Finally after returning from our three week holiday in Namibia late last month, I’ve been able to sort out all the photos and get them on here for you to see!
Firstly though, before we get on to the food, let me give you a brief account of the holiday, Namibia and why we went there.
We’re what you might call wildlife watchers, which really is just a fancy way of saying that we like to go to natural areas and look at the wildlife that is found in that area. In addition to that we’re semi-pro photographers (which means we’ve been published, and may sell photos, but it isn’t our primary job) so we try to get to as many natural areas as possible. We’ve scratched the surface of South Africa, and one of the places in South Africa that we’ve always been drawn back to is the Kalahari desert. We’ve been wanting to get to Namibia for quite some time now, as it is well known for it’s great wildlife, and finally decided this year to go there. In some ways it was a good choice as we are moving to Australia during next year and this may have been a last opportunity to spend our annual leave on a long wildlife holiday.
Namibia is a fairly large country, about 68% the size of South Africa, but only 11% the size of Australia, 8% the size of the USA and 339% the size of the UK. They have a population of only 2.2 million people.
During our three week trip we covered 8700km. We started by leaving Durban and headed to Kimberley, which is roughly half way to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (part of the Kalahari). Kgalagadi (pronounced with a silent k and soft guttural g’s) is a national park that spans South Africa and Botswana, but is also a gateway to Namibia as it is on the border with Namibia and has a border post. In order to pass through the border into Namibia you must spend at least two nights in the national park. This is done to curb the use of the park as a convenient thoroughfare, and I imagine to get more money from people staying in the park. This was fine with us as we love the park and have no problems being “forced” to stay there for a few nights. Indeed, instead of the mandatory two nights, we stayed for four nights.
Upon exiting the park into Namibia we headed to Windhoek the capital city. Here we stayed for a night and used it as an opportunity to “rest” a bit after Kgalagadi, and to stock up on items we needed while inside Namibia, including prepaid cell SIMs so that we could make use of cheaper mobile data rather than using the extremely expensive roaming rates. From Windhoek we made our way to a place called Otjiwarongo which is a dusty little (although bigger than we thought) town that is home to the Cheetah Conservation Fund. We have wanted to visit CCF for a long time as we have a great appreciation for the work they do, and we were not disappointed with our visit.
Next we moved on to Etosha National Park, which was to be the bulk of our stay in Namibia at five nights. There wasn’t a heck of a lot of wildlife around in the bush, which was surprising, but it was certainly made up for by the amount of wildlife found around the waterholes which are conveniently located next to the camps.
After Etosha we moved on to a place called Palmwag, located in the Grootberg mountains. We had a day trip booked for the following day which lasted most of the day so we stayed over for two nights.
Following on from Palmwag, we drove down to a place called Swakopmund where we stayed for three nights. Swakopmund in on the west coast of Africa so it was nice to see the ocean again, even if it was a different ocean. From Swakopmund we made trips to Walvis Bay. One trip in particular was to go out on the ocean for a few hours to see if we could find any whales and dolphins. We didn’t see any whales, but we did see dolphins, seals and plenty of sea birds.
Next we moved on to Sossusvlei section of the Namib-Naukluft Park. Namib-Naukluft Park is a park proclaimed to protect part of the Namib desert. Sossusvlei is a section that has stunning, high, red, bare dunes combined with grasslands, mountainous areas and generally amazing scenery. We spent two nights at Sossusvlei and then returned home stopping again at Kimberley.
So that’s what we did in Namibia. If you want to see some non-food pictures of our trip, you can follow our trip report on African Wildlife Parks, which will be starting shortly.
ON TO THE FOOD!
But before I start with the photos, let me quickly reproduce some things that we read in the “Getaway Guide To Namibia”:
Vegetarians struggle in Namibia. This is Red Meat Country – beef and game mostly. It’s so bad (or good) that cattle farmers have a name for chicken – salad! … Windhoek offers the most cosmopolitan eating experiences. History dictates that German cuisine dominates with everything from eisbein to Black Forest cake, but you will also find African, Cuban, Indian, Italian, Portuguese and Argentinian.
and
You can’t stay in Windhoek without visiting Joe’s Beerhouse. Like the Carnivore in Nairobi, the Dutch Milkhouse in Addis, or Bique’s in Beira, it’s famous among African overlanders and international travellers. And rightly so too – a phantasmagorical collection of memorabilia, displayed under a sprawling complex of thatched roofs that house pubs, restaurants, bomas, lapas, upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside and open fires. Vegetarians should stick to beer (there’s a good wine list, too) as the menu leans heavily towards steak and game dishes, with a little chicken and fish for the not-so-hungry.
