Laugarvatn, Iceland

The forecast looked good for today! We had our big excursion planned to the Golden Circle highlights: Gullfoss (waterfall), Strokkur (geyser) and Þingvellir National Park (continental drift). Gullfoss was at the top of my list so we headed there first.

Gullfoss is open 24/7, so we planned to be there for sunrise (9am). It’s more common for folks to visit the Golden Circle highlights on a long day trip from Reykjavík (about two hours away) so at 9am we had the falls pretty much to ourselves! Luckily the sun was poking out through the clouds to brighten our pics. There was good water flow what with all the recent rain. There’s several vantage points for pics, a couple which are in the mist shadow from the falls. Waterproof smart phones are excellent for these types of conditions. The lowest trail down to the falls was closed due to ice. Gullfoss is really cool to see, one of the top 10 visually impressive waterfalls in the world.

Next up was Geysir, about 30 minutes drive. There’s a single-lane bridge along the way, I could see that causing traffic congestion later in the day. At this early hour we were the only car on the road so we just drove through.

Geysir is home to the original geyser, in fact that’s where the word comes from. Geysir erupts infrequently nowadays, the last time was in 2016. Also in the park is Strokkur, which erupts up to 35m every seven minutes or so. This is also pretty cool to see. There’s a path leading up the hillside for different views. We saw five eruptions while we were there.

I had researched some fancy place for lunch (actually very close to our hotel) but we both had a hankering for Icelandic lamb soup so just ate at the cafeteria at Geysir. They also had a mushroom soup which Heather got. The lamb soup was so-so, not as good as the one at Seljalandsfoss.

We got through the single-lane bridge no problem, and drove on to Þingvellir. The road to the entrance passes through the national park with a speed limit of 50 km/h. It’s beautiful scenery, and also a UNESCO world heritage site.

I couldn’t find Þingvellir in the Parka parking app, when I asked it turns out they’re not part of it. That’s confusing to tourists. It was easy enough to pay at the machine though.

The first view Þingvellir (if you’ve parked at P1) is the path down between the walls representing the North American and Eurasia plates separating. It’s a unique sight. About 1km down the path is Öxarárfoss waterfall, tucked in behind the path. You can’t see or hear it until you turn around the bend, which is pretty cool.

The path then winds back towards the main entrance, and passes by Thingvallakirkja, the iconic church and summer residence of the Prime Minister. Last up is Silfra, where it’s possible to snorkel or dive between the plates. We took some pics of folks snorkeling and then called it a day. We were lucky that with all the rain we’ve had recently that we were able to have a nice day today.

Laugarvatn, Iceland

We left Vik this morning in the wind and rain. It rained the whole time we were here, with the winds never dropping below 30 km/h. For all I know it’s still raining in Vik.

It stopped raining shortly after we exited Vik city limits, heading back towards Reykjavík along Hwy 1. After an hour we turned inland, en route to Secret Lagoon, a geothermal pool near Flúðir.

We wanted to try a geothermal pool whilst in Iceland, and the Blue Lagoon sounded too busy and touristy. Several travel bloggers mentioned Secret Lagoon as a good alternative, so I bought timed-entry tickets online when I booked the trip.

We arrived at 11:45am, fifteen minutes early, but they didn’t mind. We took off our boots in the common shoe room, then split up to our respective change rooms. Changed, put my stuff in a locker (with bracelet key), showered, and then entered the pool area. We timed it perfectly as we both got to the pool at the same time.

The pool was nice and warm, about 40C. We gravitated to the warmer spots where the hot water enters the pool. It wasn’t too crowded, we could move about easily without bumping into folks. The pool bottom is lava gravel which felt nice on our feet.

After about 30 minutes we had had enough and changed back out. We had left our phones in our lockers and there’s no clock around the pool, so we had no idea how long we had been in the pool at the time. Maybe that’s the idea.

We had lunch at Vínstofa Friðheima. It’s an interesting concept. It’s a greenhouse, growing most of the tomatoes sold in Iceland. They have a large restaurant, with tables in and amongst the vines, with most of the dishes involving tomatoes. We spilt a salad, ravioli with a romesco sauce, seafood skewers, and non-alcoholic takes on a Bloody Mary. It was all very excellent, but I don’t want to look at tomatoes for at least a week.

