Reviews of safaris to Damaraland

"Namibia is a stunningly beautiful country and from our experience Namibians are universally warm and friendly. We had a fantastic trip and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys active holidays.

With one glitch, (the car being sent to the wrong guesthouse) all the arrangements worked extremely well and the information we were given in advance was very comprehensive and helpful. Nothing important was missing. This will always be one of our most memorable holidays." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 17 on a Namibia trip

"Expert Africa were amazing. They spend a lot of time with me shaping the trip and advising me of the accommodation options. I found their recommendations spot on and the accommodation they booked was superb with a very individual and varied feel. The majority of the accommodation had a very personalised feel.

Sabina is worthy of particular mention, as she really knew Namibia well and so was able to give accurate and re-assuring advice. She was always courteous and nothing was too much trouble. Expert Africa give superb attention to detail and provide lots of useful information before the trip, which ensures the trip goes smoothly. Any issues, which were limited during or after the trip were dealt with very quickly and efficiently.

I would recommend Expert Africa without reservation.

The website is also very helpful when researching your trip." Read full review: 23 nights in Africa; 12 on a Namibia trip

"Everything other than the mix-up over the booking at Doro Nawas was very good. We felt that the booking issue was dealt with satisfactorily thanks to the efforts of all concerned.

It was the first time our daughter and son-in-law have visited Namibia the they found it thoroughly enjoyable. In particular they were highly impressed with the breathtaking landscape and stunning wildlife." Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 10 on a Namibia trip

"We love travelling in Namibia. The landscapes, the emptiness, the never ending points of interest and the feeling of being a welcome guest in a happy and well adjusted stable African country makes it a special place. To be able to eat game was a delight after Zambia, but then the German style breakfasts fail to hit the heights of a Zambian breakfast so ... But it's not all about the food!

Thank you Tracy and Expert Africa. You put together a fantastic holiday rather late in the day. It was perfectly paced and suited us absolutely. Whilst the internet may work for some holidays, the local knowledge you combined with a genuine interest in, and understanding of, what we wanted to achieve was invaluable and so much appreciated." Read full review: 20 nights in Africa; 15 on a Namibia trip

"We feel like our holiday in Namibia was really long and that is because we did so many different things in very different areas. And everywhere we went there was another highlight!

The standard of accommodation, the knowledge and enthusiasm of the guides and lodge/camp staff was all fantastic. We had 2 older teenagers this us and there were no complaints about the lack of wifi as they were too enthralled.

What we all noticed was how peaceful it was. No planes, very few cars, not many people. Great scenery, lots of amazing animals and lots and lots of stars!" Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 16 on a Namibia trip

"We loved our trip, it was fantastic.

Namibia is a varied and unspoilt country and being there was a privilege. Etosha totally lived up to it's billing as one of the best wildlife locations in Africa, we saw rhino repeatedly as well as lion, leopard and black faced impala.

The desert landscapes are remarkable and walking barefoot across the salt at Dead Vlei was a unique experience, as was climbing Dune 45. The wildlife (birds and mammals), the welcoming people, stunning landscape and starry southern skies will all live in our memories, we love still finding desert sand in our trainers." Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 14 on a Namibia trip

"We travelled to Namibia mid July 2015 staying in the country for 15 nights. We are a family of four with 16 and 14 year old boys.

It was me that did the planning with lots of time on the Expert Africa web site and discussions with the excellent Sabina and Martha. Reading people's feedback, my expectations for the holiday were very high and they were met and exceeded. All the logistics went without a hitch, travelling around was very easy, the lodges were great, and of course the wildlife, scenery and people fantastic.

We planned our trip to visit Namibia with excellent guidance from Sabina and Martha at Expert Africa. I am sure that their knowledge and experience helped to make it a great holiday for us. You can read our experiences on individual lodges and activities on the relevant pages so the following is more general stuff.

The flights to Namibia do get booked up well in advance for mid July as it is a busy time and of course more expensive the later you get so it is best to plan and book your trip at least 4 months in advance. Accommodation also gets booked up limiting choices.

We originally planned to go clockwise - Naukluft Mountains, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Damaland, Etosha, Central Highlands. However due to the accommodation availability we ended up going the other way. In hindsight was this a problem? No we didn't think so. Visiting Okonjima first was fantastic and seeing Cheetah and Leopards close up (10 - 20m) was amazing. Ok they are radio collared so much easier to find (not guaranteed) but so what! We did see 'wild' cheetah in Etosha, but from what I gather this is by no means guaranteed and leopards even less likely. Okonjima was the best place we visited in terms of the accommodation and trips, and we would have preferred to stay there 2 nights.

Being the end of July it was the dry season and winter in Namibia. We are not very keen on high temperatures and the daytime temps were low to high 20's during our visit which along with low humidity was perfect. Of course night time temperatures were pretty cold - 10 deg C? Namibia doesn't do much heating apart from open fires in the communal areas and blankets / hot water bottles in the lodges. However we took the advice provided and packed and wore layers to keep us warm in the evenings and mornings. This was one of the reasons why we opted for lodges rather than a camping trip to Namibia. Obviously it was a more expensive trip though.

