drop. We had debated staying overnight in the mountains but with a daytime temperature of 3C we weren’t keen on finding out what it would drop down to over night, so we rapidly moved on.
It was mid June by this stage of our trip but we’d yet to see any sign of summer in Norway. There was still plenty of snow in evidence and the lakes were still partially frozen. We don’t know if Summer comes late here or if this year the weather has been particularly bad but despite this, it is an undeniably beautiful landscape.
We took in a few sights as we made our way across the top. There was a very pretty walk across the tundra to a lake and waterfall at Flotane, where we also saw a couple of Norwegian Lemmings scurrying around (no picture though as they were too small and fast for us).
There is also a modern art installation along this route in a man-made cave – a bear on a rubbish heap, which is said to explore man’s impact on nature over time.
After dropping back down to Fjord level we found a nice place (albeit by the side of the road) to spend the night, looking out over the water. This was the first place we had stayed the night in Norway with a lovely view. The park-ups had not been living up to our expectations so far but things definitely improved the further North we went.
Having skipped the Laerdal tunnel to go over the mountains we arrived back down in Laerdal, which is a very pretty historic town. We visited early in the morning before any of the cruise ship passengers managed to make their way there.
Just down the road from Laerdal is the Borgund Stave Church which is the biggest and best preserved of all the stave churches. The entrance fee to the church also includes the museum, which is informative and well worth a look.
Next up we drove over another mountain pass road – The Tindevegen road which then goes into the Sognefjorden scenic road (you can find all of Norway’s scenic routes on the VisitNorway website). This took us across to the little town of Lom and another Stave Church.
We spent the night wild camping near here next to a very loud fast flowing river. The amount of rain we’ve had means that all the rivers are currently raging torrents.
Up early the next morning we drove the absolutely beautiful (and unpronounceable) Gamle Strynefjellsvegen scenic route over another mountain pass. This one was shrouded in cloud but probably the snowiest and most scenic of all the ones that we have done so far.
Once across the mountains where we had been mostly alone and blissfully free of all the crowds, we arrived back in another one of Norway’s heavily touristed areas, where the glaciers sweep down from the ice sheets.
We drove up one of the valleys that has a glacier at its head, the Kjendalbreen glacier. The last few km’s of road are a toll road that gets pretty narrow and a bit rough but you end up in a gravel car park that is only around 400m to the glacier viewpoint.
You can actually walk further along the valley but it gets pretty rough going as you have to walk along the very rocky river bed.
Retracing our steps back through the valley we drove south to the next valley and immediately knew this would be busier as we passed a cruise ship and saw a whole bunch of coaches ferrying passengers up the valley.
There is a big car park at the head of the valley but this glacier – the Briksdalbreen glacier – is a bit of hike, around 2.5km with 200m of ascent.
However, if you don’t want to walk you can take a ‘troll car’ up the road to the glacial lake although it’s a little pricey.
On the hike up you pass a huge waterfall and then eventually arrive at the moraine lake at the foot of the glacier. Unlike the last one, you can’t really get close to this glacier, but you do get some very good views. I actually realised on arriving at the lake that we had been here before when we spent a long weekend in Bergen 15 years ago!
We spent the night in the Briksdalbreen car park and the next morning set off early for the ferry dock at Helleslyt. This ferry is not a normal one that is part of the highway system but is instead a tourist ferry that has seats out on the deck and a commentary. It’s a bit expensive at approximately £80 but we decided to splash out.
The ferry traverses the famous Geirangerfjord which is a very narrow Fjord with lots of waterfalls cascading down the sides. Most famous of which is the seven sisters.
The most interesting parts of the ferry ride were seeing the abandoned farms that were perched on the nearly vertical valley sides. The slopes were so treacherous that their kids used to be tied by rope to the houses when they played to stop them falling into the Fjord. Despite the steep cliffs these farms used to produce potatoes, cabbage and carrots.
Once we got to the end of the ferry ride in Geiranger it was very busy. There were two big cruise ships docked and we immediately left town and joined the slow-moving traffic switch-backing up the mountainside. There is a viewpoint of the fjord on the way but it was so busy we couldn’t park, however the traffic was so bad that I managed to jump out, take some pictures and get back in while Sarah drove slowly past.
The road goes over a mountain pass and fortunately most of the traffic turns back after the viewpoint so it became much quieter. We were heading for a very famous Norwegian road called Trollstigen which switchbacks down from the mountains.
Unfortunately at the time we were there the road was closed as a result of landslides caused by melting snow.
We were however able to drive the 30kms to the viewpoint over Trollstigen, which has a fantastic view of the switchbacks and the valley below towards the town of Andalsnes.
As we drove back along the quiet road we stopped in a big mountain valley for the night. It was our best wild camping spot in Norway so far with amazing views up and down the valley and a huge waterfall across the valley from us. It was a cold but beautiful evening and for perhaps the first time in Norway we were actually alone for the night.
Getting back around to Andalsnes was a bit of a long trek with the pass road closed so we decided to head to Alesund as our a next city stop.
Alesund is a city which is spread out on number of islands at the mouth of Geirangerfjord. It was destroyed by fire in 1904 and when they rebuilt the city after that it was with a consistent Art Nouveau style.
We wandered round the town with no real purpose, although Sarah visited the Art Nouveau Centre, which told the story of the town fire and reconstruction very well via a ‘time-machine’ and film, and the KUBE contemporary art museum while I climbed the 418 steps up the hill overlooking the town to get a view across the islands.
A short drive away, on the outskirts of the town is the Sunnmore museum. This is mainly an outdoor museum with lots of examples of traditional buildings from the history of the region, spanning medieval times up to WW2.
There are also some boat halls which have a range of historic fishing boats used in the region from Viking times up to the 20th century. The most interesting is probably a Viking boat from 780 AD. It’s about 18m long and was found in a marsh which helped to preserve its wooden structure.
Exploring South West Norway
Norway had been a destination that we were keen to get to ever since we started travelling in our Motorhome. We had spent a long weekend there over 10 years ago and knew how beautiful the scenery was but also how brutally expensive eating out is.
There was some socialising to do though before leaving home, my rugby clubs annual dinner. It was a great evening and I enjoyed speaking with Neil Back, from the England 2003 world cup winning side, as well as catching up with lots of friends.
So it was with a slight hangover the next morning that we started our journey to Calais via our usual stopover at the Canterbury Aire, enabling us to get an early morning ferry. We arrived in France early the next day and, as we wanted to make the most of our 90 days in the Schengen zone, we started to make the long drive North towards Denmark, only stopping for some shopping at a French hypermarket on the way.
Our plan was to make it to Hirtshals at the Northern tip of Denmark in just 2 days. This is where the ferry across to Kristiansand in Norway leaves from and is a journey of almost 1,300kms.
Our first stop was in Bremen in Germany where we found a small car park in a lovely wooded area to spend the night and making it to the small town of Hjorring in Denmark where we spent the second night at a lovely park-up right on the beach. The weather wasn’t great (which was to be the norm for the next four weeks), but we still managed to get out for a walk along the beach.
The next morning we were up early to get to the ferry dock in Hirtshals where we boarded the large ferry for the 3 hour trip across to Norway. The ferry was busy (with a vast number of motorhomes in the queue), but we managed to find somewhere to sit in the bar area – not actually open during the morning crossing – and before we knew It we were docking in Norway.
Arrival in Norway is just like arrival at Calais, there are no formalities or checks, you just drive straight off and get on your way.
We had decided to spend our first night at the very popular Lindesnes lighthouse. We knew Norway would be busy with motorhomes but we were still shocked by just how busy it was at the beginning of June, with 40+ motorhomes parked up there for the night.
The car park was a pay spot but it included a ticket to see the lighthouse and museum.
It was a nice spot for a first night in Norway and in the morning I went for a hike around the peninsula and along the coast.
After having a good look around we left here and visited Kvasfossen, one of many waterfalls that we would see in Norway.
Our initial plan was to head up the coast towards Stavenger and we drove round our first of many Norweigan Fjords. This was Jossingfjord where there are two small houses built under a cliff overhang for protection. These houses were built in the early 19th century and were occupied until the 1920’s. They were the houses of poor families who made their living from a mixture of farming, sheep herding and fishing.
We carried on up the coast from here, intending to hike to the infamous Trollpiken Rock, but incessant heavy rain put paid to that plan.
However the weather improved for our visit to Stavenger the next day. Stavenger is a lovely little port city and well worth a stopover. We were also lucky that on the day we visited, a festival was taking place around the harbour, with live bands, demonstrations of smithing and some historic boats that were open to the public.
We dragged ourselves away from the buzzy dockside area to also visit the cathedral with its impressive pulpit, the brightly coloured Fargegaten Street and the very pretty historic old town (Gamle Stavenger), where all the houses are painted a uniform white.
After a rejuvenating but pricey hot chocolate and slice of cake we took a short drive outside of town to visit the Swords in the Stone or Sver I Kjell. This is an impressive sculpture of three enormous swords sunk into the rock overlooking the sea, as a tribute to the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872 where King Harald Fairhair unified Norway.
