If the last fifteen months have taught me anything, it’s to be creative with week-end getaways and local escapades. It’s been hard not to be able to hop on a plane to London or Paris, but we have been luckier than most in South Africa, and there are so many lovely places to discover it almost doesn’t feel like travel has been restricted. Evidently, limited travel doesn’t mean that the school refrains from sending the children on “holidays” every six weeks, on the contrary! So keeping our two little minis busy and entertained has also been a full-time task lately. Alas we can’t go on safari or to the beach every week, so we mix those with getaways closer to the city, and finding Rosemary Hill and its adorable cabin cluster (CabinVille) so close to Johannesburg was a god-send.
Although Johannesburg feels like a giant forest and the winters here are lovely with the warm light and sunny afternoons, we sometimes miss a little bit of countryside, the kind that you would get from a trip to the Cotswolds or to Provence… It’s all a little urban at times. However, if you drive about an hour to the outskirts of Pretoria, you will find the most lovely farm now revamped into a wedding venue cum B&B. The farm offers more traditional accommodation in cottages, but what is unique is the little pods out in CabinVille: the idea of glamping in a very cool modern cabin just was too good to pass on. This is how we arrived at the Big Pod.
The Big Pod is a two-level cabin where upstairs is a large sleeping and lounging area with beautiful views out to the tree line; the full wood cladding look gives it a wonderful hygge atmosphere and the kids were so excited at a family sleepover opportunity. Downstairs is a double bedroom, a bathroom with the most perfect tiling, and a very well appointed kitchen. Outside is a deck with loungers, space to dine out, and a braai (you’re in South Africa, of course there is a very well functioning barbecue area!).
Whilst the Big Pod feels very open to nature, it is beautifully built and quite warm in the evening, not to mention the fluffy duvets. This did not feel at all like camping and my mind was very far from sleeping bags and communal showers, thankfully. Considering I am not the biggest fan of sleeping in tents and sharing my bathroom space with creepy crawlies this was perfect.
There are lots of things to do on the farm, from exploring the walking and bike paths to going on a horse ride, visiting the farm animals… The Autumn weather is perfect to walk around, as it doesn’t get too hot and the colours are beautiful, especially in the afternoon. The next morning we had signed the munchkins off for a session at Acrobranch, also on the farm, and they had a blast with the zip lines and climbing features.
All in, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Rosemary Hill. It is perfect for a quick one-night getaway from the city, to break out from the routine and enjoy something different as a family.
If you are based in South Africa, Mauritius is the ideal island get-away for young families, with all the ease that comes with an extremely tourist friendly destination, the beautifully appointed hotels right on the beach, and an easy 3.5 hours flight hop. I love Mozambique, but if you have a baby or a young toddler and want something easy, then I would recommend Mauritius. Similarly, if you are in Europe, Mauritius is an easy choice: despite the long flight, the time difference is minimal, even for babies who are on sleeping routines, and the weather is pretty fabulous all year round, making Mauritius a great escape when the weather gets a little too miserable. With the recent border closures and the disastrous oil spill on the Mauritian shores, one can only hope that the local tourism will be able to bounce back and thrive once again.
Although we had been to Mauritius before, we only discovered Lux* Belle Mare about four years ago… With two little munchkins in tow we wanted to find a hotel with great service, a pristine beach and possibly a children club, so we decided to stay at the Lux*, and we’ve never looked back. It’s easy and convenient and we stay here every time we come to Mauritius.
Like the gardens, the family suites are beautiful, modern and big enough to accommodate our little family of four. When Little Madame came as a baby, she had a baby cot, and now she shares the pull-out bed with her brother: the super attentive housekeeping team quickly learned that our littles go to bed by 8pm every night, so the bed gets pulled out whilst we are out at dinner, and ready for their early bedtime whilst we can enjoy one last drink on the terrace which leads on to the gardens and the beach (the view in the morning is spectacular). The bathroom is super roomy, with a bathtub perfect our two little munchkins to bathe together, and there is even a little walk-in closet, meaning nothing stays in the way.
