Roxanne Reid's Blog, page 19

NamibRand Nature Reserve: put it on your life list

By Roxanne Reid
I fell in love when I first saw a photograph of the endless vista that is the NamibRand Nature Reserve in southern Namibia, and I’ve wanted to experience it ever since. Now that I have, I recommend that you put it on your life list if you’re the sort of person who gets joy from beauty and wilderness. Photographs of the NamibRand show red sand dunes, grey-mauve mountains and golden grass plains. Being surrounded by them in real life certainly made me catch my breath, but eve...

Visit African penguins at Boulders Beach, Simon’s Town

By Roxanne Reid
A favourite thing to do on any visit to Cape Town is to visit African penguins at Boulders Beach, Simon’s Town. The best place is from the boardwalk between Seaforth and Boulders, where you can get fairly close as they waddle around in their dinner jackets, without disturbing them or their beach digs. This flightless bird is the only penguin that breeds in Africa. From just two breeding pairs in 1982, the colony here has grown to over 2000 birds.
The main entrance, wher...

Mbunza Living Museum, Kavango, Namibia

By Roxanne Reid
There’s no better way to learn about another culture than from its people. When we stayed at Hakusembe River Lodge on the Kavango River in Namibia, about 15km from Rundu, the Mbunza Living Museum was within spitting distance, so we took a walk there to explore. Our guide Sebron Ruben explained, ‘We consulted the old people in the village about the old ways before the museum opened, because many of the old ways aren’t used anymore.’ The Mbunza Living Museum was set up with t...

Olifantsrus campsite in Etosha National Park

By Roxanne Reid
Olifantsrus campsite in Etosha National Park in Namibia is the park’s newest camp and it’s a wonderfully different experience. For the first time in Etosha’s history it’s a dedicated campsite, with not a chalet to be seen. And it’s in the western section of the park that was previously closed to ordinary tourists. Coming from Kamanjab in Kunene, we entered through Galton Gate, from where it was about 60km to the camp. Game along this drive wasn’t plentiful, but we did see g...

Mogg’s Country Cookhouse, Hermanus: a winning recipe

By Roxanne Reid
How often do you have a three-course menu at a restaurant and find that just one of them was worth getting excited about? Visit Mogg’s Country Cookhouse, Hermanus, and you won’t have that problem; they have a winning recipe and you’ll get three five-star courses exploding with flavour. We’ve been to Mogg’s Country Cookhouse in the beautiful Hemel-en-Aarde Valley of the Overberg at least 20 times in as many years and we’ve always left happy. That’s 10 out of 10 for consisten...

Nunda River Lodge’s campsite in northeastern Namibia

By Roxanne Reid
After a long day of driving in the heat of the African sun, it was hard not to fall in love with Nunda River Lodge’s campsite near Divundu in the Kavango region of northeastern Namibia. Part of Open Africa’s Four Rivers Route(Kavango, Kwando, Zambezi and Chobe) this was one of the nicest campsites of our two-month, 11000-kilometre roadtrip in Namibia. Nunda in the language of the Hambukushu people means the fruit of the jackalberry tree (which I discovered smells and tastes...

Lions at a kill, Mountain Zebra National Park

By Roxanne Reid
In April 2013, 130 years after they had last roamed free in the area, lions were introduced to the Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock in the Eastern Cape Karoo. On a recent visit we were lucky enough to see these lions at a kill on the Kranskop Loop. On our morning drive we’d stopped at the view point at the top of the pass near the 1957-metre Bakenkop peak. Here a sign urged us to check for lions before getting out of our car to appreciate the view. We chuckled beca...

Namibia’s Okonjima Lodges: room with a view

By Roxanne Reid
I was resting on my bed at one of Namibia’s Okonjima Lodges. I could hear a black-backed jackal howling; from the picture window I could see a gemsbok silhouetted against the setting sun. It was hard to leave our fabulous room with a view for meals and activities, but we’d done it – and were glad we did. We’d spent a wonderful day at Okonjima Lodge’s Plains Camp. We’d been leopard trackingearly in the morning. In the afternoon our guide Martin Njekwa had told us more about...

7 of my favourite books about Africa

By Roxanne Reid
Over the Christmas break I've been doing some reading and re-reading of old favourites. Some of you might still be on holiday for another few days. Whether you're lazing on the beach, hiking in the mountains or even chilling at home, you're bound to have more time to read. So I've chosen 7 ofmy favourite books about Africato share with you.From Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya and Ethiopia to Nigeria, the DRC and Liberia, these 7 books range from novels to memoirs, but they all have one...

6 travel highlights of 2015

By Roxanne Reid
There’s nothing I love more than a road trip, whether it’s a weekend just 100km from home or a multi-week journey across different countries. And 2015 has been a wonderful year of roadheart – defined by author Mary Sojourner as ‘The much to be desired condition of suddenly finding everything astonishing, fascinating, and unique the second you are on a roadtrip … so that even the local gas station becomes full of characters and stories.’ Here are my 6travel highlights of 2015....