We couldn’t hand around in this area too long as we needed to be in Bergen in one week for a planned trip. So we kept moving North but of course had to stop to do the well known Preikestolen hike. This is more commonly known as Pulpit Rock and is one of the most famous walks in Norway.
It is also one of the busiest so we found somewhere to spend the night nearby and aimed to get to the car park as soon as it opened – which was 6.30am.
This paid off for us, as not only did it start to get very busy later on but the best of the days weather was early in the day. It’s not a particularly hard hike with Pulpit Rock being only around 4km from the trailhead, but there are three steep climbs totalling about 400m of elevation.
Once you get to the rock itself, in my opinion this gives you the worst view. It is much better to climb up a little further and get the view looking down onto it, although surprisingly very few people seemed to do this.
After leaving Pulpit Rock we soon came upon our first Norwegian ferry of the trip. This was right next door to a giant red chair (I don’t know why).
The ferries are very easy to navigate as you just drive straight on board. We had arranged for an electronic tag before we left home that automatically deals with all Norwegian road tolls and ferries – you even get a 50% discount on ferries. We used Flyt but there are others, collectively known as Autopass.no. The only downside is that they invoice you monthly and you have to pay by bank transfer – which for us means an additional £5 bank charge but you factor this into the savings you make.
The ferries and tolls individually aren’t that expensive but there are a lot of them and they add up. Fortunately as you get further North more of the ferries are free as they don’t get used by enough people per year. Tunnels often come with tolls in Norway but once the building costs are paid off they become free. There are a lot of tunnels in Norway too, from the roughly hewn unlit ones in more remote locations to ones with coloured lights and even roundabouts and junctions inside them. The longest tunnel in Norway stretches for 24.5kms!
Once you begin to get close to Bergen you enter the Fjordland region of Norway. This means lots of rain and while we were there, cold conditions. The temperature was only averaging about 12c each day. A bit chillier than we were expecting for this time of year but luckily we had packed a few jumpers as well as our rain gear.
The rain and the Fjords amount to a lot – and I mean A LOT – of waterfalls. It gets to the point where you ignore all but the most scenic of them, which for me is something new as I love a waterfall.
As we headed North we came to one of the most impressive and biggest waterfalls in Norway – Langfoss. This has a total height of 612m and the road actually runs across the bottom of it before it finally reaches the Fjord. CNN has actually named it one of the top ten waterfalls in the world, although its easy accessibility probably has something to do with that.
A less common sight but definitely worth looking around when you come across one, are the Stave churches. In North Western Europe, there used to be hundreds of Stave churches, which are built using a particular type of timber framing, but nowadays only 28 have survived in Norway and only 1 outside of Norway. They are generally over 800 years old but the pitch used to protect the wood unfortunately makes them very susceptible to fire!
Our first visit to a Stave church was to Roldal, which was built in the 13th century and restored in the early 1900’s. Roldal was one of the most important sites for pilgrimages in Norway.
Before arriving in Bergen, the last major town we went through was Odda. This happens to be the nearest town for another famous hike, the Trolltunga or troll tongue walk. I had wanted to do this but after some research on parking fees and costs of the shuttle buses etc., it was going to cost around £80 to do a hike, which seemed excessive to me, so we decided to pick another hike in the area.
After staying the night in a very small car park which was absolutely packed with motorhomes and vans, we got up early the next morning and drove to the trail head for the Buarbreen Glacier hike. This is an out and back hike of only 5km with a 400m vertical. The hike is a little tricky with some ladders and chains in the latter part but nothing to scary. There aren’t many views on the way there but the payoff is at the end when you see the glacier falling off the ice sheet above. Thankfully, the weather held off and gave me some good views of the ice.
After finishing the hike it was onwards to Bergen, continuing past more epic waterfalls.
The first of which was Latefoss, which thunders down right beside and then underneath the road and secondly, Espelandfossen. They are located very close together with only a tiny parking area but with a little patience and a bit of driving back and forth we eventually got ourselves a spot.
The next waterfall was Steindalsfossen, which is pretty cool as you can walk behind it (also note the old stone bridge leading up to it), and grab yourself a very nice ice-cream from the little on-site café.
And lastly, there was Fossenbratte waterfall. This is a bit of a walk down from the road but if you are a waterfall fan, definitely worth it.
From here, as you approach Bergen, the surroundings start to get more built up but we managed to find a lovely peaceful park-up in the suburbs, on a cute little harbour right next to Bergen Botanical Gardens which are roam around. In fact, this was only a 10 minute drive from the airport so perfect for our flight the next day.
Inbetween Travels
After returning from Africa we had a couple of months in the UK before again heading off overseas, which gave us plenty of time to MOT and Service the Beastlet. Unfortunately it was more pricey than usual this year as the camper is now five years old, which meant it was time to replace the timing belt and water pump. This isn’t one to ignore as a failed timing belt destroys the engine.
Being home is also a great opportunity to catch up with friends and family so we inevitably spend a lot of time socialising and eating and drinking in pubs and restaurants.
The campsite where we stay in Surrey is ideally situated for us while visiting friends and family and, as an added bonus, this Spring, a pair of Geese hatched a large brood of gorgeous fluffy goslings that they were happily parading around the campsite. They looked like something right out of an Easter cartoon !
In addition, there are some beautiful bluebell woods around Surrey so we visited a few, making the most of the unusually warm Spring weather before deciding to spend a few weeks touring Wales.
Sarah, despite being a proud Welsh girl, had never actually been to North Wales so as well as showing me some of her favourite places in South West Wales there would be plenty of new places for her to explore as well.
Our first stop though was to visit friends in Cardiff and after a very boozy, fun weekend we headed West towards the coast. Our plan was to stick to the coast as we headed North and then circle back down South via the East of England.
First stop was one of Sarah’s favourites, the town of Tenby, where we stayed in a nice campsite above the town, about a 15 minute walk to the centre. The main irritant (to us) with touring in the UK is that it is pretty difficult to wild camp and there are very few aires so most of the time you have to stay in campsites which get very busy, especially at weekends. Prices of course vary but on average we were paying between £25-£28 a night (excluding electricity), although note that many of the campsites in Wales also charge extra for using the showers?!!
Tenby can get very crowded in the summer but at this time of year the beaches were quiet despite the unseasonably warm weather and we had a lovely time wandering through the streets sampling the different bakeries and taking in the sights.
Just offshore from Tenby is a small island called Caldey Island which is owned by monks who have a large monastery there. Besides the monastery and church not far from the boat dock, the island is mostly agricultural and it is possible to do some nice walks around the island while enjoying some of their home-made chocolate!
After two days in Tenby (definitely not long enough), we left early the next morning as we had booked a boat trip to Skomer Island to see the Puffins. You have to book way in advance to get a space and even then we couldn’t get a place on the first ferry over. If you are heading there in a motorhome be aware that the road to the boat dock gets very narrow in the last few kilometres but there is parking when you arrive – just hope you don’t meet any oncoming traffic.
The journey over to Skomer only takes 15 minutes and you get dropped off at a small pier at the foot of a cliff. The climb up to the island itself (using steps and a path), only takes a few minutes and you will definitely see your first puffins on the way up as well as Guillemots and Razorbills that are nesting along the cliffs.
Once you have climbed to the top of the steps there is a short talk by one of the islands volunteers about the island and the regulations governing your interaction with the wildlife. The island of Skomer is a nature reserve and is most famous for having the biggest colony of puffins in Southern Britain and indeed one of the biggest in the world.
This year the annual puffin count was around 40,000. Not surprisingly we started seeing puffins straight away and their burrows were dotted all around the path.
Skomer is much more than just Puffins though and the trip to the island that gives you five hours to explore doesn’t feel like nearly long enough. The island has lots of birdlife, including short-eared owls (although we didn’t see any), seals and lots of cute little bunnies scampering about. The walk around the island is around 6.5km and is gorgeous at this time of year with wildflowers carpeting the landscape.
The puffins are of course the highlight and in certain places there are lots of them right next to the path. We saw them coming and going to their shallow burrows but it was still too early in the year for chicks.
It was much trickier to get a good shot of the Razorbills and Guillemots as they were nesting right on the cliff edges.
Before arriving, we were dubious as to how we would fill five hours on a small island but in fact, the time flew by and we found ourselves having to hot-foot it back to the pier for our allotted return boat.
We had planned to stay in a campsite right next to the Skomer boat car park but decided that we would rather do the narrow road out later in the day when all the traffic is going in the same direction, rather than the following morning. So we headed off straight away and ended up spending the night in a very nice campsite called Glan y Mor in St. David’s.
This wasn’t far from the beach and there was a nice clifftop walk to St. Non’s Chapel and well (St. Non was St. David’s mother).
The next day we continued our drive North, first stopping at the Blue Lagoon at Abereiddi – a former quarry right on the coast. I’ve lost count of the number of Blue lagoons that we have visited in various countries !
From here we carried on up the coast to the former industrial port of Porthgain. This tiny pretty inlet has a harbour which used to ship quarried and prepared slate around the country, some from the Blue Lagoon we had just visited. Eventually the slate stopped being shipped and it became a centre for brickmaking but after the 1930’s it was abandoned.
