Namibia Safari February-March 2021

View from the top of Spreetshoogte Pass

Part 2. Walvis Bay - Swakopmund - Erongo Conservancy - Spitzkoppe - Waterberg National Park

We drove through Namib-Naukluft National Park to Walvis Bay and much of the scenery was like something beamed to us from the Mars Rover.  On the way we took a side trip to the Spreetshoogte Pass for a chance of finding a Herero Chat.  We failed to find the chat but did see Monotonous Lark (poor bird!) and Nicholson’s Pipit as lifers for me.  Later at the Gaub River crossing I found a couple of Icterine Warblers - the third lifer for the day.  This drive, almost exclusively on smooth, wide gravel roads was some 420 km.  It was 3 hours before we saw our first car and we only saw six cars until we reached the outskirts of Walvis Bay.  This is an empty country!

Namib-Naukluft National Park

Namib-Naukluft National Park

Lots of these stone sculptures along the way.

Swakopmund

Walvis Bay and Swakopmund further north are tourist towns and often fill up with South African visitors - many of whom have holiday homes here.  We stayed in Swakopmund at the comfortable and convenient Mole Guesthouse.  There is a great pub The Old Sailer a few minutes walk away and we enjoyed perusing their menu each night after the minimal offerings in the National Park restaurants.  We spent several hours driving around the Walvis Bay salt works and nearby marshes for waders, gulls and terns.

White-winged Tern

Damara Terns

Hartlaub's Gull

Little Egret

Kelp Gull

White-fronted Plover chick

Lesser Flamingos

Next we headed inland to the Erongo Conservancy with a stop at Spitzkoppe.  This is a spectacular assembly of rocky peaks similar to Kata Tjuta in central Australia.  We were trying again for the Herero Chat but arriving late morning on a hot day doesn’t give you much of a chance and we failed again.  We pushed on to the Ai-Aiba Rock Painting Lodge set in some of the most spectacular scenery Namibia has to offer (and that’s saying something!).  Here we had a driving free day and wandered the trails around the lodge.  In the late afternoon we went on their sunset drive to look at the rock art and see what wildlife was about.  A lovely lodge!  It was a bit disconcerting however to be eating Oryx steak at dinner (delicious) and having the manager point out the Oryx coming to drink at the waterhole nearby.

Spitzkoppe

Klipspringer at Spitzkoppe

Pale-winged Starling

Erongo Conservancy boulders

Rock art

Cape Bunting

Monterio's Hornbill

Black-faced Canary

Dusky Sunbird

African Red-eyed Bulbul

Ai-Aiba Rock Painting Lodge

On to the Waterberg Plateau National Park for a couple of nights.  Another spectacular mountain range with multicoloured cliffs and trails that take you up to the various habitats.  Unfortunately this park needs some attention and the trails were in poor condition.  Boardwalks and bridges have disintegrated on one and others are badly overgrown to the point where we couldn’t find the start of them.  I scrambled up the trail to the cliff base each afternoon to look for the Rockrunner we had seen there in 2015 but this time it was not showing itself.  The restaurant was huge and could probably cater for 200 people but there were few of us at this time.  We asked for beers on the first evening only to be told there was no alcohol.  Oh well - “two cokes please”.  Then the women at the adjacent table were brought red wine.  Clearly wine isn’t alcohol!

Waterberg Plateau National Park

Rainbow cliffs, Waterberg Plateau NP

Yellow-spotted Hyrax

Red-billed Spurfowl

Grey Go-away-bird

White-browed Scrub Robin

Banded Mongoose family

Damara Dikdik

After Waterberg my bird list was 180 species with an extra four lifers (Monotonous Lark, Nicholson’s Pipit, Icterine Warbler and Hartlaub’s Spurfowl).  In 2015, with the great birding along the Caprivi Strip, I saw 254 species.  Could I beat that total on this trip?