Ok, now on to the food!
Ok this wasn’t part of the trip food, but it was a meal we had before we left. The wonderful minchee, with spinach.
One of our many food stops while driving yielded this Coke float. Coke floats are awesome!
This one’s for TFP who couldn’t believe that Creme Soda in South Africa is green! Yes, there it is. It’s going to be strange seeing it in other colours!
This is a meal that we had at the restaurant while at Twee Rivieren (Two Rivers) camp and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. It’s Cordon Bleu served with chips, carrots and cabbage (I think).
Here’s a close up on the meaty and cheesy goodness found within!
The next few photos are “padkos” – food for the road. These lovely little morsels we have only ever found in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Pineapple cores are candied and chopped into little discs. They are wonderfully tasty and not at all hard and stringy as you might expect.
Biltong. In this case, beef. It’s similar to jerky, but better in my opinion. It is a cured meat, so technically it’s still raw, but has been dried with herbs and spices and is a South African delicacy.
Another South African delicacy is Droë Wors (Dry Sausage). Basically it is a type of boerewors that has been dried in a similar manner to biltong. Also very nice and moreish.
These are what is known as roosterkoeke. Basically little breads that are cooked on a BBQ. These were made by camp staff families who cook and sell them to campers and camp residents to make a little extra cash. They can be eaten in any manner of ways, but we chose to simply cut them in half and eat them with apricot jam!
Finally we made it to Windhoek and to Joe’s Beerhouse. It’s an odd place as stated in the quote above. In the section we were in, there were all sorts of odd things hanging from the roof. In this photo we can see bicycles, a wheelbarrow, some baskets, random boxes and German sausages.
While Joe’s is a beerhouse, it is also apparently known as *the* place to consume Jägermeister. From what I have heard, Joe’s is one of the top consumers of the drink in the world! You could probably guess that though from seeing all the bottles that they have kept. And believe me they were everywhere. I think you will find them in every picture from Joe’s!
A view in the other direction. People sitting in the open air section. Oh and look, more Jägermeister bottles.
Caroline’s meal for the evening was pork schnitzel served with mushrooms, roasted potato slices and salad.
My meal was a little more savage. There are four types of pork here and I can’t remember what they all are. I think they are pork knuckle, roast pork, gammon & a porky meatloaf. Served with a small salad, a bread roll and mustard.
These are deep fried apple fritters covered in sugar and served with custard and ice cream.
This is the exit to Joe’s. Yes more Jägermeister bottles.
Joe’s personal toilet, complete with a plumbed in bottle of … yes you’ve guessed it … Jägermeister.
One final photo from just before the exit, and what a surprise, some more bottles of Jägermeister.
On arrival in Otjiwarongo we headed out for lunch. The most convenient place was the local Wimpy. This is the mixed grill that I had.
On one of our visits to the restaurant I had this monstrosity! Ok not fair to them, it was a buffet and this is what I put on my plate. Beef stroganoff (or something similar), a chop, cheesy viennas (wieners), chips and a bit of pasta salad. Not bad but a bit sloppy!
Dessert was equally bizarre. Two types of yummy ice-cream, custard and some berry flavour. A piece of cake that looks like it came from a 80′s supermarket complete with too much sickly sweet creamy icing, and custard.
Another meal from the same restaurant. Prawns and viennas (wieners). Great combo huh? I should open a restaurant!
These are the meals we had at Palmwag. We noted that after a week in Namibia this is the first decent food we had. This was a club sandwich but they didn’t have the proper bread so they did it on a roll. Caroline had a burger but I let her eat as I was too busy changing SIM cards in my phone to take a photo of hers. But that’s ok because the next night I had a burger and took a photo then.
The next night Caroline’s choice was a chicken schnitzel, which came with a tomato salsa and cheese on top.
While I had the burger that she had had the previous day. It was very tasty.
A bit blurred, but this photo shows you what the burger looked like inside.
We’re now in Swakopmund and by the sea. What better way to celebrate than with seafood! We had lunch at “The Tug”, a restaurant where part of the building is the remains of a real tug boat! Caroline had the linefish which that day was Kabeljou (Kob). Look how many pieces they gave her!
I had the Calamari, which was very nice.
Afterwards we shared a bowl and ice cream and chocolate sauce!
While we were in Swakopmund we also visited Kücki’s Pub & Restaurant. This is Caroline’s meal, roast pork with red cabbage, mash and yummy gravy.
I had the eisbein with rosti. It was very nice and the crackling was nice too, but as usual eisbein is very fatty and unless you want to eat that you spend ages scraping it off the crackling and meat!
