We are back from our trip to Africa. I would say that it was a once in a lifetime trip but I know that since this is our second trip to Africa and that we have it in our blood and will certainly go back. I will post the details of the trip shortly but I wanted to post our itinerary for those who might be leaving shortly. We booked our trip through African Adventure Company in Florida. A portion of the trip was booked very specifically because there were places that we wanted to see. We wanted to see the dunes at Sossusvlei and the remoteness of the Skeleton Coast. We spent two nights at Little Kulala and then three nights at the Skeleton Coast Camp. We then headed to the Delta to see the animals. We stayed at Vumbura Plains for two nights and then Mombo Camp for two nights before heading to Jacks Camp for three nights to see the meerkats We ended our vacation in Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls. We meets wonderful people along the way and learned about each environment and location. Each location was very different from the other and each offers an abundance scenery and memories in their own regard.

For those leaving shortly, DRESS WARMLY. It will warm up during the day but when that sun goes down it is cold. We had one morning at the Skeleton Coast where it was 43 degrees inside the tent. Don't forget gloves. I would have traded the swimsuit for an extra sweatshirt with anybody offering. The ponchos in the vehicles will keep you warm but not your hands for taking pictures. Each camp has plenty of shower items so don't drag along all your shower gear, shampoos, conditioners, soaps etc.

I'll post pictures and the details of each camp and transfer shortly.

Day One and Day Two

We fly from Chicago to Dulles and then directly on to J'burg. We fly South African Airlines. South African Airlines was very deligent about making sure that everybody who was checking in had the two facing pages available in their passports. In fact this lead to some fun at the Dulles Airport. While we were at the gate killing time until boarding we notice a group of about 50 people all wearing "Global Venture" t-shirts. They were all headed to J'burg. They had a film crew with them who we picked up was filming their "adventure". Well the "leader" of this group apparently didn't know he was suppose to have two facing pages on his passport. Guess what? SA airlines wasn't about to let him board the plane. The Flight is scheduled to leave at 5:00 p.m. and the last we saw of the "leader" was him leaving the airport at 3:45 p.m. to try and find someplace in Washington D.C. on a Friday afternoon that was going to put extra pages in his passport. Needless to say he didn't make the flight. Anyway, the flight was miserable. Any flight that long is bound to be miserable. SA airlines has movies on demand. They also show a few TV shows and their are a few games. But after about five movies, three TV shows and a few games their is not much to keep you entertained.

When we landed to J'burg we were a bit earlier so we just walked across the street to the Sun Intercontinental. The hotel is a stones throw away and I'm glad that I didn't have a transport to a hotel. We didn't see your Wilderness representative when we landed so we went to the hotel without her. She did eventually find us and pass on the rest of your vouchers and flight information. We were pretty tired after the flight and ended up just having dinner at the "Quill" at the hotel.

The Hotel is very quite and you'd never know you were at the Airport. I would recommend a night here.

June 3rd Sunday

Today we were up and back to the airport for the fight to Windhoek. I hope that when the construction is finally finished at the airport that they do away with the shuttles to the planes and everybody get a real gate. The flight to Windhoek is about two hours. When we clear customs and collect our bags we meet your pilot who is taking us to Little Kulala. We end up flying from the international airport down to Eoros Airport so that we can switch planes. The trip between airports doesn't take more that 15 minutes. After switching planes, to what appeared to be an even smaller airplane we were off to Little Kulala. I'm a bit of a white knuckle flyer. The flight to Little Kulala takes about an hours. The flight takes you through the Nafit-Namib mountains and had I had the nerve to look I'm sure the scenery was beautiful. Just kidding. The scenery was cool.

Up next... Little Kulala and the Sossusvlei Dunes

Thanks for starting your report. We're leaving Tuesday for a similar itinerary. Besides warm clothes do you have any other advice?

Leaving today for Vumbura Plains! How was it?

Vurumba Plains was great. We stayed in the the North Camp which has a great view of the water. The guides and camp staff was talking about the fact that the water was very high. They are using a different road in from the airstrip which takes about 45 minutes to get to camp before the other road is flooded. We also took a boat ride one evening and the road to the boats was completed flooded. You'll be amazed at what kind of water the Land Rovers can go through. The guides mentioned that they believed the water would get even higher. The animal viewing was great. The guides did a great job locating and then viewing the animals. Camp staff was very friendly. Have fun.