Our hotel for the next couple nights is the Héraðsskólinn Historic Guesthouse. It is a former boarding school, and one of the few hotels with character that I found while booking. Our room was recently renovated, and had a nice view of Laugarvatn (a small lake with geothermal springs).

We cleaned up and then went over to the nearby Lindin restaurant. It’s a pretty fancy restaurant for a town of 300! We enjoyed our dinner.

It was overcast and no chance for the Northern Lights yet again :(

Vik, Iceland

The forecast did not improve overnight, so we ruled out our plans to go hiking along the Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon. We had breakfast and then researched indoor options near Vik. We landed on a couple small museums and going to see the Lava Show, all in the historic part of Vik.

Unfortunately both the Skaftfellingur Museum and Hafnleysa Maritime museum were closed on Mondays & Tuesdays :( We had some time to kill before our 1pm booking at the Lava Show, so drove over to see the Dyrhólaey Lighthouse, about 20 minutes west of Vik.

The Dyrhólaey Lighthouse sits atop a cliff overlooking the ocean. Google maps said the road was closed, but the gates were open so we drove up. It was extremely windy at the top, so much so that we were afraid of getting thrown off the cliff. Visibility was really poor too, so we just decided to stay in the car and drive back to Vik.

The Lava Show seemed like it might be cheesy, but it was one of the few indoor things open today. We booked the tickets for the 1pm show online after breakfast. We arrived a bit early at 12:30pm, so browsed the gift shop. I ended up buying a small piece of obsidian-like lava glass for our souvenir shelf. The show seats about 50 and is general admission, so we chatted up the staff about the best seats.

The show was sold out, with an Icelandic school group taking up about 40 seats. It started promptly at 1pm with an intro spiel about the volcano and the safety awareness of all residents. Katla, which overlooks Vik, is overdue for an eruption, so every household has an emergency bag packed. Each home also has a large poster-sized sign they leave in their window after vacating, so emergency personnel know not to bother searching the house. Everyone then heads to the church on the hill, the nearest high point, to escape from the main danger of flooding.

Anyways back to the lava. After a short educational and historical video, the main event: molten lava is poured down a ramp. We could feel the heat from our seats.

The host then described and showed how the lava solidifies into different forms, including silica hair and glass. It was way more interesting than I had imagined! The whole show took about 45 minutes.

We grabbed lunch at the Soup Company which shares the building with the Lava Show folks. We both had the traditional lamb soup. It’s unlimited servings but we could barely finish one bowl each :)

The rain and wind seemed to have dissipated, so we went to check out the basalt columns on Reynisfjara beach. Paid for parking using the Parka app (much easier and faster than the booths), and walked 100m down the black sand to Hálsanefshellir Cave, which houses the basalt columns. The beach has rogue waves so we had timed this for low tide (I had looked up the tide tables earlier this morning). The basalt columns were cool to see, and the rain and wind wasn’t too bad.

So overall it was a pretty good day for a rain day. If it was nice weather I’d suggest seeing the natural wonders in Iceland rather than a lava show, but it was cool that it was an option for today.

Vik, Iceland

We checked our email first thing when we woke up to see if our Katla Ice Cave excursion was canceled. It was miserable outside, with wind gusts up to 95 km/h, rain, and a wind chill of -18C. Luckily it was still on!

We had a nice breakfast and then tried to figure out appropriate clothing layers for the excursion. The departure point was at Black Crust Pizzeria, 500m down the street. We probably could have walked if it wasn’t so windy. We barely made it from the hotel to the car without being bowled over by the gusts.

We booked through Katlatrack cause of their safety focus and small groups. There were only eight of us in the group, and we left right on time at 11am. (I think we were the last to arrive out of our group at 10:40am!)

We all got in a Super Jeep. It reminded me of a monster truck demolition derby vehicle, with its oversized tires. Our guide had a Nordic sense of humour, and seemed to really like his job. He also was into his tunes, and cranked Icelandic bands most of the trip.

We headed east on Hwy 1 for about ten minutes, and then cutoff to an F-road. In Iceland, this denotes a mountain road, the F is for fjall which is Icelandic for mountain. The F-road was closed due to the weather conditions, except for Super Jeeps. Our guide stopped briefly to deflate the tires for broader contact with the volcanic sand.

After a few minutes we off-roaded, although I couldn’t tell the difference as the road wasn’t all that great.

