In my last post I talked about our 9 hour drive to Damaraland. Because we got our roads so wrong before the Tracks4Africa gps app came to the rescue, we drove to the Doro Nawas camp from the opposite direction than the one taken by visitors which meant that there were no signs for the camp on the sides off the road, we keep looking for them but never saw any, which given the overlong drive worried us considerably. One of the benefits of our wrong-way drive however was that it took us through parts of the country not usually traveled by visitors and over a mountain pass that was stunning, hairy driving but fabulous views. Our guide when we finally arrived couldn't believe that we made managed the drive in our vehicle, clearly a drive that is not normally taken by tourists.

Damaraland the region, and Doro Nawas our lodge, in neither case had any really compelling connections for us. Doro Nawas is reached by 4 or 5 kilometres of gravel road branching off the main gravel highway to a very rocky and wind-swept hill rising out of the dusty desert and about 40 or 50 metres high. The main lodge was perched on top and the various individual stone chalets scattered around the hillside. The 5k drive to reach it was unquestionably the worst piece of track that we have driven  in our entire trip. It was bone-shaking, teeth-rattlingly bad and while the gravel roads and highways are pretty pretty grim in places, corrugations really shaking the car, you can usually find an optimum speed that is not so slow that the car is is slowly being shaken into piles of bolts nor so fast that the bumps are minimized but the car is unsafe, slewing about on the gravel, but a happy and tolerable balance between the two. In the case of the Doro Nawas road there was no optimum manageable speed and we feared for the safety of the car as we pounded along it. Not a good introduction to the lodge, which is a Wilderness Camp, a brand for a number of camps throughout Southern Africa which like the &Beyond Camps is a guarantee of a high level of service and accommodation. Someone was not watching the store in the case of Doro Nawas and given the cost of the camp it was surprising that no attention was paid to the first impression that a camp creates, the road to the site. It quickly became clear that the road to the camp was not the only problem faced by the camp, the service was forgetful and unpleasant and the food less than compelling....

Friday was a very, very, very long day. Landed in São Paulo at 10 am and our next connection was at 11:30 pm for our overnight to Jo'burg. I had booked us a day room at the Wyndham Tryp hotel which is in the secured in-transit area of the terminal so that we could get some sleep and have a base for the 14 hour layover without going into the public area of the terminal and so avoid having to deal with passport control and security. Good idea on paper but 14 hours marking time is very slow in reality. Slept for a couple of hours and found that the best way of getting through the day was to concentrate on not looking at my watch until at least a half hour had passed since my last look, a game with a remarkably low engagement factor. I was reminded of a movie made 5 or 6 years ago concerning someone who, for unremembered reasons, lost papers?, could not leave the transit area. Couldn't go back and couldn't go forward, had no accommodation so slept on benches, and simply waited. Don't know who wrote the script but it should have been Beckett. I empathized.

Arrived in Jo'burg in the early afternoon on Saturday, slept for a few hours, took the train into the city and had a really good dinner at The Butcher Shop grill, we both had very rare steaks, lots of fresh vegetables and a gallon or so of a wonderful South African cabernet, the single best prescription for re-kindling the ashes.

We left last night for the first leg of our trip to Namibia and then on to Jordan. This is our third trip to Africa since 2012, clearly it has attractions for us. We're flying to Jo'burg via São Paulo with a 14 hour layover in São Paulo. I'm not a great fan of Aeroplan, the only routing that allowed us to get to Jo'burg on points and in Business is the one we're flying. Aeroplan offered us other options, a leg to Montreal then an overnight to Frankfurt or London, a long layover and then another overnight to Jo'burg. However the Toronto-Montreal leg was in Business the two overnight legs were in Economy but Aeroplan wanted to charge us the full Business points total even though the only leg that was in Business was the one to Montreal. I don't mind paying the full whack to fly in the front cabin but I find it really galling to be charged maximum points to fly in steerage. I know, no handkerchiefs, a first world problem.

All flights to South Africa from North America, with the exception of a direct Washington to Jo'burg flight that's almost impossible to book on points, are right angled routes, no diagonals, so an overnight north-south or east-west, a long layover and another overnight flight perpendicular to the first. We're in São Paulo, halfway though our 14 hour layover and another overnight flight to go...

Birthday dinner great fun, V had arranged for champagne and a birthday cake. Dinner is eaten as a group with David, our 4 other photogs and V and I all at our own table. Everyone sang Happy Birthday, I made a speech, can't ever resist, and the cake was brought in by all the staff of the camp singing Maasai songs, clapping and in the spirit of the moment. There is only one other group at the camp, 5 Japanese photographers with massive amounts of Canon video and still equipment and their table joined in the birthday singing. Between the balloon ride and the birthday dinner surrounded by new friends, it was one of the better celebrations. Broke up at about 22:30 since we needed to be up at 5:30 for our morning game drive.....

Up early for a 7:00 am breakfast with David Lloyd and the other 4 members of our group. V and I had had gone for an early dinner the evening before and an early bed so we were in relatively good shape but the other 4 guys in our group had hijacked David in the bar and had made a night of it. Needless to say V and I were in much better nick than the others.

Flying a small chartered plane from Nairobi to a landing strip in the Maasai Mara where we were to be met by our cars for the 1 hour drive to our Entim Camp, our home for the next 7 days. Luggage restrictions very tight on the flight, 15k, so a Land Rover left our hotel at 8:00 am with everyone's luggage for the 9 hour drive to the camp, allowing us to carry only minimal luggage, essentially what we require for our first game drive at 4, since the luggage car will not have arrived by then....

Arrived in Addis in early afternoon and checked into the Sheraton. We have two nights and a full day to decompress from our driving and to get ready for our Kenya safaris. Couldn't wait to get to our rooms and a long hot shower and on to a good lunch. The Sheraton is a fabulous spot and a real lens into Ethiopia. Wandering the huge marble lobby and public rooms, all busy and filled with people coming and going or sitting and talking in little groups it feels as if there are layers that we can see and many more layers that we can sense but can't see. The people sitting around or moving through represent many countries and nationalities, all are very well and expensively dressed, whether informal or formal and there are lots of bespoke suits and white shirts in the crowd. Feels like being in a Graham Greene novel but not knowing the plot. There are quiet but gruffly intense Israelis, suited Brits who look as if they are on their way to a board meeting, wealthy Ethiopians with or without families, trim Germans, knots of noisy Chinese and quiet and steely Americans. Indians, Icelanders, geo-thermal experts, French, Africans from a variety of nations, all meeting and discussing and negotiating and chatting and finalizing and the background noise that you hear is the sound of money whooshing in and out of the country....

Early out of Murelle and back up to Paradise Lodge on our way back north to Addis. Retraced our route through the trackless, well barely, rough, dry, scrubby desert country. This is a region of termite mounds which are scattered in surprisingly large numbers across the countryside in addition to something else that fascinated me. This was the presence of a flower called by the locals a bottle flower, blooming in large numbers on a plant whose stem was smooth and gray and somewhat bottle-shaped, which like the termite mounds, were scattered throughout the dry scrub....