Tag Archives: thewildcreanberries

A Walk On The Wild Side

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We weren’t sure if we wanted to go to the Etosha National Park as we’re surrounded in Kenya by lots of different parks. But we’re glad we did.

The drive from Grootfontein was pretty easy and only a couple of hours. We were meant to stop in at the Hobas Meteorite, but we refused to pay $60 to see a large piece of rock. Our trip budget is pretty small so we’re prioritising what we want to spend our dollars on. The night before we met some Kiwis who are taking their two kids on a 12 month trip around the world (flyingkiwis.nz). They gave us some great advice on some activities on our next few legs of Namibia.

Getting into Etosha is straightforward, you can pay everything by card. Kenya has become really complicated to enter the game parks, they need to learn from Namibia. Once in, we went to the Namutoni Campsite to set up. The place was packed and so glad we booked in early.

The campground is super flash. It has a swimming pool, restaurant, a shop, lots of bathrooms and a waterhole to watch the animals.

This is what we did at night time. You have to be totally silent, which some people were terrible at. It was so annoying when people thought that having a loud chat while we were waiting for animals to come and drink – was a good idea. By 9.30pm not a lot was happening so Liz started making her way to bed. Ten minutes later a large elephant came to the waterhole and started drinking and munching on a bush. I (Sharon) was the only one there and it was mesmerising.

The next day we drove through the park to a place called Hallali – and the roads were horrible. They were corrugated, which was really painful. Onwards we went to Okaukuejo, the next campsite we would be staying in.

Pete wasn’t impressed at all as we were given a really small piece of dirt right next to the toilets – and we had no other place to go. It actually ended up being okay and one of the best viewing places at the park. Yes, we saw animals throughout the day but it was what we saw at night that really made us want to come back.

In the park, the campsites are pretty much the same, but we felt the setup of the waterhole was WAY better than at Namutoni. You have to take our word for it and also watch the video below to see the wildlife we saw at night. We had to drag ourselves to bed at 10pm because we had a long drive the next day, and apparently when we left all the lions came to drink.

Enjoy!

Kapishya Hot Springs

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We had been advised that a great place to break up the long journey through Zambia was the Kapishya Hot Springs.

One thing we’ve noticed is that you can spend many hours on the road and not get very far. Once we crossed the border at Tunduma, the road was good for about 160km’s, but after that, it was hard work. There’s endless trucks coming to and fro from the copper mines but at least they were decent drivers and kept a good speed. However, the road was riddled with potholes.

Once we left the Great North Road we hit red dust. We did wonder if we were going to find the place as some roads were blocked but people pointed us in the right direction.

Kapishya Hot Springs was a welcome relief to traveling. We wished we had booked longer than two nights. The natural hot springs are purposely kept at a shallow depth so that it is safe for children. There’s both campsites – where we stayed, and chalets. The restaurant caters for small and large numbers. There’s a cold pool and a very nice area you can have sundowners at.

Mark is the son of the original owners and even though he was raised in Zambia, sounds very British. He’s built up the business with farms, community development projects, chickens, greenhouses and fruit areas. There’s also a spa at the venue in case you want to have a good massage.

Kapishya takes credit card and also has free wifi – both a rare occurence in this part of the world. If you’re going to visit, you need to book ahead of time, and be aware, there are way easier ways to get there than what we took!

Camping in Tanzania

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We are often torn between booking every step of our trip, and winging it for accommodation. We decided that doing long hours and just hoping to find somewhere to sleep wasn’t going to be a happening thing, for the first week anyway.

So, we booked into The Old Farm House in a remote area but on our route. It was way better than we anticipated. It was quiet, plenty of water, and hot showers!

As we drove in, we met some people who were from Namibia – our ultimate destination. They gave us a bottle of sand from one of their sand dunes and told us to come over later. They had some friends who were coming in later too. These two couples traveled in super flash mtoorhomes, so it was an easy setup for them.

For us, it took quite some time. This was the very first time we had done a setup and actually stayed somewhere. Admittedly, it probably took us a couple of hours to get everything where we wanted.

The facilities at The Old Farm House are fantastic. You can choose to stay in a chalet which is very nice and well setup. You can get meals there but have to prebook as they do it all from scratch. We did our own meals.

We had a great night with our friends from Namibia and learnt a lot about their homeland.

The next day – we spent a lot of time packing up (we’ll get better) and headed to our next destination.