Please be aware that today’s post contains pictures of dead and dismembered animals.
Facing down yet another long, hellish travel day, we had a difficult choice to make. We could sleep in before departing Sabi Sands, or once more rise at 5 am for a final game drive.
We chose the game drive. It wasn’t really much of a choice at all.
Lions had been heard in the night, so we decided to join the search. But then the plan changed, and we found ourselves embroiled in yet another leopard hunt. (No such thing as too many leopard hunts.)
We find her once again – Rivala:
She moves through the grass, and we follow.
Rivala pauses briefly to leave her scent on a tree, carefully placing it as high as possible to make her seem larger.
She carries on down the road:
Then we go deeper into the bush.
She starts taking her deep yawns, getting ready to go off on the hunt.
We come across an impala, and wonder if she’ll make a kill.
But no, the impala realizes that she’s there and starts off.
Then something quite unusual happens – Rivala comes close. Very close.
Perhaps we have some scent from the other leopard – Tisela – on our vehicle from last night?
Eventually she moves on, and we release our collective breaths.
Rivala is such a beautiful creature, and it’s fitting that she be both the first and final leopard we see in Sabi Sands.
But Nathan and Colbert have one final surprise in store for us – even beyond the nyala and waterbuck we see while driving about.
The river level has dropped enough for us to enable a ford, provided we attempt it at a more ‘civilized’ location.
It doesn’t feel particularly civilized, but we’ll take their word for it!
Then we have an encounter that surprises even Nathan – twin baby elephants:
Elephant twins are exceptionally rare. Perhaps 1 out of every 1000 live births – and even fewer make it through the first few months.
More zoomies!
Then we spot another pregnant zebra:
Like when we went out in search of African wild dogs, Sabi always seems to throw everything at us when we have somewhere else to be.
Nathan puts on a calm face, but he does caution us that we might have missed it prior to pulling into location – but we haven’t:
The lioness-cub family group we’ve been following since the beginning has finally made a kill. And not just any kill – a zebra.
We’d been worried about this family, particularly the cubs. Their mother was looking very thin, and seemed reluctant to nurse at times. But they should now have more than enough food – for a while, at least.
Even though big sister isn’t entirely keen on sharing:
But the cubs still get more than enough:
And with that, it was time to go – though we do manage to break up an impala fight along the way:
Rutting season is approaching, and the impala are starting to prove who’s Best Mate. But it’s very difficult to catch these battles when they’re underway, as they break up almost immediately when the vehicle drives past.
Back to the lodge where we enjoyed a quick continental breakfast, and the kids enjoyed their final hot breakfast.
We finished packing, settled tips, and said our final goodbyes to Nathan and Colbert. I’ve recommended that Dulini set up some sort of photography lessons similar to what Silversea offers, perhaps with some camera rentals thrown in for good measure.
Most guests seem to be using their phones while on safari – not that there’s anything wrong with it – particularly for landscape photography – but the fancier DSLR and mirrorless cameras really seem to come into their own when photographing wildlife. A small computer lab, some cameras and some in-field lessons would go a long way.
We say our final goodbyes, and then meet up with Bruce from Sable Tours who gets us on the road to Nelspruitt Airport. We’ll need to move quickly, as it’s already 10 am and our flight departs at 1:25 pm.
Once on the road, I reach out to Experience Namibia – our forthcoming tour company – to ensure they have our contact information on WhatsApp. No immediate response from their 24/7 Ops account, but it is a Sunday morning so we’re hopeful they’ll be in touch later that day. If it were me, I’d have the guide reach out a day in advance but I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy.
There’s a brief moment of panic when we see signs for KMI – Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport – while our flight is leaving out of MQP. Bruce says that it can’t possibly be MQP, and reassures us that we are at the right airport.
We do a bit of checking, and apparently MQP is the actual airport code for Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport, but it’s all very confusing. To be thorough, I dash inside the airport when we arrive to check the board – and sure enough, our flight is listed. Phew.
This had been further complicated by the fact that you get an entirely different airport when you type “Nelspruit Airport” into Google Maps – this turns out to be a small private airport, not the international airport. As my wife reminds me, always punch in the airport code when navigating to an airport – never the name.
(I later learn that Nelspruit’s name has been changed to Mbombela, and has been for a while. That’s the drawback of trying to visit so many locations in such a short period of time, but no excuses… Also doesn’t help that everyone in the area still seems to refer to it as Nelspruit.)
Off to check-in, where we’re fortunately able to merge our bookings so that our bags are checked through Cape Town into Windhoek.
We had initially planned to return to South Africa for a G Adventures tour, but then cancelled that after they dragged their heels on booking hotels. With this being the United Kingdom’s spring break and Easter break for South Africa and Namibia, we thought it utterly bizarre that they didn’t have the hotel confirmed roughly 6 months in advance.
In our view, G had failed in their sole job of making our trip easy – so we cancelled and booked our 11 night trip with Experience Namibia instead.
Some brief shopping so that our daughter could pick up a stuffed cheetah, and then off to the outdoor café – Fever Tree – for a quick lunch. Time was tight, so we ended up having to walk our grilled cheese sandwiches through security and eat them near the gate.
Onto the plane, and farewell Nelspruit:
I promptly fall asleep for the next two hours, waking only when it was time to descend into Cape Town – where the true comedy of errors began.
Hello Cape Town:
We’d hoped to be able to make our way to international departures from within the secure area, but no such luck. Ah, well, we figure – we’ll get some dinner first, and then make our way through. We had close to two and a half hours, which we figure should be plenty. It was walk-through for both domestic and international security when we were here 6 days ago.