The scenery (at least what we could see of it in the poor visibility) was not anything I’ve seen before - a combination of snow and black sand, with volcanic peaks and hardened lava flows. Apart from monitoring the weather, our guide also had alerts for earthquakes and volcanoes. Katla is active every few years. The danger is not just from an eruption, but also the lava melting glacial dams and flooding the surrounding area.

We drove on towards the Kötlujökull glacier. Our guide pointed out where various film shoots occurred, including Star Wars (Episode I), Game of Thrones, and Interstellar.

We reached the glacier and parked on a raised area (in case of flash floods). Luckily at the glacier it wasn’t raining, and was somewhat sheltered from the wind. Our guide handed out helmets and crampons. We geared up and were on our way!

It took about 20 minutes to walk to the cave entrance. The coolest part was the view - it was all monochrome, with the grey cloudy sky, and mix of snow and black sand peaks.

The ice caves are natural and constantly changing. For our visit, the cave was only about 20m deep, which is about normal. Creative pics make it look much more spectacular.

We retraced our path back to the car. Took some more pics before our hands froze completely, and then boarded the Super Jeep for the drive back to Vik.

The excursion normally includes a visit to the black sand beach of Reynisfjara and its basalt columns. However the wind and waves made it too dangerous.

We got back to Black Crust Pizzeria around 2pm. It was a worthwhile excursion, just for the views of the interior landscape!

Heather and I split a pizza for lunch which was mmm good, although any pizza fresh out of the oven tastes good. They didn’t do coffee, so went to Lava Bakery for an espresso.

That was it for the day. It was quite a successful touristing day, considering the weather conditions.

Vik, Iceland

We had a slow start to the day, still a bit jet lagged. Had a filling breakfast at the hotel, and then packed up. The 2nd day of a vacation always takes us the longest to pack up cause we’re switching from airplane mode to travel mode. Plus we were also switching from urban to hiking stuff.

We also had to sort out car stuff, and finally got on the road around 11am for the two hour drive along Hwy 1 to Seljalandsfoss. We had a pit stop in Hvolsvöllur, which looked to be a common thing based on all the tour buses. Sort of like the 1st gas station on the 401 heading out of Toronto.

Seljalandsfoss, and the nearby Gljúfrabúi, are visible from the road about 5-10 minutes before the cut-off. The parking lot was about 80% full, it would be a disaster in the busy summer season. Paid for parking at the machines (I had downloaded the Parka app but hadn’t set it up yet).

It was another beautiful day, about 6C. Seljalandsfoss is just off the parking lot. It’s possible to walk behind the falls, but we just stayed dry and took our pics from the front. From there it’s about 10 minutes along the trail to Gljúfrabúi. These falls are somewhat hidden from the path, and it’s possible to get very close and wet. We chose wisely and stayed dry.

I had planned for lunch at the famous Mia’s Country Van, a fish&chips food truck. It was another 30 minutes down Hwy 1. It was almost 2pm so instead we just had a sandwich and split a soup from the little takeaway booth at the entrance to Seljalandsfoss. It was quite tasty. Checked out the small but excellent gift shop, and got a couple more items for the souvenir shelf (a lava bracelet, and felted soap).

We got back on Hwy 1 and continued towards Skógafoss, one of the more famous waterfalls in Iceland. The road conditions were getting worse with the strong winds picking up. There was almost a 20C difference (!) between the actual temp (5C) and the feels-like (-13C).

Stopped for some pics of red barns against cliffs and smaller waterfalls, careful to make sure the wind didn’t catch the car door and damage it. There’s actually warnings on the car doors about the wind, which neither of us had seen before Iceland.

We got to Skógafoss around 3pm. There’s a staircase to the top of the 60m, we could see two bus groups making their way down, looking much like the pics of the queues at the top of Mt Everest.

First we took our pics from the bottom. In warmer weather folks will wade in for the classic Instagram pic; only one person braved the cold water today.

It was pretty cold in the wind as we started our climb up to the top. There’s a handle rail on one side most of the way up. Without the railing, we might have been blown off the stairs.

We made it to the top, took some quick pics before my hands completely froze, and then carried back down. It was worthwhile to climb up for the view, which apparently gets better and better if you continue inland at the top.

Got back to our Dacia Duster, warmed up, and decided to skip the last item on the agenda, the Solheimasandur plane wreck. It’s a 45 minute walk each way along a beach to get to the DC3 which crashed on the beach in 1973 and is now a cool photo op. From the road, we could see waves crashing on the beach and spitting mist, it did not look pleasant at all.