We spend our days here mostly on the beach, because neither Hubby Dearest nor I understand the appeal of flying half way across the world only to lounge around a swimming pool (you can do that at the Harbour Club …) And what a beautiful beach this is: white sand, plush loungers, coconuts and parasols providing well-needed shade from the tropical sun, clear blue warm water where you can just bobble for hours on end.
There are four restaurants, including one Indian and one Chinese, but the beach one was our favourite for lunch. The main restaurant is great, with buffet for breakfast and dinner, and options for all the family. The chefs didn’t mind making vegetable purees for Little Madame when she was a baby, she has since graduated to helping herself from the great buffets. For snacks, there is a food truck on the beach, serving American junk food (there is no nicer way to describe it but it is delicious!) and fabulous ceviches, although in the afternoon the little ice cream parlour by the pool is quite popular, when children and adults flock for a taste of the tropical sorbet lollipops. My favourite? Coconut milk.
Children have a grand time at the Lux* Belle Mare, with the kids club fully equipped for children from 0 to 12 years old, and for teenagers there is a hang-out club with a ping-pong table and games by the tennis courts. We don’t really take our children on holidays only to have other people take care of them full time, but this is definitely an option Lux* give you, if you want… The kids club has a busy schedule which starts at 9AM, and children can even have dinner with the kids club team instead of their parents, if that’s your cup of chai… Whilst we don’t make use of these options full time, it is lovely for our children to spend time with others, go on beach themed adventures with a very dedicated team, and when she was a baby Little Madame had a nanny looking after her each day during her lunchtime nap and the hottest hours of the early afternoon (also meaning I was able to fit in a one-hour workout everyday whilst in the resort, including some pilates reformer work!)
If it’s your first time in Mauritius and you want to explore a little, I highly recommend a morning out at Port-Louis’ market, the fruit and veggie displays are quite unique and you can shop for local arts and crafts on the second floor. I also love the Pamplemousse botanical gardens. There are dozens of fantastic things to visit and explore on the island, but after five stays we just like to come here for the R&R…
Summer holidays are something I always look forward to, it’s usually our longest vacation in the year, and it’s the opportunity to recharge the batteries after long months at work. Before our babies, we would often go on multiple destination holidays, with a complicated itinerary of culture, nature, R&R and usually a fabulous beach far from most amenities. Once you have babies, you want to try and avoid the flight hops and a good option during the first two to three years is to pick one place and hang there for a few weeks.
So, when Little Monsieur was just over one year old, we decided to go spend our summer break in Puglia. The heel of the Italian boot wasn’t too popular back then, but it was already well known for amazing cuisine, beaches that wouldn’t look out of place in the Maldives, and incredible history and culture.
Where to stay?
There are a few hotels that are quite lovely, and a couple have even become the Summer offsite of choice of many Chelsea-ites, but with a little toddler and my parents joining us we wanted total freedom so we rented a renovated trulli house near Ostuni, with enough room for everyone, a beautiful traditional olive grove, a brand new swimming pool with a garden kitchen, and a lovely herb garden out back. We asked for a few additional baby-friendly amenities to be added, such as a high chair and a cot, and sent a box of baby essentials from London, with swimming pool toys, loads of nappies, and Little Monsieur’s favourite compotes and snacks.
The upside of the countryside around Ostuni is that it feels totally remote and quiet, but you are quite far from the sea on both sides of the heel, but with a couple of rental cars that was not an issue. The pool was plenty for us most days, especially as it allowed us to manage Little Monsieur’s nap times really nicely, as we could put him down in one of the cool rooms and hear him from the garden… I loved having a kitchen, it made going to the market at Ostuni an extra pleasure as I got to play with quite a few ingredients during our stay.
Worth visiting?
You can decide to enjoy the garden and pool, the weather during Summer here is truly gorgeous and you could absolutely spend days on end enjoying the beauty of R&R. However, Puglia is incredible for its mixed history, spanning from the Romans via the Saracens (with the white-washed architecture of the hilltowns) and the Normans to wonderful Baroque and Renaissance gems (Lecce will leave you speechless), with the distinctly Puglian trulli sprinkled amongst ageless groves of olive trees; these were storage huts with cone roofs, and many have now been renovated into beautiful boltholes, like the one we stayed in.