We finished the day at a lovely cliff-top campsite in Mwnt, Cardigan Bay with fantastic views of the coast and the tiny 13th century Holy Cross church. We spent a couple of days relaxing here, enjoying the sunny weather, which we had continued to be blessed with, and visiting the lovely Mwnt beach.
Our next destination was somewhere that Sarah had been wanting to visit for years, Portmeirion.
Portmeirion is famous as the shooting location for the surreal TV series the Prisoner in the 1960’s. However, it was actually built as a folly by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975. It is now run as a hotel and tourist site. It is a weirdly wonderful place that feels more Mediterranean than Welsh and I don’t think there is anything else like it in the world.
There is actually a motorhome aire on-site (with excellent facilities) so you can stay overnight in a camper. Just like a hotel guest, this gives you access to the site once all the tourists have gone home both in the evening and before they arrive in the morning as well as use of the heated outdoor pool and beach towels. With your entrance included it is actually pretty good value and we had a great time wandering around.
From Portmeirion we headed to Porthdinllaen on the Lynn Peninsula where we of course had to visit the famous Ty Coch pub which sits right on the beach in a pretty little cove just a short walk across a golf course from our campsite. We enjoyed a few beers sitting on the wall outside the pub with our feet dangling over the sand, watching the local fishermen land and tow away their fishing boats across the beach.
This area also had a really nice coastal walk that goes out to a coastal watch station and then along the beach to the village of Morfa Nefyn and then back to the campsite at Porthdinllaen.
While Sarah had always wanted to visit Portmeirion I had always wanted to see Caernarfon Castle and this was our next stop. It’s a big castle and takes a couple of hours to explore with interesting exhibits and numerous towers to climb to get different perspectives on it. This 11th century castle is a UNESCO World Heritage site and was used for the investiture of the Princes of Wales in 1911 and 1969.
Next up on our Welsh tour was the island of Anglesey where we visited Plas Nedwydd House, most famously the home of the 2nd Earl of Uxbridge who was a hero of the battle of Waterloo as second in command to the Duke of Wellington. He actually lost a leg at the end of the battle after leading a cavalry charge. He was fitted with an artificial leg and they became known as Anglesey legs after his other title of Marquess of Anglesey. The house is quite grand and the gardens are lovely – well worth a visit if in the area.
While on Anglesey we also visited Beaumaris Castle which was designed as a very grand castle indeed but never actually finished as rebellions in Scotland took money away from the budget to build it in the 1320’s as King Edward I switched his attention to Scotland.
Unfortunately we were running out of time, so that was it for us on Anglesey but we had seen enough to know that it was somewhere we would come back to explore in the future.
Our last stop in Wales was the pretty town of Conwy, which is dominated by a huge castle that used to have the main road run straight through it. The road has been moved – and is now a much bigger highway.
The castle was again one of King Edward I castles and was built very quickly, in just 4 years, in 1283. The castle is split into two parts with the inner royal section having been a luxurious living and entertainment space. It’s another great castle to visit with fantastic views.
The town of Conwy itself is a waterfront town with a tidal harbour wall. When the tide is out it looks as though the boats resting on the sand will never be able to sail away but the tide comes in fast and suddenly they are floating high against the wall.
We took a walk through the town, stopping off for some fish and chips and visiting the smallest house in Britain. It was absolutely tiny and bizarrely the last owner had been 6’ 4” – how he fit I don’t know.
After visiting the town we drove the short distance to Bodnant Gardens which are well worth a visit especially if you are National Trust members. There are lots of different gardens, woods and meadows to explore not to mention the Instagrammers favourite, the Laburnum Arch.
And with that, we had come to the end of our quick tour around the coast of Wales, feeling incredibly lucky that the sun had stuck with us throughout the trip. Needless to say we will definitely be back as there is so much more to see.
We weren’t due to go home yet though, as we were heading to North East England to visit our friends the Roverlanders, who we had met in Serbia last year. They are completely refurbishing their Landrover ambulance conversion, so they’ve rented a house to be their base for doing this.
On the way over to them we stopped off at Chester. The town was pretty disrupted as there was a half-marathon taking place so much of it was roped off. We did however manage to get in and see the very impressive cathedral and have the best Bakewell tart EVER at a lovely little cafe called Huxley’s next to the clocktower.
After spending a couple of days with Donna and Jon, The Roverlanders, where we visited Whitby together and enjoyed some delicious fish and chips we headed back South and our little UK excursion was over.
With just a week in London we were then heading off for our summer trip to Norway.
Kenya
Kenya is the first destination of our trip and the first time in years, that we had put ourselves in the hands of a tour company. So when we arrived at the airport we actually had a pickup to take us to our hotel in the Nairobi city centre.
The tour company didn’t get off to a great start as despite knowing when we were arriving the pickup was an hour late. Anyway, in the meantime we managed to secure the usual essentials easily enough at the airport – a sim card and local currency.
We arrived at our hotel which was a bit unusual as the entrance was through a small shopping mall but the security guard at the entrance was very helpful and pointed us to a lift which went up to the hotel.
We had a day to spare before our tour began so we did a little exploring around our hotel and found a restaurant for lunch but we weren’t up for much as we knew the tour was starting early the next day and would be very full on.
In the morning we were picked up by Wilson, our Masaai guide for the week. The vehicle for the trip was a Toyota Landcruiser with three rows of seats and a raising safari roof.
We visited a few more hotels to pick up other guests for the trip and were surprised that the Landcruiser would be completely full.
Once we had collected everyone we started to drive out of Nairobi and head towards the Masai Mara which is about a four hour drive from the city. We stopped off at a viewpoint to see the Great Rift Valley but visibility wasn’t great – we still managed to get a sense of the size of the valley but it was very hazy.
After this it was back in the car and the last hour of the drive got very bumpy as we headed down an unpaved road towards the Southern gate of the Masai Mara. We travelled at a fair pace and after the biggest bumps a musical “Sorry” would ring out from Wilson in the front although the pace didn’t slow.
Eventually we reached the Masai Camp hotel, which was only a few hundred metres from the edge of the Masai Mara. After being welcomed by the Masai staff in their colourful traditional dress we dumped our bags in our tents (despite being tents they still had an ensuite bathroom) and headed back to the Landcruiser for an evening game drive.
It didn’t take long once we were in the park to start seeing wildlife. The first area we went through had the grass cut back and we had great sightings of eland, buffalo, warthog and of course impala.
This abundance of wildlife was to be a theme of the Masai Mara and we would seldom go long without a new sighting.
The highlight of this evening game drive was a pride of lions atop a big mound of dirt, which was giving them a panoramic view of the surrounding area, including a delicious looking herd of buffalo! When we first arrived at the lion sighting we couldn’t get very close as the road was closed, so we were, along with a few other vehicles, kept at a distance. However when we returned almost an hour later the road block had been lifted and a group of park rangers were monitoring access to the area.
This was the start of witnessing the slightly strange approach to off-roading that exists in the Masai Mara, which is unlike anything we have seen in any other game park. Off-roading is not allowed – unless there is a predator sighting, then no more than five vehicles can go off-road to see the animals before having to return to the road. There are big fines for breaking these rules and we saw lots of Rangers who were doing their best to manage the process but when there is no ranger vehicle in sight it’s a bit of a free for all as the guides attempt to get the best viewings for their guests.
The off-roading rule is not the only way the rules get broken in the Masai Mara. We spent some time with the pride of lions and our guide agreed to let us stay to watch the sunsetting behind them, but we were a fair distance from the exit which meant we wouldn’t make it back before the park gates closed at 6.30pm. No problem though, we eventually left the park by a back road around 7.30pm in almost total darkness. Hakuna Matata, as they like to say in this part of the world.
We went back to the Masai camp for an evening meal and learnt quickly that they were feeders. It was a three course meal and there was loads of food. If you didn’t clear your plate then they would jokingly push you to eat more. The food was great though, very tasty. After leaving the main building at night to go back to our tent we were escorted by rangers as predators have been known to wander into the camp but to our relief, the only wildlife we saw on the way back to our tent was a small herd of zebra grazing.
The next morning we were up early as we had a full day game drive in the Masai Mara on the plan. This was to prove a long day as we started early and didn’t get back to the hotel until gone dark again.
This was by far the best single days game drive that we have ever done. We had multiple lion sightings and even saw our first full grown male lion. We saw a cheetah and a couple of leopards as well as the full gamut of prey animals, not forgetting of course the elephants. The only thing we didn’t see was a rhino which are very elusive in this park.
The day was spent mostly in the Landcruiser but we did have a couple of opportunities to stretch our legs. First was at a rest stop where we learnt that during the busy period (the wildebeest migration) there can be upwards of 100 vehicles here. Fortunately there were only about 10 when we were there as well as a troop of baboons posing for us around the toilet block.
The second stop was a lunch stop where we had a picnic on a bluff overlooking the Mara river with the sounds of hippos to keep us company.
The longest stop of the day was actually when we crossed over into Tanzania (no border post or passport) to go on a short hike with a Serengeti ranger down the Mara river to see crocodiles and hippos. We were at the main crossing spot for wildebeest during the migration that has been made famous by so many wildlife documentaries. Apparently during the migration this area gets incredibly busy, with the bridge over the river being standing room only there are so many tourists.