So we called it a day and headed for the hotel. The wind picked up and was pushing our car all over the road. Two-handed driving as Heather called it.

We had to walk at a 45° angle from the parking lot to the entrance of Hotel Kría, the wind was that strong. We almost took flight with the smaller suitcases like a Mary Poppins umbrella.

Checked in, relaxed, and had dinner later on. It’s a nice hotel to be storm-stayed if the weather gets worse. We’re here for three nights, with an excursion planned tomorrow to the Katla Ice Caves, and then a day trip to more waterfalls on Tuesday. We’ll see what the weather brings!

Reykjavík, Iceland

Iceland in February to see the Northern Lights seemed like a good idea in October when we booked this trip, though we were questioning our decision after a particularly cold January in Toronto.

Packing winter stuff takes up way more space than summer gear. We made our way to Pearson on Friday evening, both of us with two pieces of luggage in tow (a suitcase and carry-on). We took less luggage for three weeks in Namibia!

Our Icelandair flight departed 30 minutes early, cause all the passengers were there. We didn’t sleep much on the five hour flight :( We were lucky to get out at all, in between two major snowstorms on Thursday and Saturday in Toronto.

We arrived at Keflavik International Airport (KEF) around 6am. It’s a much larger airport than I expected. I googled, it handles about 10 million passengers a year! That’s impressive for a country of 400,000. (For comparison, Pearson handles 50 million.)

There was a bit of a line up at immigration which moved quickly. The agent just asked how long we were staying and if we had booked accommodation. We got the standard Schengen stamp and were through.

Our luggage was already touring around the carousel. We picked up our Dacia Duster from Europcar and were on our way by 7:15am, a very impressive 75 minutes after touching down at KEF!

It was still dark as we drove to our hotel in Reykjavik. It’s been a while since I’ve driven a standard, most rental car companies don’t have them anymore.

We checked in at Hotel Skuggi. They have an early check-in plus breakfast for 55 EUR, which worked well for us. Cleaned up, had breakfast and then took a two hour nap.

We woke up at 11:30am feeling much better. It was a beautiful day - sunny and about 3C. I had sketched out a few things to see today, all within walking distance of each other.

We started at the Sun Voyager sculpture, and then continued along the waterfront to the Harpa Concert Hall. This is an impressive building which has multiple floors open to the public (just the concert halls themselves are for ticket holders only). The Iceland Symphony Orchestra youth had a free concert in the foyer for young listeners, which filled the floors with music. It was quite nice.

We walked further past the shipyards on our way to lunch. There were a few art installations along the way which we stopped to look at. (There’s a lot of art sprinkled throughout the city).

We had lunch at Kaffivagninn, a classic old diner. The food was excellent and the atmosphere great. There were more regulars than tourists which was nice. We tried the local Egils Gull 0% beer which was pretty good. The homemade desserts looked tasty but we were too full from our mains.

Next stop was National Gallery of Iceland (Listasafn Íslands). (‘Íslands’ is Icelandic for Iceland, and not the English word ‘island’ as I mistakenly thought before I got here). We toured around their curated exhibits. It’s a smaller art museum, with four exhibition halls.

We still had time to get to Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral before it closed at 5pm, so headed back out. The route took us through residential streets and their brightly painted houses.

Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral is a famous landmark in Reykjavík. It’s more impressive from the outside; the inside is nice too, but if you’re there when it’s closed you’re not missing out. It’s possible to take the elevator to the viewing platform in the tower for 14 CAD. It looked touristy and windy & cold, so we didn’t bother.

Got back to our hotel and cleaned up. Heather was stilll full from lunch but I was peckish, so I headed to the nearby Hlemmur Mathöll food hall. I ate at Kröst, which was really good. I tried their IPA, which is brewed by a local craft brewery for the food hall. It was excellent, and reminded me of the great IPAs we had in Estonia.

And that was it for our first day in Iceland! It’s country number 105 for me and 65 for Heather. Tomorrow we head to Vik.

Toronto, Canada

It took us 42 hours door-to-door to get home from Cape Town, one of the longer journeys home we've had after a vacation. We flew CPT-JNB-LHR-YYZ with a bit of a layover in both JNB and LHR.