We spent quite a bit of time in nearby Ostuni, with its wonderful market, close-packed whitewashed houses, the beautiful Aragonese cathedral and its very own Puglian ‘bridge of sighs’. The food is delicious everywhere you go here, it’s worth exploring just for the food, and there are fragrant pastry shops and gelaterie pretty much in each town you drive through… And the light, simply magical, makes everyone look good. Though very touristy, Alberobello is worth a visit, it is a Unesco site with hundreds of trulli houses (now mainly tourist shops and cafes) dating back to medieval times. Lecce, also called the Florence of the South is a baroque beauty with dozens of palazzi built between the 17th and 18th century. Polignano A Mare is a gorgeous sea-side town built on cliffs, with a gorgeous little beach underneath a bridge and full of tiny shops and delicious seafood restaurants. It goes on and on. You could spend months in Puglia and not be done.
What about the food?
Food is amazing here, in the most humble cafes you’ll drink delicious coffee with amazing pastries, in the smallest deli you’ll find the softest burrata (burrata was invented in Puglia actually), and of course as Italy’s main producer of olive oil, you won’t find anything better anywhere else. Whilst we’re here, have you heard of taralli? Also Pugliese, delicious as antipasto with an Aperol Spritz and some fresh olives. During our holiday, we cooked most days in our holiday rental, sea bass with herbs, octopus salad, courgette flower fritters, fig and almond tart, lemon biscuits. We drank mainly local wine, which is delicious, sparkling water, lemonade, and the best refresher I know: watermelon and mint juice with a dash of lemon.
Wait, this is a Summer vacation, how is the sea?
The sea is very clear, very much like Sardinia and Corsica, and the sand is very white, making some beaches look like they belong somewhere in the Indian Ocean… Most days when we craved the beach we drove out to Torre Guaceto, a 7-km stretch of sandy shores by a 16th-century watchtower, which is also a WWF protected area making it a beautiful beach with clear water. Other places in Salento are truly beautiful, but with a temperamental toddler around we didn’t go to that many beaches in the end.. We will simply have to come back.
Top tips for a Summer vacation in Puglia? First bring an appetite… you’ll be eating delicious food for weeks, second be prepared for crowded beaches, these are the most beautiful ones on the Italian mainland so don’t be surprised if you can barely fit space for your towel after lunch, and third, do spend some time driving around and enjoying the region, we did it a little randomly, when Little Monsieur was in the mood for a drive, and each time we discovered wonderful towns…
Moving continents like we did a couple of years ago is a big adventure, and I wanted to celebrate our arrival by going on safari as soon as we arrived, showing our little travellers just how wonderful our new home country was. One of the first things I did when we moved to Johannesburg was research safari options that would accommodate our littles, not just at the lodge, but also on the game drives. Not many places are flexible about it, with most only allowing children on game drives after the age of 12, some after the age of 6, and a lot of lodges will tell you to bring your children and leave them with the lodge babysitter whilst you go on safari… I’m still not quite sure what the point of that would be (come all the way to the bush, then leave your child with a stranger in a closed room with videos about animals whilst you go enjoy a game drive?) but thankfully I soon found out about Morukury Family and their houses in the private section of the Madikwe game reserve.
Where is it?
The Madikwe Game Reserve is about 4 hours drive away from Johannesburg, although many tourists fly here from ORT with the small planes, as there is a landing strip. It’s a “Big Five” reserve and is malaria free, so quite popular with families, but not many of the 20-odd lodges in the public reserve side can welcome children as little as two.
Being entirely private, Morukuru allows babies on game drives, and the ranger then exercises their discretion on how close to get to animals or how long to stay at a sighting, depending on how the littles in the car are behaving. It also means everything is adapted to you and your family, so if baby needs a later start or if your son doesn’t eat tomatoes, then things will be arranged exactly to suit you. And bring a baby we did: on our first visit, Little Madame had a baby seat and drank her bottle on the sunrise drives, although she did express a strong preference for sitting on her dad’s lap and really got quite interested when she saw her first cheetahs, inquiring if she could go play with the kitties…
Which Morukuru house is best?