Our day in the Masai Mara was amazing and we again exited the park well after sunset but it did let us get some pictures of animals with the sun setting behind them.
After another night in the masai camp we were up early again but this time because we were heading to a masai village for a tour. This was actually the village that our guide Wilson grew up in and his father was the chief. However given that his father had 10 wives and 48 children this didn’t make him that special !
The Masai men from the village greeted us with a traditional dance which was accompanied by a droning song. One of them was wearing a hat made from a lions head which one of the elders of the village had killed as a boy. The Masai boys used to be sent out as teenagers to kill a lion as a test of manhood but the government no longer allow this practice as lions are endangered.
The dance ended with us joining in with the Masai jumping competition. They can jump very high and this is used to impress the women as a precursor to a marriage match. Unsurprisingly our jumps were nowhere near as impressive.
In the village itself they gave us a demonstration of how to light a fire the traditional way using a block of wood and a stick and then we went with one of Wilson’s relatives to see his house.
The last bit of the visit was to be serenaded by the women – who were a lot more tuneful than the men, and provided with the opportunity to purchase some of their wares.
After our Masai visit we had a long drive ahead which was to take the rest of the day as we headed towards Lake Naivasha. The first couple of hours was pretty bumpy as we drove through a conservancy next to the Masai Mara. This did mean however that we saw some game although we weren’t allowed to stop. Eventually we reached a paved road but we still had a long drive until we finally reached our hotel near to Lake Naivasha national park. This was a proper hotel that even had a swimming pool.
The next morning we were up before light as we were going to hit the park at first light. The park was misty in the morning light but it wasn’t long before we started to spot wildlife along the lake shore. Lots of waterbucks make their homes here.
However the real reason we were here was to see Rhinos – the only one of the big five we hadn’t yet seen. It wasn’t too long until we came upon a mother and calf rhino right next to the road – which was fortunate because there is no off roading here.
These were white rhino which are less shy than the black rhino and tend to live more socially. We also saw a group of three a bit later who were just lying down together.
The other wildlife that we saw in abundance in Lake Naivasha were birds, including pelicans and flamingos.
We only spent a few hours in the park but really enjoyed it, the scenery was beautiful and the mix of forest and lake was unlike any other park we had visited.
Next stop was at Lake Nakuru which was only about an hour or so drive from Lake Naivashsa. Here we were going on a boat ride across the lake. The boat was a small open boat which meant that we were really close to the water.
The absolute highlight of Lake Nakuru were the Fish Eagles of which there were many. Our guide took some small fish with him and threw these out into the water so that the fish eagles could sweep down and pluck them from the water. This was amazing to watch and they really are magnificent birds.
We also saw several hippos basking on the bank of the lake which was the first time we had seen a group together on land. The lake was full of birdlife and we even saw some waterbuck and impala on an island in the middle of the lake.
It was a fun cruise but before long we were back on the Landcruiser on our way back through Nairobi to the south of the country, where we were spending the next couple of days in the shadow of Kilimanjaro at Amboseli National Park.
Our accommodation in Amboseli was a tented camp again but our tent was huge with three double beds in it and of course an ensuite bathroom out the back. Despite this, it was probably the worst of the accommodation that we had (there wasn’t always water for showering and when there was it generally wasn’t hot and unfortunately the buffet food served here was not good, especially when compared to the Masai camp), however it was fine, we’ve stayed in much worse and we weren’t here for the accommodation!
After an early night I was up very early for a guided hike on the fringes of the park. We didn’t see too much wildlife but the views of Kilimanjaro were spectacular and it was great to be out walking for a change.
After breakfast back at the camp it was time for an all day game drive again. Amboseli is know for its abundance of elephants and we were definitely not disappointed. We saw hundreds of them from big groups of up to 20, down to solitary ones.
The goal of the day was to get a picture of elephants in front of Kilimanjaro. Throughout the day the mountain kept appearing and disappearing as the weather changed and in the early afternoon the weather really came in with some torrential rain.
We narrowly avoided being soaked in the rain as this was during our lunch stop where we walked to a viewpoint on top of a small hill. Fortunately the rain came down as we reached the top and we could huddle in the small shelter at the top to eat our lunch.
The views were great, there were loads of little birds and you could see multiple groups of elephants from the top so it was a good lunch stop. Once the rain stopped we made our way back to the car.
Amboseli did not disappoint and it’s not just about elephants, we saw several lions, giraffe, a couple of cheetah and lots of hyena. Hyena had been quite elusive for us up to this point but they seemed to be everywhere in Amboseli. Everytime we stopped to look at something you would look around and spot a hyena somewhere in the landscape!
As it came closer to sunset and leaving the park the skies seemed to clear and Kilimanjaro came out and we managed to get some pictures of elephants in front of it as well as giraffes!
Overall it was a good day of game viewing but there was more to come in the morning as despite it being our last day of the trip we would game drive through the length of the park before beginning the drive back to Nairobi.
We had a lovely morning game drive with more hyenas, lions and of course elephants. But all good things have to end and we had to drive back to Nairobi.
This was the end of what had been an excellent tour with a fantastic guide and it was great to not have to organise things ourselves for a while. The group of people on our trip were also great and it was really fun to be with other people for a change.
We had a couple of spare days in Nairobi before we were flying back to the UK and as a treat had arranged our last night in a nice hotel for a bit of luxury before the overnight flight home.
We didn’t do much in Nairobi, quite frankly we were pretty tired after a really full on week but we did go to the Giraffe Centre, which is a very famous Nairobi landmark. The giraffe here are Rothschild Giraffe which are endangered but they have a breeding programme which aims to release the young giraffe back into the wild.
There is a feeding platform at giraffe head height where you can hand feed the giraffe, which is a lot of fun. They have very long black tongues which snake out to take the food from your hands. They were very gentle but you do need to be a bit careful as they can headbutt you if they aren’t getting the food quickly enough.
This was a fitting end to our amazing Africa trip. After three months in Africa we definitely felt that there was so much more to see and that we would need to come back. We were very pleased to discover that budget travel and safaris in Africa are possible and that you don’t need to spend a fortune to explore this amazing place.
Zanzibar
We flew to Dar Es Salaam with Air Malawi via Blantyre (in Malawi). To our surprise the flight was actually pretty good and we even got a half decent meal on board.
After arriving in Dar Es Salaam we bought a couple of sim cards in a shop just outside arrivals and, after some negotiation with a number of taxi drivers, jumped in a taxi to our hotel in the centre of town.
Our flight landed in the evening and by the time we made it to our hotel it was quite late so all we wanted to do was hit the hay.
We didn’t plan on staying in Dar, it’s a big, dusty, bustling city and our thoughts were running more towards relaxing on a sun lounger with a cocktail in hand, so the next morning we headed straight for the port and the Zanzibar ferry.
We hopped in a Tuk Tuk and before long we were surrounded by hoards of people and the absolute chaos that is the ferry terminal. Luckily we had pre-booked our ferry tickets online which made life a little easier but the process of getting through to the waiting area is complete carnage and if we had to do it all again today I would be none the wiser. On the plus side, everybody who worked there was very helpful and ushered us from one desk to another to get us through, and somehow, despite having only bought standard class tickets we ended up in the first class waiting area comfortably seated under a very welcome large fan.
The ferry itself was an oasis of calm with comfortable, spacious seating (in standard class) and, despite some initial swell upon exiting the sheltered harbour, the rest of the two-hour journey passed smoothly.
Arrival at Zanzibar was less chaotic than the Dar Es Salaam end but the terminal is still very busy. When you arrive you actually have to go to immigration and get a passport stamp for entry into Zanzibar, even though it is part of Tanzania.
There is also a real stinger of a tax for entry to the island in the guise of mandatory travel insurance for USD 44 per person which came into force from 1 October 2024. The fact that you already have travel insurance is irrelevant and what you get is pretty poor. I am fairly sure that it wouldn’t actually be any use if we tried to claim against it and given that we already had insurance this just felt like a tax dressed up as insurance. Anyway, that said, you can buy it online while on the ferry or at the terminal and you have to show it before you can get the entry stamp in your passport.
Once through immigration you are free to exit the port which is right on the doorstep of Stone Town.
Stone Town is the historic heart of Zanzibar city. Established in the 16th century by the Portuguese, it wasn’t until the 19th century, when the Omani Sultanate moved their capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, that the city became the centre of a vast trading network. Trade in cloves, ivory and slaves were central to its success. At one stage Zanzibar produced 90% of the world’s cloves.
It was in the 19th century when the distinctive coral stone buildings, palaces and mosques were built with a fusion of Swahili, Arab, Persian, Indian and European styles.
We were staying in Stone Town for a couple of days to absorb some of this incredible culture before moving onto the beach so we side-stepped all the taxis and hawkers outside the port and navigated our way through the narrow alleyways to our hotel.
The hotel room was fairly basic, which we kind of expect on our budget but there was a lovely pool and restaurant in a shady courtyard, that felt like a world away from the hustle and bustle of the town.
After our first night in the hotel we did have to change rooms as we woke in the morning to a smoke-filled room. After quickly throwing some clothes on we realised that the air conditioning unit was on the verge of combusting so after turning it off we headed to reception to let them know there was a slight problem!
