kelley13

We only have seven days in Namibia for our first visit (other two weeks we'll be in South Africa visiting my husband's family) and will be travelling with our (almost) 2 year old son and another couple. We just decided to go and are in the very early planning phase--but think we'd like to do Sossusvlei and Etosha--not sure if there's time for anywhere else. We think we want to self-drive the entire time, but are open to flying. Any advice on our itinerary would be very much appreciated.

bat

hi kelley:
I do not have any personal advice but here are a couple of threads that may help while you wait for first hand advice.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34873895

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34905132

kimburu

We're hoping to go in April and my understanding is that in February the game viewing in Etosha may not be as good as you would expect because the rains means the animals don't have to come to the permanent waterholes and the roads are all placed to lead to these waterholes. If seeing the wildlife is the goal, you might be better elsewhere... gret for birds though, apparently. In any case you certainly need to take into account the time of year - your experience everywhere may well be quite different to that of people who visited in the dry season. Anyway, I'd really appreciate it if you report back on your experience because there appears to be very little information on wet season trips in Namibia.

You certainly have time for one more place in 7 days if you are counting from arrival in Windhoek or flying in, and likewise on the way out. I don;t think it would be practical to drive from the South African border to Sossusvlei in a single day. If you fly in, there is a flight from Cape Town to Walvis Bay and you can then add Swakopmund to your trip without eating up any time travelling (it's roughly equidistant with Windhoek from Sossussvlei). If you have an ides of what kind of thing you are interested in - or where you'd like to go - I'm sure people could give you some good advice.

kelley13

Thanks for your responses bat and kimburu. We will be flying in and out of Windhoek (in from Joburg, out to Capetown or vice versa).

We would really like to experience Etosha. While game viewing is definitely a priority, we've all been lucky enough to experience that on other occassions in SA. I've contacted a couple of local travel operators to inquire about what to expect during the rainy season. I will definitely report back here on what they say.

We are trying to arrange the entire trip so we can fly from Capetown to Walvis Bay as you suggested kimburu.

We know we'd like to stay at Okaukuejo in Etosha if possible. In Sosusvlei we would like to stay somewhere a bit more upscale that also welcomes children.

We'd like to experience as much of Namibia as we can--by this I mean the countryside and the people. We prefer independent travel to oraganized activities and have found this works better when we travel with our son.

I hope this gives a better picture of what we are looking for. I welcome any suggestions.

travel4flowers

I think 7 days is going to be tight to try to see both Etosha and Sossusvlei. We did both on a self-drive in Sept 2004 and it took us 8 days and we felt rushed. Here is what we did
Cape Town - Windhoek (1pm arrival) - Waterburg
Waterburg - Etosha (Halali) 2 nights
Etosha - Erongo
Erongo - Swakomund
Swakomund - Sossusvlei (2 nights)
Sossusvlei - Windhoek
Windhoek - US via J'Burg

We drove for about 4 hours most days except from Swakomund to Sossusvlei and that took us about 6 hours because we stopped to check out the Namib Desert along the way.

We originally wanted to go to Sossusvlie at first but we couldn't get Etosha reservations when we wanted so we switched. That might have added a night.

travel4flowers

I was going to add that we used Cardboard Box for planning and they were great.