We are now Morukuru veterans, having visited the Madikwe houses four times and stayed in all three of them, although Owners House is my favourite. It’s by the river, with two beautiful suites and a number of decks and terraces overlooking the water and the tree canopy, and the swimming pool is laid on a nice open flat area on the side of the house, which is very reassuring when you come with tiny ones: we did spend quite a few afternoons here enjoying Pimm’s whilst our munchkins enjoyed a swim, even in the dead of South African winter (when the temperature around 2PM is a balmy 30 degres celsius, don’t worry).
River House is a little bigger, very close, but the swimming pool has a sharp infinity edge I’m not totally fond of especially when my children see that as a perfect jumping edge into the water… Farm House is set in a completely different part of the private reserve, meaning you don’t get the river landscape, but it’s bigger and has a wonderful lawn where nyalas come to graze and children can roam wild, and the lounge features a very cool bar and many comfortable sofas, making it the perfect house when we came with my parents and a couple of friends last year. All three houses are beautiful, and whenever we are back I always feel like the luckiest girl ever regardless of which one we stay in.
What’s so special about Morukuru?
This place is magical, it feels like having your own private house in the middle of the bush, complete with a full staff and a ranger and tracker team whose sole concern is that you have an amazing time. We rarely come for more than three days, usually long week-ends, and always ask the same ranger – hostess team as we love Evan and Ilse and they looked after us on our first stay, but each time the experience is truly unique. The animal sightings are of course fantastic, especially if you consider that Morukuru is set in a private area where at most three cars will be out at once, so we were the only ones around when we spotted that two-week old baby rhino on our second stay, and when we’re lucky we get a breakfast feast in their special viewing deck by the watering hole, meaning we get to enjoy the most special spectacle as we’re sampling 3-star worthy food.
When we first came, Hubby Dearest and I had a special anniversary to celebrate, and of course the team prepared a surprise dinner for the two of us, and Evan and Ilse had dinner with our two munchkins whilst we had a romantic meal outside on the deck. On the same stay, we saw some amazing sightings, including spotted dogs feasting on a kudu, but when our ranger heard that a pair of cheetah siblings were out having breakfast a good drive away, he postponed our breakfast to a brunch and we went to watch Little Madame’s “two kitties”. Had I wanted a bubble bath after an evening game drive on one of the decks, that is also possible, although as a mama I usually prefer to have dinner with my children than bathing for hours on end in the open, but know that is an option, as are massages, walking safaris, and much much more.
Nothing is too much to ask here, Morukuru offers 5-star worthy Relais & Chateaux service through and through: there are hot bottles on your seat as you jump in the car for the pre-sunrise drive, you can enjoy your favourite cocktail at sundowners whilst a herd of elephants pass on one side and a couple of rhinos are grazing on the other, the turn-down team thinks of every little luxury you may want before going to sleep, and the cooks’ food is truly to die for. Each meal is different, from the menu to the setting, from a boma dinner on top of a hill to a breakfast on the deck looking out to the river… You are sent off as you leave with homemade cookies and biltong for the drive home, and little cups with cocoa and marshmallows for when you get there. Nothing is too much, the house is pretty much yours for your stay, and when I commented on how delicious the mini muffins of the morning coffee were, I got to take the recipe with me to try and replicate them at home…
Why is it perfect for families?
Beyond everything I mentioned already, the staff at Morukuru, and in particular the ranger and tracker team, are truly keen to ensure children enjoy their time on safari. Evan is always looking for ways to entertain our little ones, and he keeps his eyes peeled for animals that could grab their interest, such as snakes for Little Monsieur (much to my despair…). We went fishing one afternoon, and enjoyed the fun of catching small fish as well as seeing an elephant swim by. It is truly magical. Being alone in a big part of the reserve, a private area that also happens to be the home of a beautiful lion pride, means you get to stay as long as you want to admire some fantastic animals, even if your children are talking in the back of the car or playing with Little Ponies, because yes, at some point children will get bored of seeing wildlife and will want to escape to their own little world… By the way, take it from me if you’re going on safari with children for the first time: take some toys along, and a little camera for the older ones, and make sure you have snacks, because the odds are, they won’t want to wait until sundowners for a little nibble.