So we order a pair of plain cheese pizzas from Debonairs Pizza, and check our messages. Experience Namibia sends over contact information for our guide Ewald, so we figure we’re just about set.
The pizzas arrive, and it is objectively terrible – think Kraft Singles and chunks of tofu. It doesn’t even have tomato sauce. That goes in the garbage, and we try the Steers burger restaurant next to it.
While waiting for the Steers order, my wife hears another customer go up to complain about the lack of tomato sauce. That’s apparently just the way they make it. Bizarre.
Steers is a bit better, though my request for plain burgers is only partially successful – they still arrive slathered with mayo and ketchup. Ah, well. We make it work – and at least the fries are decent.
Steers has some quirks of their own, however – they apparently take the orders of everyone in line before they start cooking. Or they wait until there’s so much of a crowd formed that they stop taking orders and then start cooking. It’s all very odd.
As my wife and I munch on our second, partially-successful dinner, we realize that our global e-SIM cards won’t work in Namibia. We’re still not keen to spend US$10 per day per device to use our Canadian phone plans, so we go in search of other options.
There’s a brief scramble, and eventually we find a company called AloSIM which offers Namibian e-SIMs. The price isn’t cheap – US$10 for 1 gigabyte – but we’d much prefer to have comms immediately on landing, as opposed to having to buy a physical SIM card from a telecom shop at 9 pm at night.
Finally, we pack up and head for security. Looks like there’s a bit of a line. Okay, quite a long line. Wait – Mother of God.
The line stretches all the way around the airport in a box, like the world’s worst game of Snake. This is when the panic really sets in – our flight starts boarding in under an hour and departs in about 90 min. There is no way we’re going to make it on time.
Then we hear the sweetest sound in the known universe – someone asking, “Is anyone on the flight to Windhoek?”
This Airlink gate agent – Reinhardt – proceeds to walk down the entire line, picking up Windhoek passengers so that we can jump to the front of the security line, and then on to the front of the immigration line. It appears that immigration is what’s truly holding up the show – it easily could have taken three hours to have gotten through that mess.
We have apparently chosen the worst day of the week to transit through Cape Town – Sunday is when everyone is heading back from whatever weekend adventures they might’ve had, plus when many travelers return from week-long holidays. We make a mental not to never, ever book a flight out of Cape Town on a Sunday ever again.
Someone also mentions that Windhoek airport apparently closes at a set time, and so our plane has no leeway to stay on the tarmac waiting for stray passengers. When 6:15 pm arrives, they will be in the air – or they won’t be landing.
Onto the transfer bus, and then onto the plane. We relax slightly once our butts are in our seats, and a bit more once the flight is underway.
Immigration forms are distributed and we painstakingly enter in all of our details, including the hotel where we’ll be staying our first night – the address of which is buried in some forgotten corner of my laptop.
Namibia’s visa requirements are relatively new. We’d attempted to apply online before departing on our trip, but it wasn’t working – so we figured we’d just pay when we landed. How hard could it be?
Still blissfully unaware of how hard it would be, I then spend a frantic hour and a half attempting to write the previous day’s blog post, as I know I won’t have time once we get in. We aren’t expecting to reach the Weinburg Windhoek until close to 10 pm, and I want to be asleep soon thereafter.
I do enjoy a nice malt beer and a tasty meal from Airlink – this is ginger chicken:
We’re in the air for about two hours, and then start to descend once more.
Touchdown, Windhoek:
We race through the roped-off maze that leads to the front of the immigration line, and hand over our documents. And we wait. And wait.
Thus begins the most torturous visa application process we have ever undertaken.
It’s not like we’re grilled on our travel habits or anything like that – they just had to enter every single line from our forms manually into the system. And the agent was a trainee. And they didn’t know that you could copy and paste information between applications.
By the time our passports had been stamped, roughly 30 minutes had passed and almost everyone else in line had been processed.
But at least we could pay our rather-expensive visa fees (US$300, give or take) by credit card. So that was something.
Our bags were waiting for us, so we collected them and ran them through the X-Ray scanner. And then we met our guide, Ewald!
Going from one tour company to the next always feels like leaping between trapeze – you’re never quite sure if the person on the other side is going to catch you. This is manageable, but less so when you’re landing late at night – I hate even the prospect of calling multiple Windhoek hotels to see if they have any last-minute availability and, oh yes, can they also arrange transfers for 345 pounds of luggage?
Everyone’s fading at this point, so we’re very glad to see Ewald.
Leaving the airport feels good, too – not just the physical act of leaving it, but also the vibe around the airport. It feels like a safe place.
With the exception of the very-aggressive porters who keep trying to take my luggage, despite me firmly keeping a hand on it and saying, “No, thank you.” Eventually Ewald has a word with them and they back off. Another reason why we went with a guide for this leg – despite the popularity of self-drive Namibia tours.
Into our safari vehicle, which will be our transport for the next 10 days:
(Photo taken two days after, while we’re underway.)
And off to the Weinburg, which is beautiful.
We wish we were doing more than just sleeping, eating and leaving tonight but at least we’ll be back at the end of our journey.
We’re also thrilled to discover that our rooms are partially-connected – there’s a door just outside both of them that can be closed off so that they effectively form a single larger suite. This is one of our favourite room arrangements, and we’re so glad to find it here.
Ewald asks that we’re ready for our daily briefing and to depart at around 8 am tomorrow. It’s not quite a sleep-in, but a far sight better than the 5 am wakeups we’ve had for the past week.
Plus, I get to enjoy this as my office tonight:
With the day’s post up, it’s finally time to head to bed.