June 3rd Sunday

Today we were up and back to the airport for the fight to Windhoek. I hope that when the construction is finally finished at the airport that they do away with the shuttles to the planes and everybody get a real gate. The flight to Windhoek is about two hours. When we clear customs and collect our bags we meet your pilot who is taking us to Little Kulala. We end up flying from the international airport down to Eoros Airport so that we can switch planes. The trip between airports doesn't take more that 15 minutes. After switching planes, to what appeared to be an even smaller airplane we were off to Little Kulala. I'm a bit of a white knuckle flyer. The flight to Little Kulala takes about an hours. The flight takes you through the Nafit-Namib mountains and had I had the nerve to look I'm sure the scenery was beautiful. Just kidding. The scenery was cool. When we arrived at Little Kulala we were late which met we missed the sundowner. By staying in camp we did get to experience a great sand storm.

June 4th:

Little Kulala is situated about 45 minutes from the private gate into the park. Kulala is closer, but only by about 15 minutes. The morning was spent seeing the sun rise with the dunes as a beautiful backdrop. We then continued down into the park so that we could climb the dunes and walk down to the Sossusvelei. The scenery is amazing. Not much is anything in the way of animals. Brunch was late in the morning and was had under an tree while in the park. On the way back to Little Kulala we did stop at Kulala to look around. The lodges are very different. Kulala is very dark on the inside. The room do not have the private plunge pools. But when the temperature is 50 degrees it were wasn't going to matter. We arrive back in camp around 12:30 and had the afternoon to rest and relax because we were headed to Sesreim Canyon to view the canyon and has sundowners. The canyon is a bout 40 meters deep and not too difficult to get in and out of. Sundowner was kind of a quick affair because we all had to be out of the park by 6:30 p.m. So we tore out of there before after we had our drinks.

Dinner as at about 7:30. A complaint about Little Kulala was not the accommodations or the food which were really outstanding but really the management staff. There seemed to be a lot of "assistant" managers on site but they really didn't interact with the guests. In all of the rest of the camps the managers and assistants were always around and even dined with the guests. This didn't happen at Little Kulala. They also did not have long communal table at dinner. We asked them to move all the tables together so we could sit together. The managers did not join us for dinner. The pilots did which was a lot of fun.

June 4th

This morning started at 4:15 a.m. with a wake up call for the balloon ride. They have two different launch sites. The one that they use the day before which was about 15 minutes from the lodge and the one we got to use that was over an hour drive to the lunch site. The balloon ride was much different then the one we did in Kenya. In Kenya we were low to the group and travel some distant as we watched the animals. The balloon in Kenya carried up to 20 people. This balloon was smaller. There were eight people in the balloon plus the pilot. We covered very little distance but really went up and down in elevation. The weather was cloudy, so we went above the clouds to watch the sun rise. At one point the elevation meter read 580 meters. It really was quite high. I think everybody noticed the height. We really stayed pretty stationary in the sky. We landed about an hour later. Breakfast was served to us in the desert. The breakfast was continental, not the hot breakfast that was served in Kenya. I think that balloon ride was interesting just to see the scenery but not as exciting as in Kenya.

We were back at the lodge around 10:30 and the rest of the group who had gone back to the dunes arrive around 11:30 a.m. Today they served us lunch and gave us some options for the evening activity. Some were going up on the mountains to watch the sunset, other's were headed back to the canyon and we decided to go back to the dune to see the sunset against the dunes. The sun actually sets behind the dunes so doesn't give the same kind of shadows that you see in the morning. The idea was definitely to dress warm because the wind was really blowing and it was cold.

Let's see if this picture thing works.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePh...id=73405432811

(Next Skeleton Coast)

pictures didn't work. try using tiny url for the link. copy and paste the url for your pictures into tinyurl.com and then repost.

Let's try this again.
http://tinyurl.com/2r2e76

Ok, I think I got it.

http://tinyurl.com/35mdxf

link did not work for me. only brought up my albums. Please try again.

make sure you are typing in the link from your OPEN gallery, not the sign-in page.

http://tinyurl.com/2w63sj

I hate computers.
Kim

http://tinyurl.com/2w63sj

http://tinyurl.com/3966ek

Thanks for the help the last link it the link that I wanted. Can hardly wait to post the rest, and try it again.

Kim

None of the links are working for me. What you need to do is click on the Share Photos tab in Kodakgallery, select the album that you want to share, click Continue, and send an invitation to your own email address. At the bottom of the email you receive, there will be a link. Copy and paste that link here. You don't really need to use tinyurl because the invite link isn't that long. The invite link should look similar to my link in this thread http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34916902

Looking forward to seeing your photos!

You'll get the pictures figured out eventually.