We were meant to return to Morukuru Madikwe later this month, alas this has now been postponed with the lockdown, but we will be back as soon as we can. As you would expect, such privacy and luxury come at quite a high price, and I think I hear my card give a little sigh each time I book a stay here, but it’s worth every cent. I would rather come here a couple of times a year than go on safari elsewhere every other week-end…
On our second day, we switched our flip flops for good hiking shoes and went up through the winding roads in search of La Fournaise. During the wet season (November to April) it does get quite misty around the volcano and we did arrive at the final viewpoint just in time for a major drizzle, so didn’t see much but did get positively drenched, especially as I had forgotten my rain jacket in the hotel room! However we had stopped en route to explore Pas de Sables, a large flatland of volcanic sand where you can walk on top of solidified lava flow ridges. Walking around the volcano feels like being on the moon, with some incredible flowers growing out of nowhere, and the most amazing bushes of wild hydrangeas lining the road on the way up to the viewpoint.
Day Three – Visiting the South East coast
Our third day was all about gardens and the coast. The botanic gardens here are something else: with the tropical weather every plant looks like a steroid version of what you find elsewhere, so beautiful and captivating. But also these places are totally filled with mosquitoes: even though I had sprayed myself and the children abundantly with insect repellent coming out of the car, we spent one hour admiring the trees and flowers at the Jardin des Parfums et des Epices, and when I came out my legs looked like they had chickenpox. Evidently no amount of appeasing gel would help and I spent most of the rest of our holiday scratching my legs like a dog with fleas.
We also went up to see the Cascade de Grand Galet, one of the most beautiful waterfalls in this part of the island. I love the turquoise pool it makes at the bottom, and a few years ago, when it was just Hubby and I, we would have probably jumped into the water for a little swim… This time we just took pictures. I don’t think it’s as tall as some of the ones in the North coast, but we wanted to avoid the heavy traffic around Saint-Denis and too long travels so we stayed mainly in the South of the island during our trip.
We had a wonderful creole lunch on the coast, where we filled up on curries and palm salad, before walking it all off on the lava rocks by the sea, admiring the souffleurs: that is where the volcanic rock forms an underwater cave which ends with an opening shaped like a small funnel, through which the water escapes into high jets when there are big waves.
We took off for the fresher hills of Saint Gilles Le Haut to visit the Villèle Museum. Once the home of the Panon-Desbassyns family, wealthy landowners who contributed to the growth of the local sugar industry through the systematic use of slavery with some of the most gruesome methods I’ve read about… We skipped the compulsory guided tour for the house (no offense, but I don’t need a 2-hour laboured tour to view a planteur’s house, I listened to enough history classes in my youth) and visited the gorgeous gardens instead, as well as the outbuildings where an exhibit of the family’s slave books, rules etc made for a very sobering visit.
Day Five – Up to the Maïdo and into the tamarin woods
The Maïdo is another volcanic peak, just above Saint Paul, with some stunning views over the Cirque de Mafate. You get some beautiful clouds flying up from the valleys, with little villages nested in the mountains below playing hide and seek. We went early in the morning so we could enjoy as much visibility as possible, and even so there were quite a few tourist coaches around. We drove down back to one of the tamarin forests, and tried to drag our little urbanites for a little hike and at first they were quite intrigued by bent and windy branches, the but the paths were both quite steep and slippery from the mist, so our attempt was quite short-lived.