Overall it was quite a diverse trip, which we enjoy. The landscape changed with every place we stayed. The highlight for me was Sossusvlei, and Deadvlei in particular. It's hard to pick a favourite lodge because they were all really good, however Hoodia and Mowani did stand out. Namibia is one of the most photogenic countries in the world (Myanmar is still tops), everywhere we looked was so scenic. It's so photogenic, some of our pics look like fake AI-generated pics!

One surprise for me was that we never used mosquito repellant at all over the entire trip. Most of the trip was in very dry conditions across the Namib and Kalahari deserts (where the humidity was 15%). I thought we might have sand flies in the desert, but there was nothing. Around Etosha, we had swarms of big moths, but no mosquitoes. We already had our malaria tablets so just took them anyways. I suppose it must be a seasonal thing, because it is a malarial area.

There were some gadgets that we were glad we packed: the Peak Design car phone mount, the Casetify phone wrist strap, and Solbari UPF driving gloves. All worked really well. The wrist straps came in handy bouncing around in open safari vehicles, as we didn't have to worry about dropping our phone.

We didn't have much down time, especially in the first half of the trip. The excursions took up most of the day, and I could barely keep up with editing pics and posting to our travel blog. When we got home, I realized that some of my Namibia pics were out-of-focus -- I've since replaced with pics that are actually in focus :) We really enjoyed Cape Town at the end of the trip, it was sort of a vacation after the safari.

There were a couple bonus sites along our Namibia route that were pretty cool. Seeing the Hoba Meteorite, the largest meteorite in the world, was really impressive. I can't believe it's just sitting there in a field. The Zeila Shipwreck just outside Swakopmund was cool too.

We were pretty impressed with how easy it is to transfer through JNB nowadays. Ten years ago, there were officials looking for bribes at every opportunity, and long line-ups everywhere. This has all been cleaned up. Immigration is now fully automated, and fairly quick. Unlilke Pearson, which remains one of the worst airports we have flown through. It took us over 90 minutes from landing at Pearson to exiting the airport. Pearson is the only airport that relies on staff yelling out directions to herd passengers through immigration and customs, as opposed to just having clear signage like everywhere else in the world.

We drove over 2,600km in Namibia, further than we traveled in the South Island of NZ, most of it over gravel and sand roads. It really felt like an adventure, in particular the rural areas around Damaraland. Gas stations were fairly common throughout our route, we were able to fill up no problems before we dropped below half a tank (Toyota Fortuners get over 700km per tank). Marissa had a SIM card and got a signal about 80% of the time; offline Google Maps worked for me. There was hardly any traffc on the roads, we passed just a handful of vehicles each direction most days. This matches up with Namibia being the 2nd lowest country in the world by population density (Mongolia is lowest), and being low season for travel.

We were super lucky with lack of rain (Namibia's rainy season goes from November to March). We only got rained on once, and we were just relaxing in our cabin anyways. It didn't rain at all while I was driving, and it didn't rain during any of our excurions. With climate change, we're finding that rainy season doesn't seem to reflect actual rainfall any more, and really just means less tourists.

Next up, Iceland in February!

Cape Town, South Africa

Heather and I wrapped up our vacation with a visit to Zeitz MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary Art Africa). Marissa joined a separate excursion to Robben’s Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

The Zeitz MOCAA is built out of former grain silos on the waterfront. It took a couple years to carve away the thick concrete to create the interior space. It’s a stunning building inside.

There’s exhibits across three floors, all curated from their extensive collection of African art. We thought it was really well done.

Walked around the V&A waterfront after. It’s a nice waterfront, with lots of restaurants and boutique shops, filled with tourists. We browsed a bit and then headed over to the Loop St area that we walked through on Jan 1. Things were back to normal hours today. In fact it was a weekday, and so there were office workers in the CBD!

We had lunch at a random sushi place that rated highly on Google, it wasn’t too bad. Then browsed through some of the art galleries, we really liked the art at Eclectica Contemporary.

We got back to the hotel around 4pm, exactly when Marissa returned from her excursion. Relaxed, had some excellent chocolate cake (the hotel has freshly baked goodies every day at 4pm), and then started packing up for our return home.

We had dinner at Miller’s Thumb, an happening seafood place on Kloof Nek Rd. Chatted about the trip highlights (there were many), and got home early-ish (9pm) cause we had an early start tomorrow. Cape Town was a nice little vacation after the safari.

Cape Town, South Africa

We arranged through the hotel for a car and driver to take us around the highlights of the Cape Peninsula. It was about the same cost as the three of us booking an excursion with a tour company, but this way we’d have full flexibility.