Stone Town, so called because the buildings are made of stone, is a labyrinth of small alleys and roads. There are no cars in the alleys but you have to be alert to the odd cart, moped, motorbike or bicycle. The stand out feature of Stone Town are the very cool, ancient, carved wooden doors.
The intricately carved doors were a symbol of wealth. The greater the wealth and social standing of the owner of the building the more intricately carved and larger the door.
On our first night in Stone Town we visited the historic Livingstone hotel for sundowner drinks. Unfortunately as it was Ramadan we weren’t allowed out onto the beachfront dining area until the sun had set but we could watch the sunset from the 1st floor terrace. Once the sun was safely down the area came alive and we had dinner with our feet in the sand on the beach.
We had organised to go on a spice tour to a farm a 30 minute drive from Stone Town. The traffic in Zanzibar Town is horrendous and despite seeing some new roads in the process of being constructed the growing population has led to virtual gridlock.
The tour itself was very interesting with a large array of spices and fruits being grown on the farm. It is always fascinating to see how things actually look on the tree (or bush in the case of pineapples) when we are so used to seeing them packaged up in the supermarket.
A young lad who helped guide us through the farm spent his time making various things for us including crowns for both of us and glasses, a bag and a combo bracelet and ring for Sarah!
The tour was not without drama though as at one stage a large Breadfruit fell from a tree and hit Sarah on the head bouncing off onto her shoulder and then onto my arm before hitting the floor. It certainly hurt my arm and Sarah definitely had a slight concussion but on the plus side at least it wasn’t a spiky Durian fruit! After the fire in the room and the incident with the Breadfruit Sarah was starting to think her days were numbered!
The end of the tour featured “the Butterfly”. This is a guy who climbs a coconut tree while singing a well known Swahili song, called Jambo Bwana. He had a great voice and it’s a catchy song so was very enjoyable.
That night we went to a local restaurant where you selected food from a buffet. We had a bit of a seafood feast which we shared with the local cats who sat all around our table as we ate.
The next day we arranged a taxi to take us across the island to the beach town of Paje. This was a one and a half hour journey but at least once out of Zanzibar city the traffic eased.
We were staying in a walled hotel with a nice pool and as we had been on the go for a couple of months at this stage we were happy to have some much needed downtime by the pool.
The only downside to the hotel was that for most of the day, there were only really two sun loungers in the shade (for some reason they didn’t have umbrellas) so it was a race each morning to see who could get the prime seats. The other issue was that they were reluctant to run their generator so we spent significant periods with no power (and therefore no air conditioning and unusually also no water) as the power cuts were frequent and lengthy. The generators of the more expensive hotels seemed to whizz into action as soon as the power cut out as you could hear them all kick in as you walked down the street.
The beach in this part of the island is a big expanse with very shallow water at low tide and then at high tide there is barely any beach left as the water laps against the beachfront hotels and restaurants.
We found a lovely beach bar for sundowner drinks, which also did great food and we may have indulged in the 2 for 1 cocktails a bit too much!
Despite a few minor issues on the whole we had an enjoyable time in Zanzibar but it was soon time to move on. Getting the ferry from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam was much more straightforward and much less hectic. The arrival in Dar was busy as expected but we quickly jumped in a Tuk Tuk away from the chaos and spent our last night in Tanzania in a city hotel before leaving for Rwanda the next day.
Rwanda, Uganda, Monkeys and Gorillas
Our flight to Rwanda was fairly inauspicious as Air Rwanda is definitely not one of the better airlines we have flown. A sharp contrast to Malawi Air which was really good. The worst aspect of the flight was that they didn’t turn the air conditioning on for large portions of it and the temperature in the cabin was boiling.
We arrived at Kigali airport, at around 8pm, and easily got sim cards at the desk straight outside arrivals and some money at an ATM nearby. All of the cabs seem to be controlled by a single desk so there was no ability to negotiate on price and we got in a relatively expensive cab to our hotel in Kigali.
By the time we arrived it was pretty late but we were starving so we had a quick meal at the hotel restaurant before collapsing into bed. J had a very early start the next morning.
At 4.30am the next morning I met my Farouk , my guide for my trip to Uganda to see Gorillas and discovered that I was the only person on the trip. It started with a drive out of Kigali into the hills to the North and the Volcanos National Park.
We arrived at the meeting point at Volcanos National Park at 8am which is the same time for all briefings for the various treks that they offer. I wasn’t here to see Gorillas but to see Golden Monkeys. The permit in Rwanda to see gorillas is US$1,500 per person and over the border in Uganda it is only US$800, so I was heading across into Uganda to see them.
However the permit for Golden Monkey treks is only US$100 and the treks are generally much easier than the Gorilla treks as the monkeys are usually found on the edges of the farmland.
Golden Monkeys are a small monkey that is a sub-species of the Sykes or Blue Monkey. They are critically endangered and there are thought to be only around 5,000 remaining, all confined to this range of mountains in Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC.
After the briefing and a free (well we had paid for the permit) coffee (made by a barista) we all jumped into our respective cars and headed about 10 minutes down the road to the start of the hike to see the monkeys. We had started off as a group of about 20 but as half the group were French they were split off and taken to another group of monkeys so there were only 10 of us to see this group.
We hiked uphill through farmland for about 30 minutes until we reached the edge of the forest and there we met some rangers who reported that the family of monkeys that we were going to view was only around 20m away. This family was around 100 strong and the biggest of the habituated groups of golden monkeys in Rwanda.
We were led into the forest and into a small clearing and we started to see the monkeys perched in the trees around us. We were free to move around to get the best spots to see the monkeys.
As the hour of viewing time passed the monkeys seemed to get more and more used to us as a group and the came closer and closer. By the end of the hour they were all around us, on the floor and in the trees and seemingly very unbothered.
The hour flew past and we were soon hiking back through the fields to meet our guides in the car park.
For me the next part of the trip was to head towards the Uganda border and cross over into Uganda. This is where my pre-bought Ugandan visa came into play. With all the paperwork in order the border only took about 20 minutes to navigate and was very easy.
There is a visa for Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda that you can buy for $100 but for British passport holders the entry into Rwanda and Kenya are both visa free (although you need an ETA for Kenya). This means that all three countries cost $80 in total (Uganda visa $50, Rwanda Free, Kenya ETA $30) which is actually cheaper than the combined visa of $100.
After stopping for a quick lunch in a town just past the border we soon turned off the paved road onto fairly rough mountain tracks. This is when the thinking behind the choice of a Toyota Landcruiser as the tour vehicle became clear.
The last 30km of the journey took about an hour and a half as we drove through stunning mountain scenery. It really reminded me of Northern Vietnam, which was a real surprise to me.
We arrived at a hill top lodge just 30 minutes drive from where I would be trekking the gorillas the next day. This was the “budget” tour option but the hotel was better than expected and there were some great views of the forest from the veranda of my chalet. It did start pouring with rain soon after we arrived so I did take the option of a quick nap – I mean after all I had been up since 4.
Rain stopped for just before dinner which was a three course meal and quite tasty and I headed to bed straight after.
The next morning we were up before sunrise to have breakfast and get going. The gorilla trek was going to start at sunrise so we headed off in the dark to the sector of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest that my permit was allocated to.
I was expecting to go to a ranger station or visitor centre but we actually just pulled up in the middle of a track where there was a moped parked. This was to be the start of the trek and 2 rangers stepped out of the forest – my guides.
3 trackers had gone on ahead to find where the gorilla family that I had been assigned had moved to. They stay with them all day and then have to track them again in the morning which can be difficult as they can move quite a long way.
As I was here in the wetter season and it is low season I was the only person assigned to this group today and therefore had a private trip.
We set off through the forest towards the last known position of the gorillas. The hiking was very tough as the trails were muddy (low down but fortunately we were heading up, very steep and narrow with lots of trip hazards.
They say that the hike to find the gorillas can take half an hour or several hours well I was “treated” to a three hour hike to get to the gorillas. The trackers were having some problems finding them so it took a while and the last half hour of the hiking was completely off trail through some really difficult terrain.
However eventually we descended into a boggy valley and suddenly I saw my first gorilla and the timer on my 1 hour with them started. Manoeuvring around the valley was pretty difficult as it was very rough terrain and I was very glad that I wasn’t part of a bigger group because the vantage points for watching the gorillas were fairly limited.
First off we made our way over to the primary silverback of the group and we found a great place around 2 metres away from where the silverback was resting with a baby playing on top of him and one of his females as well. At one stage he sat up straight and looked right at me. They seemed completely unbothered by us. He suddenly jumped up and leapt into the bushes and ran off after a female who we had seen in that direction. The speed of his movement was amazing, if he wanted to hurt you it would all be over in a flash !
We then moved position to near the second junior silverback of the group. While watching him and a couple of females around him we were lucky enough to see him sneakily copulate with one of the females. If the primary silverback had seen him there would have been trouble but he got away with it. The guides were very excited to see this and told me that this is very rare !
While in this position one of the younger females walked right by me, within touching distance which was very cool.
