Day 8 - Sunday drive to Tents

Once again it was a 0630 breakfast followed by hitting that dusty trail at 0730 for our long, long drive. 

Flat scrub brush with rock covered soil was the scenery. We came across a couple of baboons early by a dried up riverbed that still had some green trees along it, and also an Oryx and a couple of Springbok. 

We are becoming accustomed to seeing Oryxx and Springboks as they are the most common in this area. Today was to be a long, boring day that would be spent in the bus looking out over rock covered flat terrain. There were these odd shaped rock hills everywhere and it is a very inhospitable area overall. Lunch is in a hamlet sized place. While waiting for our sandwiches to be made I ordered a Shandy and wandered up the street with Bob to visit the local hardware store that had a bit of everything. 

 The time we reached our tents everyone was tired of the bus, although in the last couple of hours the landscape now had some mountainous hills and there was much more dry grass than rocks. 

Our tents were a mix of Adobe walls, cement floors and canvas roof and windows. There was electricity, no internet or air conditioning. It was a long walk for Bob and I to the reception which is where the pool and small bar were. I went for a dip in the pool which was about the size of 4 bathtubs but very cool and refreshing. We relaxed in the tent until 6:45 PM which is when we met to be bussed up the road about 3 km for supper. Supper was at the sister lodge to where we were staying and quite up scaled in features. Dinner was an extravagant buffet outside with candlelight and an almost full moon for light. There was quite an array of salads including Sushi, salmon, and soup. The main course was cooked in front of you at a station where they had 2 chefs. At one grill there was a selection of beef, chicken or pork, bbq'd to your desire. At the other grill you had a choice of 9 different types of wild game, including gazelle, impala, Oryx, ostrich, eland, kodu, Wildebeast, springbok and I can't recall the last one lol. On this night I tried the impala and eland, neither of which I liked that much.  There was another station where you could choose your selection of western stir fry. 

Our dinners seem to take about 2 to 2.5 hours and it was 9: 30 before we were paying our bills. The place was packed and the waiters did an amazing job of reading the bills by candlelight and adding up individual bills by hand. There were a lot of Germans in this lodge. 

We were not up to late as we had an early day again tomorrow to visit the red dunes of Namibia.