Our driver, Roger, suggested an early start at 8:15 to beat the crowds. It’s about an hour drive to the park gates, where we paid our entrance fees and continued on towards Cape Point.

Everyone stops at Cape Point to walk up to the lighthouse (there’s also a funicular but it was out of service today). Due to early hour, we had it mostly to ourselves. There’s nice views of the ocean and Cape of Good Hope. We could also see the boardwalk from Cape Point to Cape of Good Hope, which was our next activity.

It takes about 45 minutes to walk one way. Roger drove to the other side to pick us up. We saw some elands along the way. The boardwalk is in rough shape - some boards were broken in half, and most felt like a heavy step could snap them. But we survived.

We had lunch reservations at Two Oceans, which overlooks False Bay. Supposedly it’s where you can see the Atlantic Ocean and Southern Ocean meet, but in reality it’s just all blue water. (We had the same experience in Dominica trying to see where the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic meet). The lunch was pretty good, given that you’re really here for the views.

Next on the itinerary was Boulders Beach, home of a colony of African penguins. Unfortunately access was blocked because of overcrowding (too many tourists today!), so we had to skip it.

We cut across the peninsula back to the west side to drive along Chapman’ s Peak, a spectacular drive.

Roger then tried to find something else to fill the time (as we’d missed the penguins). We stopped for a coffee, and then drove through the popular beach communities around Camps Bay and Clifton. It was jam-packed today, and we crawled in traffic for about 90 minutes. I would have preferred to have skipped all of it and just got home early but oh well.

We pushed out our dinner reservations to 8pm cause we were still full from lunch . We ate at Manna Epicure, a French restaurant with snobby waitstaff and good food. Walked back home along the hip and busy Kloof St.

Cape Town, South Africa

Happy New Year! As is our tradition, we booked something for Jan 1 morning that is otherwise very busy. This year it was the cableway up to the top of Table Mountain.

It took a while to get an Uber from the hotel, I guess most drivers were working late last night. We had pre-booked FastTrack tickets for the 10am-10:30 window. We managed to get on the next cable car after arriving (capacity is about 65 people). According to the internet, usually there’s a 2-3 car backlog, about 30 minutes, even for the FastTrack. Our Jan 1 morning strategy paid off again!

We had perfect weather: low wind, about 22C, and not a cloud in the sky. We did a little circuit around the top, about half on the boardwalk and half on the rocky path. There’s pretty orange flowers growing alongside the path, which Marissa initially mistook for flags marking the trail, lol.

We spent about 90 minutes at the top, including lots of stops for pictures, and stopping in at the gift shop.

We caught the next car going down as well. It’s a four minute ride, and the car spins about a one full revolution along the way, so everyone gets a view out the front.

We took another Uber to Bo-Kaap, near the waterfront. (All the Uber rides here are about 8 CAD, it’s a compact city). Bo-Kaap is known for its brightly painted houses & cobblestone streets. It’s a multicultural neighbourhood, about half Muslim. It’s very picturesque.

Had a tasty döner at one of the few places open (Jan 1 is a public holiday). Dropped into an art gallery for photo inspiration, walked around and took more pics.

We then made our way to the boutique shops and cafes along Bree St / Loop St / Long St. Unfortunately almost everything was closed here too. Jan 1 is a tricky day on vacations, but at least we saw Table Mountain and the street scenes in Bo-Kaap.

We walked the rest of the way back to the hotel, about 30 minutes. It’s way more pedestrian-friendly in Cape Town vs Johannesburg, and as safe as any big city in the central areas of town.

We relaxed back at the hotel, still full from our döners at lunch. We had dinner reservations at Carne on Kloof at 7pm, which was okay. I think most restaurants had trouble staffing Jan 1.

Cape Town, South Africa

We drove from Windhoek to the airport at dawn. The car rental return with Europcar was quick and easy. We drove 2,637km over the past two weeks, averaging about 300km per driving day. That’s more than I imagined, and further than we drove on the South Island in NZ. Most of it was over gravel roads too. Our Toyota Fortuner held up pretty well over all the bumps, and I was was suitably impressed with our Peak Design car mount.

Check-in with Airlink was also quick and easy. We had some time to kill cause everything had been so quick, so grabbed a cappuccino and croissant before dumping our water and going through security and immigration.

Windhoek’s international airport is pretty small - there were only eight gates, and about ten departures today. Checked out the souvenir shops and used up our remaining Namibian dollars.

