28 Feb 2007 - 3 Mar 2007 - Namib

My idea was to see as much of the country as possible, and to take as long as it takes stopping where ever & for as long as we felt like. So we headed south and after about 255km we were in Solitaire at about 4pm, we stayed in the Solitaire Country Lodge(there was no where else!) and they had a nice pool anyway. There was only one other couple staying so the staff were very attentive, dinner bed & breakfast was about £53. We tried to get an earlier start the next morning to avoid the heat, but it was only 80km to Sesriem so we made it quite early to  the campsite. We set up our first African camp but it wasn't long before we had the most amazing sand storm, so we had to retreat into the cab of the Landy. That was followed by a big thunder storm the first of many spectacular storms and very heavy rain, I nearly didn't bother heading down to Sossusvlei for the sunset after it stopped raining. But Rosie thought we should go down the 100km and see if it cleared up, she was right what a fantastic sunset we had ( I just hope I can get the photos on the site) We decided to eat in the Sossusvlei Lodge beside the campsite as we thought it would be raining, they had a buffet with a big selection of game on the grill we tried Zebra & Warthog. While eating in the hotel we saw a black backed jackal looking for scraps, and on our return to the camp we saw another beside our tent.

Next morning we drove to the Namtib Biosphere Reserve a German run farm 260km of gravel road from Sesriem, we were shown to the campsite about 2 km from the house set in front of the red Tiras mountains. The choice was ours as there were no other campers so we chose a site under a huge camelthorn tree, with a short walk to the imaculate shower block. Rosie cooked the first night we were there, but the second night the 3rd my birthday we went down to the farmhouse for dinner. After dinner we went outside to see the moon eclipse, but the young guy at the farm had the time wrong so after sitting around till 11pm we went to bed and missed it!!

We drove to Ludritz on the coast the next morning a journey of about 265km