Africa 2017- Day 22

Day 22- Little Kuala Camp

This morning we drove back to the airport, but this time, we were ushered into a small, private lounge for Wilderness Safari’s transportation wing, Wilderness Air.  Here we met our pilot and were ushered through “security” out onto the tarmac.  Our light aircraft (a Cessna Caravan) looked tiny compared to its big brothers from Boeing and Airbus.  

The flight to Soususflei took about 1 hour and gave us a look from the air at the spectacular scenery we would be treated to on the ground.  The gravel airstrip in the desert was about a 15 minute drive to the camp.

Fairy Circles- Aliens or something more sinister?

Fairy Circles

Fairy Circles

More Fairy Circles

Litle Kulala is a small, 11 accommodation (thus the name), luxury camp, and I do mean luxury.  We were guided to our home away from home (unit 4, not the end of the line!) after a welcome drink and cold towels.  We walked through a gate surrounding our unit into a private outdoor lounging area with a private plunge pool and a western view of the desert.  Inside, there was a large bedroom area with ceiling to floor glass wall again with western desert views and A/C.  Going back outside to the lounging area, we found a staircase to an upper deck with another king bed for sleeping under the stars.  Not too shabby.

                                   

                                         

View from the bed

Sleeping Al Fresco on the upper deck

Communal pool

                                            

We went for a short afternoon “sundowner” drive with our guide, Eric, and an older British couple with whom we had flown in.  We were paired up with them by chance, and already began missing our OAT travel group.  If you thought I was a pain in the neck with all my picture snapping, I paled by comparison.  We made a few stops to take pictures of a wooden bridge  and trees, etc. 

and didn’t quite make the spot that Eric wanted to take us to, but did manage to catch a nice sundown.  Sunsets here, though, were not as amazing as we had been seeing in other parts of southern Africa, primarily due to the lack of any clouds.  It seemed to go from bright light, to red at the horizon, then pitch black.

Before dinner, we sat down with Eric to plan the next 2 days’ activities.  We had planned to go ballooning one morning, but after we did the conversion from Namibian dollars (and rechecked it several times, because we couldn’t believe the computational result) we elected to remain on the ground.  The cost was over $1,000 for the two of us for about an hour flight (though it did include a champagne breakfast) in a balloon basket with 16 of your closest friends. We were able to think of a bout 100 other better uses for the money.  Tomorrow we planned to go to Soususflei National Park.  The British couple was pushing Eric to leave earlier than his planned 6 am because they wanted to see the sun rise over the dunes.  Although he explained that we would have to wait to enter the park until the sun came up (by law), they pushed to get to the park gate early and rush in as soon as possible.  Eric and Jeri and I reluctantly agreed.  The next day we planned to see Sesriem Canyon in the morning (with a much more civilized departure of 8, after breakfast).

Dinner was excellent with great ambience.  We sat on the deck overlooking the dunes.  There was a watering hole about 50 yards from us with a spotlight which allowed for game viewing while we ate.  Tonight we dined on Oryx and prayed one did not come by and give us dirty looks.

We decided to sleep under the stars tonight, so our outdoor bed was made up for us along with the requisite mosquito netting.  The stars and Milky Way were beautiful especially without the light pollution normally a factor.  As we settled in for the night, though, the full moon began to rise.  Sleeping became a bit difficult with a spotlight on us, so after an hour or so, we traded our view of the stars for our darkened, air-conditioned room.  Nice idea but bad timing-14 days later would have been perfect.

Tomorrow we have to get up very early (5 am- this is definitely not a sleeping vacation) to get to the sand dunes of Sususflei in National Park as the sun comes up.