The flight to Cape Town took under two hours. Airlink served a decent meal again - they’re a really good regional airline. Not sure what I will do with my Skybucks frequent flyer points though.

The immigration line up at Cape Town was huge - it looked like all the big jets from Europe arrived just before us. We took bets, Heather won with a guess of 1h15 that was almost bang-on. (I had guessed 2h, and Marissa 1h30). The immigration officer was very friendly once we actually got to the front of the line, maybe cause we’re commonwealth.

As expected, our luggage was waiting for us (I had checked the AirTags so we knew it had made it here). Customs waved us through and then we searched for our driver. The poor guy had been waiting the whole time, holding up the sign with our names for the past 90 minutes as passengers slowly streamed out. Marissa quickly got a SIM card, and then we were off.

Got a whirlwind tour of Cape Town on the drive into the hotel. We’re staying at Derwent Boutique Hotel in the Tamboerskloof neighbourhood of Cape Town, walking distance to all the restaurants along Kloof St.

Relaxed the rest of the afternoon, and then met up for the NYE mini-celebration at 5pm for the hotel guests. Chatted with the owners, who are Canadian. At 6pm we left for dinner at the Black Sheep, we had the early seating and had to be done by 8pm. The food and service were excellent, with an amazing view of Table Mountain as a bonus. (All the restaurants we are dining at in Cape Town are recommendations from the hotel owners).

We stayed up until midnight to celebrate the New Year for the first time in years. We had a nice view of the fireworks over the V&A Waterfront from our deck. The air had cooled to about 18C, very comfortable for sleeping.

Windhoek, Namibia

We ended the safari part of our trip today. Marissa got up early for the morning game drive. Heather and I had a leisurely breakfast, watching the wildlife grazing in the savannah.

We were on the road by 10am, on the B1 back to Windhoek. There was nice scenery but boring to drive, just a straight road and no other cars.

Marissa had learned about the different types of fences on one of her educational excursions. At the time she thought it was knowledge she’d never use, but now we found it really interesting because we could identify private reserves vs farms or other land uses. A lot of the land approaching Windhoek was private reserves.

The guidebook said there was a good curio place just outside Otjiwarongo but we didn’t see anything. The A1 started shortly after, a divided highway with two lanes in each direction, speed limit 120km/h and devoid of other vehicles. Seemed like a lot of infrastructure for us.

We reached our hotel, the Olive Grove, around 1pm. Checked in, had some lunch, and then went into town for some souvenir shopping. Unfortunately the main curio shop, Namibia Craft Centre, was closed over the holidays. There were a handful of stalls outside.

Back at the hotel, we reconfigured our packs for airplane mode, had a nice dinner and settled up our hotel so we could just leave in the morning. The weather was really comfortable for dinner, about 24C and low humidity.

Okonjima Nature Reserve, Namibia

It was nice and cool for our morning safari, about 18C and overcast. Marissa had joined the excursion to see the cheetah rehabilitation centre; Heather and I went on a nature drive. It was just the two of us plus our guide, Mathew.

Mathew was really knowledgeable about the local wildlife and fauna. We learnt quite a bit, even though we’ve been going on lots of game drives the past week or so. We saw a number of species we hadn’t yet seen on this trip, including dik-diks, duikers, and warthogs. We also saw a family of bat-eared foxes, and a canary, which I’ve not previously seen in the wild.

We returned to the lodge around 9:30am, and had a large breakfast (probably better classified as a brunch given the time and the amount we ate).

The safari schedule here at Okonjima Bush Camp is more what we were accustomed to - breakfast after the morning safari, a long break over the afternoon, and then an evening safari. It’s much more relaxing than the six hour excursions we had earlier on the trip.

The afternoon safari was tracking leopards, which are collared here. We started with spotting a non-collared one, which was a bonus! Our guide then used an antenna to locate two other leopards. Unfortunately they were sleeping in dense underbrush and not photographable. (I took some anyways).

The collared leopards are all named by the researchers. Our guide said that one of the leopard’s name was Luka, and we all wondered the same thing, if it lived on the 2nd floor.

We ended the game drive with a collared leopard who was resting after eating. It wasn’t interested in us and was habitualized to the vehicle, but we still got a little close to it for our comfort and the leopards imo.

Anyways we got back to the lodge a little after 8pm. We were still full from our brunch and then lunch, so it was a small dinner.