That 2 pages in your passport rule has been around for quite a while. I cannot a group leader wouldn't know that.

Were you 2 nights at Little Kulala?

June 6-9

This morning we are flying from Little Kulala to the Skeleton Coast. Thankfully the weather is much calmer than when we arrived. We had a very early start and were off to the airport for a 07:30 departure. We were the only occupants for the flight. We fly to Swalkopmund for refueling, then some low level flying along the coast before we cut back over land to Palmwag for Africa's version of a Chinese fire drill. We now met up with the rest of our travel champions for the caravan to the Skeleton Coast. The plane is a fourteen seater with bigger tires to land at the Skeleton Coast Camp (SCC).

The SCC is set down in a little valley. When you fly in you can certainly tell that this is not your average camp. It is really remote. There is a main tent and then 6 other tents situated in the valley. The flights into SCC are two times per week, either Wednesday or Saturday. Since our flight was full the camp wasn't getting their laundry or extra supplies. Lunch was served shortly after arrival and introductions. Everyone sits at a community table and is served buffet. There are two camp guides. All activities are done together in two separate vehicles. We are told that there are three different routes that they can choose from. A Northern Circuit, which leaves camp after breakfast and takes about 10 hours and heads toward the coast and the seal colony. A Southern Circuit which heads to the coast and follows the Coast south along the beach and an interior route which heads inland and goes to Parros and the animals found in the desert. The routes depend on the weather and the fog along the coast.

Our first evening in camp consists of a short tour of the area around camp and sundowner to an area which always has water and view of the animals around this small creek. By the time we get back to camp it is DARK. They hand us a wind up flash light to head to our tents to get ready for dinner. Apparently nobody paid a lot of attention to the direction of the tents in the daylight and we forget how to find out tents in the dark. We were all wandering around laughing like little kinds trying to find our tents.

The tents are powered by solar lights after dark and give off very little light. There is hot water in the tents thanks to the solar power but don't expect to run a blow dryer. (They are very eco-aware of the water since it takes a guy 5 hours each way, every other day to go get water for the camp) In fact you won't find any outlets in the tents at all. This was the coldest of all the nights. In the morning my little travel clock said that the inside temperature of the tent was 43 degrees, at the civilized wake-up time of 6:30 a.m.

After a nice breakfast we all leave cam around 7:30. Our guides have decided that we are going to take the Northern Route and drive to the coast for lunch and then the seal colony. Kallie is out guide and his enthusiam for the area is infectious. He is from the area and really knows his stuff. The whole route for the day ends up taking almost 10 hours. The scenery and dunes were quite amazing. This place is definitely "off the grid". There were fourteen of us for the day and we never saw anyone else for the whole day. We stopped for coffee and a snack at about ten. We finally got to the coast around 12:30 in the afternoon and lunch was set up for us. After lunch we went to the sea colony at Cape Fria. We spent about 30 minutes watching and walking around the seals. There were brown-backed jackals everywhere because of the constant food source. The seal are loud and smelly but worth the trip.

We then headed south along the coast to look at the debris scattered along the coast. The drive was over two hours before we headed back inland towards the camp. We arrive back at camp shortly after five for our cocktails and a shower before dinner.

By the time the hot water gets to the shower you certainly work quickly since the room temperature is about 60 degrees. Tonight's dinner is either Oryx or Atlantic KingKlip which had been caught by the previous guests.

The next day we head inland to see the "traditional" himba village and the desert animals. We had the chance to see desert elephants and giraffe and meercats all before our morning coffee break. The "traditional" village is always an interesting tourist adventure. I always think of the movie Crocidille Dundee when they take you to these villages to see the locals. I found the school at Paros much more interesting and the way the private donations and Wilderness Safaris is supporting the school. After lunch we headed back to camp via a canyon which contains a natural spring. The weather finally had warmed up enough to sit up top of the vehicle. We are back at the camp around 4:30. Tonights dinner is a cook-out of sorts. I could hardly wait for the complaining to start because it was cold. It just reminds me that so much of a good safari depends our your travel campanions who generally you don't choose and can't get rid of.

The following morning before the plane arrived you had the choice of a walk around camp to look at the little things or a drive to the coast to due so surf fishing from Rocky Point. Opt for the fishing. I was really fun ad required no skill. The five of us who went ended up with 6 fish in about 45 minutes.

After a quick drive back to camp we are given a sack lunch and leave the SCC for Windhoek.

(Next night in Windhoek)

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...1&y=okqux4

I hope this works.

Kim

That link worked, thanks!