The hour seemed to pass in a flash and it wasn’t long until the guides were telling me it was time to leave. The hike out of the valley was hard work as there was no path and a lot of very spiky foliage but we got out on the path and it was then only an hour’s hike back to the pick up point at the edge of the farmland.
I waved goodbye to the rangers and met back up with Farouk for the drive back to Kigali. The drive back was very straightforward and despite stopping for lunch we arrived back at around 4pm. Lunch was in a local Ugandan restaurant just before the border. It was definitely an adventure because it was a served buffet and it was difficult to tell what any of the food actually was. I had some fish and goat and the goat was lovely.
The main impediment to our journey was the huge number of speed cameras in Rwanda ! Farouk told me that not many of the Uganda guides like coming into Rwanda because there are so many cameras and the fines are so big, if they get caught it wipes out their fees for the trip they are doing.
We had a couple of days in Rwanda after the end of the trip. We discovered that although Kigali is a clean and fairly modern capital that there isn’t much to do there.
We did head into the centre of town to explore a bit – and discover that there isn’t much to see. We did see the “Kigali” sign – sited in a pedestrian only strip but not really in an inspiring location.
The one place that all visitors to Rwanda must go though is the Genocide Memorial. We hopped on a pair of motorbike taxis (of which there are thousands in Kigali) and took the 15 minute journey to the memorial.
This is a very sombre place as you learn about the horrendous events of 100 days in 1994 when the Hutu militia had planned and carried out a extermination of members of the Tusti ethnic group. Estimates are that up to 800,000 people were killed in that short period.
The memorial is a good museum that tells the story of the genocide through many personnel stories and really exposes the shameful roles of the many parties. The UN actually had peacekeeping troops on the country who could have stopped the genocide but they withdrew instead allowing the massacres to continue unchecked.
The next destination for us after Rwanda was Kenya and this was to be our last destination in Africa but it was a good one
Kruger National Park – A Self Drive Adventure
There aren’t actually many places that you can fly to from Namibia, so we found ourselves having to fly via Johannesburg which seemed like a great opportunity to stay in South Africa for a few days and visit Kruger National Park – the biggest Game Park in Africa.
The Southern gate, Malelane, is only a four-hour drive from Johannesburg airport where we picked up our rental car. If you follow our blog then you’ll know that we usually rent the cheapest car we can find but we’ve learnt something on this trip, which is that wildlife viewing is much better with a bit of height (especially at this time of year when the grass is long), and a bit of clearance doesn’t go amiss on the game park roads. So this time we opted for a Toyota Urban Cruiser – although we were going to give it a bit of test outside an Urban environment.
We spent the night in a small guesthouse near the town of Mbombela, about one-hour short of the park entrance and the next morning, after picking up some car snacks for our game drives, we drove the rest of the way to Malelane Gate where they explained that payment is taken at the rest camp. This is where our wild card purchase would prove its worth as Kruger costs R535 (that’s about £23) per person per day and we’d booked for five days.
For the first two nights we had arranged to stay at Lower Sabie Rest Camp, which is about 100km from Malelane Gate. Kruger has a good network of paved roads and this journey was paved for most of the way.
The first leg of the journey was to head to Skukuza Rest Camp, which is the biggest rest camp in the park and home to the park administration.
It wasn’t long before we saw our first Elephants right next to the road, as well as a number of Impala (which were to prove our most common sighting).
One of the things we liked about driving around Kruger was that everyone was really happy to share information about where they had seen various animals – not just other self-drivers like us, but also the paid guides.
We hadn’t been in the park very long when someone waved us down and told us that there was a leopard in a tree a few km’s up the road. We sped up and made our way there to where about 10 cars were parked up all looking at a tree about 20m off the road.
We arrived in the nick of time, as only a few minutes later the Leopard got up, climbed to a different branch of the tree to retrieve a half eaten Impala carcass, before descending with its lunch and slinking off into the bushes. We were off to a fantastic start!
The crowd quickly dispersed and we headed on up the road to Skukuza Rest Camp where we stopped at the Cattle Baron restaurant for lunch, which is in a beautiful spot overlooking the Sabie River.
There were a whole bunch of Monkeys at the rest camp but fortunately they didn’t seem to bother people at the restaurant.
After lunch we started our afternoon game drive towards Lower Sabie Camp. We hadn’t gone far when we had to take a diversion from the main road as a result of flooding in January which had washed out the road. The diversion wasn’t too rough though and we were soon back on track.
We took our time on the drive, which is partially along the Sabie River, and were rewarded with a rare sighting of a hungry Hippo out of the water during the day.
As usual, we ended up short on time and running late to get to the camp gate before closing, so we speed up and were making good time when we ran into a herd of Elephants walking down the middle of the road.
There was no way past and we had to sit and wait while they slowly wandered down the road, occasionally stepping off the road to make us think we had an opportunity to pass before stepping right back into the road again.
Eventually they moved off the road allowing us to pass and we hurriedly made our way to the gate, along with a couple of other cars – at least we all had the same excuse! We were 20 minutes late but in true African style there were no worries and we entered the camp without a problem.
We quickly checked in and were given the keys to our room. The hut we had booked was basic with no bathroom but the toilet/ shower block was only about 50m away. Fortunately there was air conditioning, although it was an incredibly old and noisy contraption and with the frequent power cuts it was off as much as it was on. However, as we were learning, when on safari you are out and about for most of the day and your room is really only for sleeping.
In the morning we were up early and headed South towards Crocodile Bridge camp and the Southern gate to the Park. We had a good morning game drive but the absolute highlight was seeing a Cheetah with a year old cub about 30m from the road. They were lazing around under the shade of a bush.
We spent some time watching them and were rewarded with the adult getting up and moving around before slumping back down in the shade. If there is something we have learnt about watching the big cats is that they do sleep a lot of the time but they are also quite restless and if you take a little time to observe them they will shift position from time to time.
For lunch we headed back to Lower Sabie and the Mugg & Bean restaurant overlooking the Sabie River. We’ve found the food in the rest camps at Kruger to be pretty decent and not bad value either.
We headed back out in the afternoon and had our first crocodile sighting, basking in the sunshine on rocks in the Sabie river. That afternoon was fairly uneventful, although we did see a good number of Elephants and when there aren’t that many bigger animals to see there are always an amazing variety of birds.
We had booked an official park game drive for the evening and were desperately hoping it would be better than the one we did in Etosha where we saw very little. This one started in the full dark and when we climbed onboard and the truck started up, we were pleased to find that it lit up like a Christmas tree with spotlights on both sides and two strong white spotting lights. This was much better than the single red spotlight we had in Etosha.
The game drive was two hours long and it felt like every couple of minutes the guide spotted something new. We started off seeing a lot of hippos, who come out of the river to forage at night. In fact we saw so many that the guide refused to stop after the first couple.
We also saw owls, chameleons, a snake in a tree, numerous small deer but the absolute highlight of the nights was coming across 2 lionesses walking down the road. They were patrolling their territory using the road as a convenient path. We followed them as they made their way along, at a fair pace, before having a five minute break to groom themselves and starting their patrol again.
The following day we were due to stay at Satara Camp, which about 100km North of Lower Sabie, so we set off early in the morning for our game drive towards Satara.
It was a long drive at safari pace but we arrived in time for a late lunch. We didn’t see a whole bunch of game on the way despite going slowly and keeping our eyes peeled, some days are just slower than others, but we did see our first Cape Buffalo – the last of the Big 5 for us (although the Rhino bums at night in Etosha did feel a bit inadequate).
However as we approached Satara we did see some Waterbuck, which were a new animal to us. They only live near water as they need to drink several times a day and they have a gland which secretes a musky oil onto their skin so they are not a popular prey animal for the big cats.
Satara is not on the water but it seemed a much busier camp than Lower Sabie. We had a bathroom in our room here and a small balcony which was nice although we had paid a little extra for this accommodation (almost twice as much but it was the cheapest accommodation available).
The restaurant at Satara was again very good and we settled down to a late lunch when we arrived.
On our afternoon game drive we saw a Lion walking along the road almost as soon as we started, although she soon headed off into the bushes. This is the first animal we’ve seen wearing a tracking collar.
We had a long game drive but didn’t manage to make the full loop we had planned to do before we had to turn around and make it back to camp for sunset.
Having done a night-time safari drive we wanted to also try a sunrise drive, which in practice meant getting up at a shockingly early 3.45am as we had to be at the departure point for 4.15am. I’m not going to lie, it was a struggle but it was well worth it as we had some incredible sightings.
This game drive was all about Lions – we came upon one group in the pre-dawn darkness who were relaxing on the roadside with a couple of skittish hyenas hanging around several metres away. This pride had a couple of playful young cubs who were jumping on the adults when they weren’t looking.
We drove on from this pride of Lions and as the sky brightened we came across another pride of 11 Lions that were also sitting on the road.
The Lions apparently like to sleep on the tarmac roads because they retain the heat of the day and are dry, unlike the dewy grass.
This pride was made up of lionesses, some older cubs and a couple of teenage male lions whose manes were just starting to grow in.
We stayed with these guys for quite a while until they started to wander off into the long grass.
That was a great game drive with 20 Lions as well as the usual assortment of Zebra, Giraffe and miscellaneous bambis !
