After leaving Etosha, we spent a delightful day of rest in Tsumeb, before travelling south to the Waterberg Plateau. After all the safari excitement, we needed a day in one place to rest without being ‘wowed’ by anything! Clare had sourced the perfect place, where we had a private little chalet in a sort of resort. There were big enough gardens to provide a gentle leg stretch and a restaurant to provide evening meals, so we didn’t even need to drive the truck anywhere. We had planned on walking into the town in the afternoon for a coffee and a look around, but only got as for as the pool side bar, where we settled for no walking and an afternoon cold beer instead! 

With a couple of steak meals inside us and a relaxing 24 hours, we felt set up nicely to move on the next day feeling refreshed and ready for the next adventure!!

Apart from passing a bizarre castle, the road was straight and quiet. First on tarmac, then the final bit on red sandy tracks, rather than gravel ones. 

We’ve been assigned a little camp area with under cover area and a flat-ish place to park the van. The toilet/showers block are shared with four other pitches, but everyone has their own assigned facilities within the building. 

One of the things that attracted us to this area is that there are some hiking trails that you can do without an official park guide. Once we’d got camp established, we set out to take a short walk up to the Plateau Lodge. In the afternoons, it’s a bit hot for hiking, so being only a kilometre or two away, this seemed like a reasonable objective – and with the possibility of being able to get a cold drink once we got there. We were right on both accounts! The view from the lodge terrace, which is located just below the plateau rim was quite incredible.

The place was pretty fancy inside at that time of day, completely empty except for some staff, who soon furnished us with a couple of cold Windhoek Beers while we settled into comfy deck chairs on the edge of the world feeling like millionaires.

We watched the sunrise from bed the following day, and after our well established, re-freshing routine of having a hot lemon drink in the tent (flask of hot water prepared the night before), we got organised for a hike along the ‘Andersson Trail’. 

The trail was a delight. We saw no one, and heard only birds and animals as we traversed under the big orange sandstone cliffs that guarded the plateau above. We walked with binoculars in hand, as there was something else to see at every turn. 

The map distances that we’d been given at the lodge, were a bit optimistic and it soon became clear that we were I for a longer hour than anticipated, but not unachievable. 

As we passed the final lodge (Wilderness Lodge), we entered the head of the valley and the cliffs narrowed closer together. It’s here that a spring was found by the explorer ‘Andersson’ in 1850s. The fauna quickly changed to lush green grass and big trees. 

Sudden loud noises from some unidentified animals stopped in our tracks. There are white rhino here, so we wanted to confirm what the commotion was before continuing! It turned out to be baboons. Loads of them! We watched for ages as they leapt from trees, fed and chased each other. A real life wildlife documentary right before eyes. Absolutely magical. Their movements and characteristics and affections are so human.

We followed the loop trail (called Porcupine Trail) back towards the lodge and soon found ourselves face to face with some large female (no big horns – Phew!) Kudu. After a long eye to eye stand off, they bounced off into the bush.

The scale of the sketch map that we’d been given was clearly a bit off, so rather than hike a further trail back towards camp and risk having to walk further than anticipated now that the heat of the day was in full force, we returned via the jeep track which was a guaranteed straight line back to our place. It also passed our favourite tree!

We arrived around 13:30, hot, sweaty and ready for the fried egg butties we’d saved for lunch. These were quickly produced and rapidly followed by a snooze in the shade. 

By 16:00 we were back up at the Plateau Lodge, ready to set out in a hike up to the plateau rim. This ‘lost world’ plateau is out of bounds to the public, but keen to see the view from the top, we hired a guide to allow us access to the summit views.

As part of the guiding ‘package’, (called ‘The Honeymoon Sundowner experience!’), he carried up a bottle of sparkling wine and a few snacks, so that we could enjoy the sun set together, alone, on the summit of the Waterberg Plateau. 

What a wonderful way to finish our time in the wilds! 

Prime viewing for the golden hour colours and subsequent sunset…

It was dark by the time we got back to camp, but we’d pre-prepared our dinner, so it was quick and easy to sort out.

There are Honey Badgers in the area and as soon as we started getting our food out, they came to investigate!

We’d been carrying around a bundle of firewood for the past month, but not really had the opportunity or inclination to sit around a campfire. As it was our last chance, we made a little campfire and sat in comfy chairs watching shooting stars.

The camp has a lot of staff, doing all sorts of jobs from sweeping floors, guarding gates to looking out for rhino poachers. They all seem to have radios and seem to call ahead to each other so they all know where the camp guests are. By the time we’d walked back and had dinner, someone had been notified that we were back in camp, so had lit the ‘donkey’ fire to make sure we had hot water for a shower before bed! Nice touch!