Okonjima Nature Reserve, Namibia

We’ve seen a lot of cool stuff this trip, but today we saw something that was out of this world! We checked out of the Mushara Outpost and headed east on the C38. It’s paved roads the rest of the road trip, yay!

We had a detour past Grootfontein to see the Hoba Meteorite, the largest intact meteorite on earth. It’s estimated at 60 tonnes, and remains where it landed. It skipped into the ground, so there’s no crater. Up until 1987, it just sat in a farmer’s field, when it was donated by the farmer to the state. Combined with Namibia’s independence in 1990, it has become a proper tourist attraction, with security to prevent vandalism and the like. We paid our admission (about 20 CAD), had a short 10 minute guided tour, took our pics and touched the meteorite. It’s probably the only time I’ll touch something not from earth.

We stopped for a break in Otavi. Had some really good chips (french fries), topped up the gas tank, and carried on to Okonjima Bush Camp, our final safari lodge of the trip. The landscape had changed back to dry desert and shrubs. We had just gotten used to the humidity around Etosha!

The chalets at Okonjima Bush Camp are spaced about 100m apart and all have private views of the savannah. There’s no a/c, but unlike the pizza ovens we slept in at Rostock Ritz, these actually worked at cooling down the inside.

We were too late for the afternoon game drive so just relaxed in our chalets. We had dinner after sunset, enjoying the lack of big moths we encountered in the (wet) Etosha area. We had an early start for safari tomorrow morning so went to bed early.

Etosha, Namibia

Today was big cat day! We were hoping to see the big cats today in Etosha NP: lions, cheetahs, and leopards.

We had an excellent breakfast as we watched dawn break and listened to the birds and other creatures wake up the day.

At 6:30am we met our guide (we never caught her name) and were off, just the three of us in the back.

We retraced our route from yesterday for the first hour, until we cut off from the C38 in the park. Along the way in we saw a Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl, a type of owl. Either our guide spotted it, or more likely knew its favourite spot; both boded well for the safari :)

We saw a clan of spotted hyenas, including a very young one. Watched them play around for a few minutes. Our guide was in contact over the radio with her colleagues to find out where game had been spotted. They used a numbered code to identify animals, by size. We were most interested in the 3s (lion), 4s (leopard) and 5s (cheetah).

We got word of some 5s beside some road. Our guide checked with us if we were okay with doing 60km/h (the speed limit, although in an open air safari vehicle on dirt roads, it was dusty), and then took off like a bat out of hell, at 80km/h. She was quite the character, we really liked her as a guide.

We saw the two cheetahs at a distance, not really worth a pic yet. Our guide said they might come towards the road, so we waited. She had a tea in the meantime. Then her radio called out about a 4, in action, and she quickly turned, said ‘Hold my tea’ and we took off at 80km/h again.

It was a leopard stalking a baby zebra! I think every guided safari in the park was at the location, at least a dozen vehicles (one disadvantage of national parks vs private reserves). Marissa wasn’t comfortable with watching a kill, so we took some pics and then went back to the cheetahs.

The cheetahs had since made their way to the road! And were drinking from a small puddle at the side of the road. We took lots of pics. Our guide got on the radio excitedly to her colleagues ‘5 on the road! You must push!’ (meaning go fast). We found her hilarious.

Drove around some more, and saw another pair of cheetahs, and then a leopard in a tree! Our guide was very surprised at the volume of cats - normally these are very difficult to spot in rainy season.

We returned back to the lodge around noon, a very enjoyable game drive thanks to our guide.

The afternoon game drive was at 3pm, which didn’t leave much down time. Instead, Heather and I opted out, and were planning to do some birdwatching on the property. Marissa went on the drive, joined by some other random guests. The guide saved her the full front row though :)

Our bird watching didn’t pan out as it absolutely poured rain all afternoon. We actually enjoyed relaxing in our tent with the rain coming down, so it all worked out :)

We chatted with some of the other guests in the main lodge. Everyone had done the same circuit (it’s really just a choice of clockwise or counterclockwise) and in fact we had mostly stayed at the same places (also not a surprise, as there’s not many options at each price point).

Marissa arrived after her game drive and we sat down for dinner. It was at a communal table, so we chatted some more with the other guests. Marissa had seen a lion, We had grilled beef with a pepper sauce, it was the yummiest yet. The kitchen here at Mushara Outpost is excellent.