We were pretty tired after our early start so we stayed in camp until after lunch when we headed back out. Unfortunately there is no pool at Satara so we couldn’t relax in quite the same fashion as at the other rest camps but it does have nice grounds to wander around in.
We had come to the end of our stay in Kruger but we were leaving by the Orpen Gate which is due West of Satara. So, with our binoculars at the ready we headed off on our final game drive.
The absolute highlight of this drive was coming across 3 Wild Dogs (or Painted Wolves as they are also known) who were using a raised area of the road as a lookout from where they were watching herds of Wildebeest and Zebra grazing. We watched as they cautiously approached a sole Wildebeest, however he had spotted them and bellowed loudly. Suddenly a number of Wildebeest appeared out of nowhere and once he had back-up he aggressively approached the dogs who eventually backed off. It was fascinating to watch this interaction.
This was a great end to our Kruger safari but we weren’t quite finished with South Africa. We had decided to follow the Panoramic Route back to Johannesburg which is a loop that goes through the Blyde River Canyon via a number of waterfalls and viewpoints.
Our first stop was actually in Blyde River Canyon itself but the viewpoint isn’t particularly spectacular and it was far too hot for a hike, so we drove all the way around to the far side of the canyon where we stopped off at the Three Rondavels viewpoint, which truly was spectacular.
Our next stop was at Bourke’s Luck Potholes (named after a gold prospector), which involved a short walk along a canyon and then over a bridge and back around to the start. It’s an attractive location although we felt a little overpriced.
However, there is a pretty waterfall and the canyon itself is worth seeing.
It had been a long day by this stage so we made our way to the town of Graskop where we had arranged our overnight accommodation. As this was our last proper night in South Africa we went out for dinner and I tried Warthog stew, as a local guide in Namibia had told me that this was his favourite game meat.
I must say I was a bit underwhelmed and wouldn’t rush to try it again.
The next morning we headed out early to Lisbon falls and then Berlin falls where there a viewpoints to see the cascades.
We also checked out a short hike to a rock mount called The Pinnacle.
We then returned to Graskop where we took the elevator down into Graskop gorge. There is a boardwalk around the bottom of the gorge with some very informative boards telling you about the fauna and flora of the area and if you want to splash a bit more cash they also have a zipline and bungee swing across the gorge.
Our final stop on the Panoramic Route was Mac Mac Falls, where a short trail leads to a caged-in viewpoint over the pretty waterfall.
Leaving Graskop and Mac Mac Falls behind us we had a three hour drive back to Johannesburg for our early morning flight to Tanzania the next day. That was the end of our amazing adventure in South Africa and Namibia but we still had a few more countries to explore in Africa before heading home.
Dunes, a Ghost Town and a very big Canyon
After the very smelly visit to Cape Cross we had a much needed laundry day in Walvis Bay. We’d been on the go every day since arriving in Namibia and both felt like we needed a day to chill, so we booked into an apartment with a separate lounge and kitchen which gave us a little more space to kick back and relax.
There’s no rest for the wicked though and the following morning we were on our way again to our next destination, which was going to be a five hour drive through the mountains and into the deep desert.
We had almost reached the Tropic of Capricorn – a waypoint on the journey when we felt and heard the unmistakeable thud, thud, thud of a flat tyre. We’d finally got one of the punctures that Namibia is renowned for handing out. It was hot work to change the tyre but it wasn’t long before we were back on our way again.
The only stop on the way was the tiny hamlet of Solitaire which has a petrol station, a tyre repair shop (where we were told our tyre was unfortunately beyond repair) and a café with a sign claiming to have the best apple pie in Namibia. Well that was all the incentive we needed to pop in and give it a try. The verdict – delicious and so big we couldn’t actually finish it.
We finally reached our destination, which was a camp in the desert at a place called Sesriem. Stepping out of the car here was like opening an oven door with a strong blast of hot air.
We had a hut here with a BBQ station and picnic table on a patio outside and each evening while eating dinner we were observed from a distance by a scavenging Black-Backed Jackal, whom we observed just as curiously in return. We also saw an Oryx wandering around the camp.
Fortunately the hot days descended into cool nights and while it definitely wasn’t cold, the evenings and early mornings were much more comfortable.
The reason we had come to this part of Namibia was to visit Sossusvlei, which is famous for its huge dunes. In fact, ‘Big Daddy’ is the biggest dune in the world.
The dunes are in a National Park and the gates to the park only open at sunrise. The famous shots of the Deadvlei Trees is actually located 60km inside the gates, so if this is what you want to capture, you need to be at the gates for opening time and then travel the 60km’s hoping to arrive in time to get the good light on the dunes. It’s worth knowing that you can pay the entrance fee on the way out so you don’t have to stop for that.
There is a speed limit of 60km in the park so it should take an hour to travel the 60km distance but everyone was exceeding the speed limit so the journey was a bit quicker than this.
At the 60km mark the good tarmac road becomes a 4×4 sandy track for 5km before it reaches the car park for Deadvlei. We had heard conflicting advice about this track and whether it was better to take the shuttle or drive it yourself. Given that we had rented a 4×4 truck we decided to give it a go and drive it ourselves, so after dropping the tyres down to 1.6 bar to cope with the soft sand, we engaged 4×4 and headed off. For the most part the track wasn’t too bad, there were really only a couple of sections where the driving became a little tricky through the deeper drifts of sand, but we made it to the car park without too much trouble.
The car park is about 700m from Deadvlei (meaning dead marsh), famous for its salt pan and ancient fossilised camelthorn trees that are thought to be over 900 years old. Having tried to get there as early as we could the sun hadn’t quite hit the salt pan yet so we were just in time for the good light and for relatively cool temperatures.
After exploring the pan I decided to climb up the dune next to the pan and rather than go round to the main path I went straight up the side. This was a huge mistake as it was very steep and the sand meant that I kept sliding back down. I ended up climbing on all fours and was shattered by the time I had reached the top. I even heard a guide telling one of his guests that I was crazy for coming up that way.
The views made it all worthwhile though.
After a couple of hours we made our way back to the car and started driving out of Sossusvlei, stopping off for photos at some of the dunes on the way back out of the park.
Near the entrance to the park is a turning for another rough road which leads to the Sesriem Canyon. This doesn’t look like much from road level but you can drop down into the canyon and usually go for a walk along it. However there had been some recent heavy rain and as a result the canyon was flooded. This meant that unfortunately we couldn’t walk all along it but we went as far as we could.
The temperature had been pretty reasonable throughout the morning but by this time it was starting to get up into the high 30’s, so it was time for us to retreat back to our air-conditioned hut. We emerged in the early evening for a sunset beer and BBQ dinner with our watchful, neighbourly Jackal but after our early start we were ready for an early night.
Our next destination was much further South in Namibia and another long drive, so we set out early, again. After fuelling up and readjusting our tyre pressure to 1.8 bar for gravel roads, we set off.
After a smooth quick ride for the first few kilometres on a paved road we turned onto a gravel road which we would follow for the rest of the journey. The gravel road was ok but it was long and straight and there wasn’t much in the way of views so it felt like a very long day.
We stopped at the tiny hamlet of Helmeringhausen to break the journey, which is not much more than a petrol station and a very pretty country hotel and restaurant but it was nice to get out of the truck and stretch our legs. We relaxed in the shade of the hotel gardens with a cool glass of homemade lemonade and a slice of their Apple Cake, which is advertised as the best in Namibia. Well we had tried the best Apple Pie in Namibia so it felt only right to try the best Apple Cake in Namibia and to be fair it was also delicious. More of an Apple Crumble to us Brits than a cake but in our humble opinion, the better of the two we’d had this week.
From Helmeringhausen it wasn’t too far to our final destination of the day of Aus. We had decided to stay here to break our journey and the next morning set off early for the coastal town of Luderitz.
Not far from Aus is an area called the Klein Aus Vista, which is home to wild horses and a lot of Oryx. It’s a real desert and how the horses manage to scratch a living here is amazing. It is believed that they came from German army horses that were set free when the Germans left Namibia during WW1. We were lucky to see some right at the side of the road, as well as at a waterhole that has been built especially for them.
Just outside Luderitz, and the reason we had travelled to this part of the country, lies the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop. At one time this was the richest town in the world after the discovery of diamonds in the area.
Kolmanskop was established in 1908 and many mod-cons were installed in the town including a large hospital (with its own wine cellar!), power station, bowling alley, swimming pool, ice factory and the first x-ray machine in the southern hemisphere.
The town began to decline in the 1920’s as the diamonds began to be exhausted and when, in 1928, huge diamond deposits were discovered 270km away, many of the inhabitants abruptly left.
The last inhabitants left in 1956 and now the town is a monument to the diamond rush as it decays and is slowly submerged by the sand of the surrounding desert. It is a popular tourist destination and the guided tour was really interesting, but for me, the abandoned buildings half filled with sand were the real highlight and a photographer’s playground.
The astonishing thing about the diamonds in Kolmanskop was that they just littered the ground and could simply be picked up off the floor. This led the authorities to create a large Forbidden Zone around the diamond fields. Any unauthorised access was banned and all workers were searched when leaving. The x-ray machine was actually for the workers to ensure they had not ingested any diamonds rather than for medical purposes!