Day Six – La Route aux 400 virages and Cilaos
Having laced the munchkins’ breakfast juice with travel sickness powder, we took off for our last visit of the trip, all the way to Cilaos, via a road of only 30 kilometers but that is famous for having 400 turns. I believe it has that and more, as well as super steep views down to the valley, and the tightest tunnels I’ve seen: in fact we saw a bus come out of one end and the driver must have a very special license as nothing else fit in that tunnel besides his bus… At the end of the road is a tiny mountain village full of creole charm and beauty, with colourful cases that I spent a couple of hours photographing from various angle, although there is a little shop where you can buy beautiful watercolours of all of them. We also visited the Maison de La Broderie, a place where ladies painstakingly embroider following decades-old traditions and make the most beautiful linen.
We flew back to Johannesburg the next morning, glad of all our adventures on this island with so much to see and do, regardless of whether you are visiting as a young couple, a group of friends, or a family with small children.
As a family, we love travelling, but Africa has always had a very special place in my heart: there is so much to see and learn, so much contrast, you could spend a lifetime on this continent and still not have seen half of what it holds. Since moving to South Africa, we’ve managed to visit so many of the places on our bucket list, and I am so looking forward to sharing these with you. Starting with the week we spent in the extreme contrasts of the Namib Naukluft with our children and four of our darling friends…
First things first: if you know me, you know I like to research things thoroughly. Of course I love nothing as much as a comfortable luxury travel experience, but it turns out, if you want to really enjoy the Namib desert, you need to mix it up a bit, get out of your comfort zone and consider camping (yes, camping, not glamping). We flew into Walvis Bay, where we rented two cars with rooftop tents, built-in fridges and all the paraphernalia you need to cook in the wild. Word of caution: a car with two little tents on the roof was perfect for us and the two minis (the tents are relatively easy to unfold in the evening and back down in the morning), but the four big guys did struggle a little during the nights we slept in the tents…
Disclaimer: I had never camped in my life before this but self-driving let us follow our own rhythm, visit some of the most special sites, and most importantly sleep inside the Sossusvlei Nature Park within easy access to the gorgeous red sand dunes (whereas staying in the nearby lodges means you have to be out of the park between sundown and sunrise, missing the most beautiful light over the desert). Also the kids adored the experience and are begging for another go. Before you start thinking how impressive and how much I have adapted, let me put you right: we interspersed the nights of camping with nights in some of the most eco-luxe lodges in the region, just to keep the balance.
Day One and Two – Walvis Bay and Naukluft Camp
Our first day was an epic reminder of what a bunch of camping rookies we all were! Thanks to a slight delay in departing Walvis Bay (between a late flight and six coddled adults trying to buy groceries in a harbor town for five days in the desert, time can become a flexible measure), we arrived at our first base, Naukluft Camp, in the blackest of nights. And we had to find and set up our campsite, prepare dinner, shower in cold water because by then most of the other, cleverer, better prepared campers had all showered, and settle the kids to sleep, all pretty much in the dark. Doing all this with a couple of solar lamps that we didn’t really charge properly was, diplomatically put, a challenge. Cue big loss of sense of humour for me; thankfully we had a lot of wine from the grocery hunt, and we downed three bottles between six adults that first night. Nevermind, our reward was awaiting the next morning when we got to enjoy strong coffee and a cooked breakfast (by meal two you become a gas canister chef), before going on a 16km hike up the mountain, past some of fabulous rock structures, ancient trees and the most enticing natural pools, perfect for a refreshing swim.
Day Three and Four – Wolvedans Dune Lodge
After our big hike and a quick lunch, we took up towards our next stop, Wolvedans Dune Lodge… Driving through the Namib desert is an experience unlike any other. You drive hundreds of kilometres on dust tracks only to see the odd oryx or zebra on the side of the road, or a sign indicating a farm. Eventually we arrived at Wolvedans; evidently as we were still learning this travelling in the sand business, we followed the coordinates and arrived straight at the Dune Lodge, on top of the most glorious landscape of red sand, when the lodge protocol demands you drive to the reception lodge, where the air strip is, and be driven from there in one of the lodge’s Defenders… Anyways, that small mistake was soon forgiven, and we were shown to our wooden houses that sat on stilts on top of the dune; ours was the last one of the row, giving us an impression of total isolation that was incredible. Proper other-wordly.
