Sunday, June 15, 2025

We got up at 6:45 and got ready. I went outside on the porch several times to take pictures. I walked to the main building and used the Internet outside the door. It was chilly but the sun also felt warm. The scenery was incredible! 

The Internet worked but was really slow to upload pictures to my blog. The others joined us a little after 8. Breakfast was wonderful. There was a buffet with cereal, yogurt, fruit, toast, coffee, juice, and more. Then they came around to the tables and took orders for eggs and bacon. I posted about Johannesburg on Facebook. Then we got ready to go. We loaded the luggage and then I noticed that one of our tires was flat. We unloaded the luggage and Kelvin and Colin worked on changing the tire. They had trouble getting the spare off the vehicle, but thankfully one of the men who worked there helped. 

It didn’t take too long and then we got on the road. As we drove, we saw 1 blesbok, 2 kudu, and 1 baboon. The road was very bumpy and rocky. We drove to Solitaire where we stopped to get our tire repaired. They had a bakery there so we had lunch. I had a chicken pie and then Tammy and I split a blueberry tart and a lemon shortbread cookie. 

After the tire was patched, we took pictures of some old cars they had for decoration. 

We saw a ground squirrel as we were driving out of the parking lot. 

We drove through the mountains. Most of the roads were dirt/rock. You kind of made your own lane except when a vehicle was approaching. There were holes and big ruts in the road. In some places, the road was super wide (4-6 lanes wide) because people kept driving on the edge of the road where it was smoother. We enjoyed watching for wildlife and appreciating the landscape. It took about 2-2.5 more hours to reach the place where we were staying. We saw lots of gemsbok (oryx) on the way… around 23! We also saw many cows, some horses, and a few goats. 

We arrived around 4 at the Elegant Desert Lodge. 

After we booked it, we kept calling it the “Elephant Dessert Lodge,” so that is our nickname for it. The lodge was very elegant with beautiful landscaping. There was a weaver bird nest hanging up in the lobby. We thought it was for decoration for the tourists, but we found out the next day that weaver birds actually live inside it! We signed up for a hot air balloon ride the next day and a sundowner tour that night. We had about an hour before we had to leave on the tour. We had some cinnamon roll-ish treats and sat outside with Kelvin and Sandra. 

Our sundowner tour was just the six of us, which was nice because we all got an edge seat in the vehicle. They used a pick-up truck that had an attachment on top of the truck bed with seats and a roof. We were high up so we could see well. It was bumpy as they drove us on paths. Daniel was our guide and he took us to see a huge weaver bird nest where the birds were really active. He explained that the males build the nest and the females inspect it and if they like it they will move in. Hundreds of birds can live in one nest. We could hear the babies chirping and saw lots of birds flying in and out. Daniel said that you have to be careful near the nests because sometimes cobras go up into the nests to eat the birds and they can drop onto your head!

Next, he took us to see a “bushman” painting on the side of a rock. He said that the paintings were 5,000-6,000 years old. One was a horse and the second was a springbok.

We stopped by an endangered Namibian plant called the Elephant Foot. Many people who try to smuggle it out of the country are put in prison. 

After that, we drove to a hill we could climb to see the sunset better. It was gorgeous. 

In about 20 minutes, Daniel whistled for us to come down and they had drinks and snacks for us to enjoy while we watched the sunset. There was lots of alcohol and soft drinks. The snack trays had biltong (South African jerky), nuts, chips, and dried fruit. There was a desert rat that kept coming out of a hole. Daniel tossed some ice and banana chips on the ground and the desert rat would come and take them. He was much cuter than the name implies.

After the sun had mostly set, we got back in the vehicle and headed back to the lodge. We quickly got ready for dinner and went to the main building. There was a set menu with four courses. We had asparagus soup, a salad with apples, corn, and hard-boiled eggs, delicious rolls, oryx steak, vegetables with cheese sauce, rice, and malva pudding for dessert. 

The dinner lasted almost two hours. We went back to our room and I took a shower. Tammy and I had two twin beds that were surrounded by a shared mosquito net. There was an African bedtime story on our beds with a sweet treat of white chocolate with something crunchy in it. There was a sign on the wall that said not to leave anything outside or the jackals will eat it!

I couldn’t get connected to the Internet, but I did write a bit in my blog before going to sleep.