After exploring Kolmanskop we headed to the town of Luderitz where we were due to spend the night. Luderitz is a major port town – one of only a handful on the West coast of Southern Africa. As such it is a fairly large industrial town although there is some colonial German architecture to admire.
We were coming to the end of our time in Namibia but we had one more place we wanted to visit – Fish River Canyon, which is the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon.
We had planned to stay the night in the town of Keetmanshoop which is about a 4 hour drive from Luderitz on a good paved road.
Just near Keetmanshoop is the Quiver Tree Forest which has a concentration of the desert Quiver Trees. The hollow branches of these trees were used to create quivers for the arrows of the San people – hence the name.
We had a bit of a surprise in the evening when prolonged torrential rain flooded the small studio apartment we were staying in. Water poured in from behind the toilet (thankfully not from the sewer) and was dripping through the ceiling at numerous points. Fortunately for us the owners of the apartment were able to stem the flow before it completely flooded us and we had enough containers to catch the drips until the rain subsided.
We were concerned that the heavy rain would make the journey to Fish River Canyon much harder. However by the following morning, aside from a few puddles, most of the water had drained away and the dirt roads were in pretty good shape apart from the last few kilometres before reaching the park.
We visited a number of the viewpoints over the canyon on very rough tracks but descending to the canyon floor is banned at this time of year and even in the winter hiking is only allowed with a permit. With it being the rainy season and the recent heavy rain we had hoped to see the river flowing at the bottom but unfortunately the river bed was mostly dry with just a few pockets of water.
After a picnic lunch we retraced our steps back to Keetmanshoop where we spent the night before driving the long, tarmac road back to Windhoek for our flight out of Namibia the next day.
Magical Damaraland
It was going to take a lot to live up to our experience in Etosha and we weren’t quite sure what to expect as we headed towards Damaraland but we were feeling pretty positive as Namibia hadn’t disappointed us so far.
We stayed the night in a fairly eclectic guest house in a small town called Kamanjab, where there was very little to do other than to visit an ancient rock engraving site.
The engravings (called Peet Alberts), which are the second largest concentration of rock engravings in Namibia, are on private land, so in order to visit them you have to get a key to the gate from Oppi-Koppi Rest Camp and then drive 5km out of town to the site.
There is a short walk up a small hill of tumbled rocks to the top where a series of painted white arrows direct you around the animal and abstract rock engravings, of which there are said to be between 1,200-1,500. The engravings were created by two distinct ethnic groups, the San/ Bushman are responsible for the animal engravings which could be up to 25,000 years old and the more recent geometric abstract designs are those of the Khoekoen people, which are dated between 400-2,500 years old.
The engravings mostly feature animals, in particular giraffes as the larger the animal the more supernatural potency they were considered to have as, for the Bushman, the art is part of their Shamanism religion and this site may have been considered a gateway to the spiritual world. Other images that can be found here are zebra, elephants, oryx, human figures, animal prints and a human footprint amongst other things.
It was amazing being able to wander around the rocks at our own pace, discovering the engravings with no one else there and not something you would be able to do in many places around the world.
After this brief excursion we returned the key and left Kamanjab heading South on a gravel road towards Twyfelfontein, stopping on the way to visit the Petrified Forest.
This tour requires a guide to walk you around the site where we were first shown the famous Welwitschia plants. These are amazing plants that have adapted to desert-like conditions and very low rainfall (they have had no rainfall in this area for 2 years to date). The plants have only two very broad rubbery leaves which become split over the years by the action of the wind. These plants can live to over 1,500 years old and are the longest lived plant in the world.
A few of the petrified trees have been exposed by erosion in this area. It is believed that they were actually deposited here millions of years ago when Africa was still part of Gondwanaland, having been moved hundreds of miles from what is now central Africa by floodwaters.
The trees were buried and under extreme pressure minerals were pushed into their structure gradually turning them to stone but keeping the form of the trees, including the rings and form of the bark. They have taken on different colours depending on the minerals that they absorbed. This was an interesting stopover but walking around in the searing mid afternoon sun wasn’t the best and we were grateful to get back to the air-conditioning of the cab and continue on our way to Twyfelfontein.
In Twyfelfontein there is a real lack of accommodation choices so we booked a tent at Twyfelfontein Adventure Camp which was way over our normal budget. This was not your normal tent though – think luxury glamping, it even had a bathroom. In fact the whole place was amazing, a real treat for us after some of the dubious backpacking hostels we have stayed in on this trip.
This part of the world is very hot so early morning and late afternoon are the best times to move around – we were lucky to be staying somewhere with a swimming pool (in fact it had 2) to allow you to cool off in the baking afternoon.
The tented camp was at the foot of a rocky hill on which live a troop of baboons and in the afternoon they would come down from the hillside to drink from the small artificial waterhole in front of the camp. In the night you could hear their cries from the rocks behind the tents.
One of the best things about the camp was that they had built a staircase and path up the rocky hill to the top where they have set up a small bar. This made it the perfect place for a sundowner as the views from the top were beautiful in the setting sun.
The camp was also half board and the food was excellent, each evening they served up a great Braai for dinner.
There were two reasons we had come to Twyfelfontein: the first is that it is a world heritage site for its bushman rock art and the second is that it is possible to do a game drive to see desert adapted animals.
We booked a game drive through the lodge and it started immediately after an early breakfast when we were loaded into the back of an open seated Landcruiser (unfortunately in the bumpy back seats). Almost immediately we turned off the gravel road onto a track and then dropped into a dry sandy riverbed. This was going to be a bumpy trip!
As there hasn’t been any rain in this area for 2 years all the rivers are dry and the concern from the locals about the effect of global warming is palpable, however there is still some underground water so there are plenty of green trees lining the river beds and it is these which provide food for the majority of the animals to be found in this area.
Our first spot was a small deer and then we came across some giraffes and a sizeable herd of ostrich but we weren’t here to see those.
We had come to see the desert-adapted elephants and it wasn’t long before we found two bull elephants grazing on a fallen tree. They are not a distinct sub-species but they have longer trunks (for digging for water), bigger feet (for walking on sand) and they only need water every 4 days. They are also more aggressive than normal elephants – I suppose only drinking every 4 days makes them tetchy.
Our guide was an amazing tracker and he was able to follow the elephant footprints in the sand – distinguishing the age of the prints from how faded they were by the wind.
We spent a couple of hours tracking down a couple of groups of elephants with babies in tow and had some really good encounters with them.
It was a great trip and highly recommended even though by the end of it we were feeling pretty beaten up as the back of the Landcruiser was like a rollercoaster.
The Unesco rock art site was only a short distance from the camp and we decided to visit first thing the following morning when it was bit cooler. A good decision as there was no shade anywhere on the walk through the engravings.
This site requires you to have a guided tour but you have your own private guide. The engravings here are younger than those at Kamanjab, only between 3 and 5 thousand years old! However this meant that they were a bit more complex and better preserved.
Researchers think that some of the engravings served as a map to the nomadic San people. They would indicate sources of water and the presence of game and dangerous animals to help other groups of people who moved through the area.
The most famous of the engravings here shows a lion with a strange tail which represents a shaman.
After our luxurious break at Twyfelfontein we continued to move South through the beautiful landscape to the town of Aus near the Brandberg mountains. The gravel roads up until this point had been in good shape but this one was definitely hard going with some deep sand, potholes and corrugations.
Aus is a mining town and doesn’t have a whole lot to recommend it but it is close to a short hike to some paintings in the Brandberg mountains that we wanted to see.
This is more Bushman art, but younger still, at between 2 and 3 thousand years old and these are actually paintings rather than engravings.
The site of the paintings is actually a 2.5km hike up through a dry river valley and you have to have a guide to take you there.
The paintings themselves are in a small cave formed by an overhang. The famous white lady is in fact neither white nor a lady and is said to be the representation of a shaman. It is now very faded, a process which has been accelerated by water being poured over the paintings for many years in the past to ‘bring out the colours’ for visitors. Our guide believes that within10 years the image may have completely gone. I hope he is wrong and on the plus side while we were there it was good to see a team assessing the site for UNESCO heritage status.
We managed to get back to the car before the temperature became too unbearable and we left Damaraland to head back to the much cooler coast.
After an easy drive along a rare tarmac road towards the coast and then a very good salt road (which are great until it rains), we reached Cape Cross. Cape Cross is the largest seal colony in Africa with as many as 250,000 seals.
When you arrive here and open the car door the first thing that hits you is the over-powering stench of the seals. It’s so bad it feels like a physical blow. I don’t think that I’ve ever actually smelt something so bad.
The smell was actually so bad that the day after it still permeated our clothes and we had to wash everything.
At Cape Cross there is a boardwalk to view the seals and they are everywhere, under the boardwalk, next to it and lining the rocky beach. It’s a noisy place to be as all those seals make a real cacophony.
By the water there were hundreds of baby seals, with only a relatively few adults as most of the adults would be at sea fishing for food.
We could only stay here for around 30 minutes as eventually the stench overpowered us and we retreated to the car, which also stank for days afterwards, continuing our drive along the coast to Walvis Bay which was a convenient stop on the way to our next destination.