The experience at Wolvedans is one that I would recommend to anyone who travels to the Namib; eco-luxury structures with a Star Wars feel that perfectly fit with the surroundings Martian, with all the amazing trappings of old-school African travel. I fell head over heels in love with the decor, the drives up and down the dunes to see chameleons and ostriches, and of course sundowners in the middle of the red sand, what’s not to love. The team stops at nothing to spoil you rotten, it’s a truly fantastic place.
Day Five and Six – Sossusvlei
After a couple of nights here we moved on to our next stop, and the piece de resistance of our trip as far as sights and magic: Sossusvlei. Back to camping, but this time we were almost experts. We stocked up for any additional goodies in the small gas station just outside the park, close to Sesriem Camp where we had booked to stay. Our site had a beautiful tree, we settled the two cars down on each side of it, and started putting out our dining chairs, and got to cooking a memorable braai to the tune of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (#travellingwithguncles) whilst I saw people eat out of plastic boxes, so yes we might have been camping but we were no savages… We spent two nights here and between the amazing starry sky, the beauty of sunrise over the desert, and the utter magic of Deadvlei, this is where I felt the most breathtaken.
After waking up in the middle of one night we scrambled through the camp to find the exit of the park (I may or may not have fallen flat on my face, tripped by one of the low level wires that protect the camp’s plants from being trampled on by tourists… but it was dark so I don’t remember) and go up in a hot air balloon with the lovely team of Namib Sky to see the desert wake up slowly. Watching herds of oryx pass by unaware, wondering about fairy circles, and then landing to a champagne breakfast is a once in a lifetime experience I highly recommend, and my only regret is Little Madame was too small to join us so I made her and her brother stay with the nanny on the ground as breakfast was being set… I hear they were bribed into patience with scones and muffins.
If you do only three things in Sossusvlei, it has to be: climb up a dune (we did Dune 45, which stands at 170m high and looks easy enough, it’s not, in fact it’s a nasty workout, but the view from the top is magical), go walk in Deadvlei and wonder at the centennial acacias that have calcified on the salt pan, and finally do take that balloon ride, nothing gets quite close.
Day 7 and 8 – Pelican Point and Sandwich Harbor
As far as contrasts go, the last part of our trip was so different from the first few days it seemed we were on a different continent. We drove back through the desert again, and back to Walvis Bay, where we left our friends and drove all the way through the laguna to spend two nights at Pelican Point Lodge, a cinema set worthy building sat by the side of a hundred-year-old lighthouse, on a slim strip of sand that is the home of a seal colony, a few jackal families, as well as flocks of flamingos and pelicans. Staying here feels very much like being on a boat in the middle of the sea, especially during foggy evenings, and the rooms are modern and lovely. By now it felt amazing to take a long hot shower to try and wash off the tons of red sand that seemed to have found its way into my hair, ears, and even eyes; that fully made up for the less than warm service from the hostess on duty, who is single-handedly responsible for the only poor service we had during the whole trip…
Nevertheless, we had an amazing day out on Sandwich Harbor, which is also part of the natural park, driving up and down the white sand dunes, admiring the pink salt pans and enjoying glorious seafood by the yacht club in Walvis Bay. As if we hadn’t had our fill of sand for a week, we reunited with the guncles who were staying nearby and spent the last afternoon of our trip sandboarding down some pretty impressive dunes (you have to use your legs to go back up for another ride down, no ski lifts here!).
We soon had to get back to Johannesburg and our day to day lives but with our eyes full of stars and our heads filled with memories of fantastic landscapes, amazing moments shared with friends and family, and the hunger to do it all again very soon.
Before I go, let me give you my top three tips about this trip: 1) pack light but ensure you have enough layers to dress comfortably through the day, the temperature amplitude and the wind are no jokes here, 2) opt for self-driving for at least part of the trip, you will see more and the kids will love sleeping on the rooftop tents but don’t forget quickdry camping and the headlights for reading in the tent, 3) do splurge with the balloon ride and Wolvedans, the experience in both cases was worth every penny. Also, if you want a day by day account of our trip go on to my Instagram, all our travels are in my story highlights, trip by trip.
A Styled Life 