Dessert was warm apple pie with custard. YUM!
The following day we drove down to Walvis Bay and had lunch at “The Raft”
Caroline had a “Limbo Dancer” which was ham, pineapple & sweetcorn. They also use cheddar and mozzarella on this pizza.
I had the “Flaming Sombrero” burger, which is cheese, bacon & caramelised onions with a chilli tomato salsa.
For dessert we headed to Café Probst, also in Walvis Bay. We’d been told that this was a good place to get apple pie in Namibia, and whoever told us was not wrong! Alongside the apple pie is a custard pastry that was also very nice!
That evening, back in Swakopmund we were keen to try a restaurant that we had seen very close to where we were staying, The Wreck. The building was literally shaped to look like a ship. This is Caroline’s dinner, a chicken and prawn curry which she raved about for a good while!
I had the pork fillet that was served on top of a baked potato with a lovely gravy.
Dessert was a dark rum chocolate mousse, which also came with a surprise chocolate samoosa.
We were quite happy to dine at The Wreck. Not only was the food wonderful, but so was the view (the large windows had a view of the Atlantic Ocean). Also we were very impressed that they made almost exclusive use of LED lighting inside the restaurant, which to a bunch of eco-freaks such as ourselves, means a lot.
This is the menu from Café Anton in Swakopmund. Note number 15 – Chicken Gordon Bleu. 
We were at Café Anton in search of the best Apple Pie/Crumble/Strudel in Swakopmund. This was the strudel, and it was damn good. Pity when they asked us if we wanted cream that they didn’t mention that they’d be charging extra for that!
We also had a slice of black forest cake. We shared half of each.
That night we were back at The Wreck. We had such a nice meal the night before that we decided to just go back again. We went back a bit earlier that night and got a wonderful view of the sun setting over the ocean. We also got to watch the clearly newly weds posing for photos in front of said sunset and then smooching the night away at their table!
Caroline had the lamb curry.
While I had the kingklip, which despite not looking like much, was very nice and sufficient.
For dessert Caroline had the Creme Brulee,
And I had the Amarula & Vanilla cup. It turned out to just be vanilla ice cream with an Amarula sauce, but it was very nice none-the-less.
While in Swakopmund we had breakfast at the B&B. This is what we had! Mmm… Bacon and Eggs… Wakey wakey, eggs ‘n bakey.
Now on our way to Sossusvlei there’s this little town in the middle of nowhere, literally. Something like 200km from the nearest city and still 70-odd km to our destination. The place is called Solitaire, which might give you an idea of how isolated they are. But they’re on the main route from pretty much anywhere to Sossusvlei so they get a lot of traffic through. A guy by the name of Moose McGregor arrived in 1992 to run the general store, and to pass the time started baking. One of the items that he baked was apple pie, and soon this became known as the best apple pie around. Now pretty much everyone passing on their way to or from Sossusvlei stops to get some apple pie and coffee. So much so that in peak times Moose now bakes up to 250kg of apple pie per day. That’s a LOT of apple pie! But we can see why as it was excellent. Despite travelling in the opposite direction on the way out of Sossusvlei I wanted to detour via Solitaire for some more apple pie. Thankfully sanity prevailed! Read a bit more about the apple pie here.
Now for some reason I do not have one single photo of a meal while we were at Sossusvlei. We did eat at their restaurant, but it wasn’t anything major which is probably why we didn’t take any photos. So… now on our way home…
We have crossed back into South Africa, had dinner at the Spur in Kimberley, and now this is breakfast in Bloemfontein at the Wimpy on the side of the freeway. This is mega breakfast I think.
And then for lunch at Harrismith, now relatively close to home, we stopped at Nando’s. This is Caroline’s chicken pita…
I had a double cheese burger, which is what I usually have at Nando’s, not that we go to Nando’s much. We’re still trying to boycott them because they refuse to use free range chicken, but occasionally we crack. We both had our meals “mild”.
So that’s it. Hope you enjoyed our little excursion! We are now able to resume our normal daily broadcast hopefully!
Tagged as:
apple pie,
apple strudel,
bacon,
biltong,
black forest cake,
boerewors,
burger,
calamari,
chicken,
chips,
chocolate mousse,
chop,
club sandwich,
coke float,
cordon bleu,
creme soda,
dessert,
droe wors,
egg,
eisbein,
fish,
ice cream,
jagermeiser,
kabeljou,
kingklip,
lamb curry,
minchee,
namibia,
pinapple core,
pizza,
pork,
prawn,
prawn and chicken curry,
roast pork,
roostekoek,
sausage,
schnitzel,
stroganoff,
vienna,
wiener
