TRAVEL: HIKING TRAILS
So this month, Travelin Head jets off to South West Africa, and lands in Windhoek, Namibia. This trip is to experience a hiking trail with a difference. Namibia is a country with coastline and a desert, the Namib Desert to be precise. The landscape varies from dry grasslands, to desert land and dunes, mountains and hills, and ofcourse the ocean.

Windhoek is the capital city of Namibia. So we hired a vehicle and took a drive out of the city, about 20kms to a game reserve park called Daan Viljoen. The park has camping facilities, comfortable accomodation, barbecue facilities and it is a fun destination for the whole family.

Upon arrival at the park gate, you are required to sign in and register your vehicle and your particulars. From the gate, a scenic drive to the reception office area follows and is about a 2km drive from the gate. At the reception, you are required to pay N$10.00 (Ten Namibian Dollars) which is roughly US$1.60. Each person is then also required to pay N$10.00. So it’s ten bucks for the car and ten bucks per person in the car.

We arrived in the morning, drove from the reception to our accomodation, unpacked and changed into our hiking gear and off we went to begin the trail. Now this is one trail on which you should carry your camera. The trail started off with sightings of horses grazing. The terrain was pretty flat at the beginning. The landscape was simply breath taking with the hills touching a clear blue sky.

Absolutely breath taking. As we continued on, we began a steep ascent into the hills and our first sighting of wild life was two very unconcerned wildebeest, which is a large antelope. Our presence didn’t seem to bother them as they watched us for five minutes and continued grazing. The 18km trail begins with about 1km of flat ground and then begins a sharp ascent. It continues to ascend for several kilometers and boasts a beautiful scenery.