We booked our flights independently saving about £600 but this did impact on our holiday in that we were planning on visiting the excellent Okonjima first. However the flight I booked didn't arrive until 1pm which didn't allow enough time to get through immigration, collect the hire car and the 3.5 hrs drive from the airport, therefore we had to stay one night at River Crossing and then only one night at Okonjima and it would have been better to have arrived earlier and had two nights at Okonjima.

We planned to have two nights at most of the places we went to which makes for a more relaxing trip and time to relax as well as the activities, especially as quite a few of the trips involve early morning starts. Our trip included 2,500km of driving so having relaxing days makes this easier.

We found all the Namibians we met very warm, friendly and welcoming. The reception and service at the places we stayed at was great and In a number of lodges, we were greeted with a song as well as drink and hot towel. They were happy to chat, especially the managers and all appeared to be happy. We very much enjoyed the singing that the staff did after dinner at a number of the lodges.

Food - Our boys are not the most adventurous and at most of the places we stayed at there was either a set menu with no choices or a choice of main menu only. However, they ate just about all that was put in front of them! Game steak was a regular feature, and it was excellent! Breakfast usually included a cooked option (usually eggs & bacon) which set the day off well, especially on an early start. Most places had cold drinks, tea, coffee and hot chocolate availabile throughout the day and cake at tea time so we didn't go hungry! House wine was usually good and drinks usually sensibly prices (relative to UK prices).

Obviously it is a sparsely populated country (about 2 million people) in a country 3+ times the size of the UK so there aren't lots of shops you can just stop at and pick up a snack. So you need to plan ahead a bit, order a packed lunch if necessary but there are good shops in the towns.

In Swakopmund we wanted to do the kayaking with seals as well as sand boarding and you can do both on one day - kayaking in the morning and sand boarding in the afternoon. However it typically gets windy in the afternoon and the sand boarding would not be as much fun. So we opted to spend 3 nights in Swakopmund (at the excellent Organic Square apartments) and do kayaking on the 1st morning and sand boarding on the 2nd day which worked out very well, and the weather for both was excellent. Given we had a long drive from Damaraland and to Sesriem either side of Swakopmund, it made sense as well.

My wife didn't fancy sand boarding so went on Tommy's Tour to see the wildlife etc. Although it got excellent reviews her experience was not that good. Although they found and saw interesting animals, the group was too large (30) and his rather old vehicle had problems and did breakdown once so he was stressed about that. The biggest problem was that there wasn't time to ask questions and quite a bit was in German rather than English.

WiFi - Our boys are not surprisingly used to having a decent broadband connection. As just about all the places we stayed at were remote, some very, the connection speed was poor, and in one place there was no WiFi (only via satellite on a PC which was available for public use). Clearly they were frustrated but we thought it wasn't a bad thing and to be honest there'd was lots to do and see!! We did set one of the boys the challenge of making a video of the trip. Given he had plenty of time in the car, this worked well and he did an excellent job making a 26min video set to music and we will enjoy this for years to come!

Driving - The roads are great whether tarmac or gravel and navigation easy. Of the 2,500km a bit over half was on gravel. We had a 2WD Honda CRV which was fine and our 4 suitcases fitted in the boot under the pull over cover (just!). Obviously you can't go as fast on gravel, and some were more rutted than others but generally they were fine and there was little traffic on the road. You can't drive after dark as there is a high risk of hitting animals, and we did see a lot of warthogs and some other large herbivores close to the road so you do need to keep your wits about you! We didn't get any punctures and the Bidvest (Budget) car pick up and drop off at the airport was easy. Many of the journeys were 3+ hours long and two were 5+. To help the time pass, we download some audio books which we played through the cars audio system via an aux lead and this helped the time pass, as well as some spectacular scenery at times. Fuel was cheap but you do need to pay by cash.

Winter means the dry season, and therefore not much vegetation and animals having to visit water holes. All good news for seeing animals, and we had a great time just sitting by water holes watching the animals come and go. At one in Etosha, when we arrived there were 3 lions and then 5 others arrived over the period of an hour, all greeting the others as they met.

Etosha - we stayed at Okaukuejo Camp. On the way we stopped off at Halali which didn't seem as nice, and the flood lit water hole at Okaukuejo really was fantastic, or maybe we were lucky with the animals and their coming and going. The food and accommodation was fine. We were advised to drive ourselves around which worked well, although the advantage of going with a guide is they talk to each other on the radio so you get a better chance of seeing animals, and of course you can learn from them more about the wildlife, park etc. We did a trip into Etosha from Mushara with a guide and then did the rest ourselves which we think worked well.

Trips - We contemplated going on an organised trip with a guide, the advantages being not having to worry about any organisation when out there and having the opportunity to learn from the guide, and for us and the boys to interact with the others in the group - could be good, or not so??!! However the downside was having to go on specific dates (which wasn't easy) and limited to the

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I think you did an excellent job, but it would have been nice to have had more detail on how the price was made up rather than just a single figure." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 12 on a Namibia trip

"This was an excellent holiday, and we really enjoyed exploring the diversity of places, activities and landscapes that Namibia has to offer. We really appreciated the informed advice from Tracy at Expert Africa when we were planning this trip - it made planning a lot simpler and easier.

However - and this is a big however - we object to the advice that a normal 2WD car is sufficient for the route that we took. We were assured that this would be fine, so we hired a Toyata Corolla. This was of course fine on tarmac, and meant we had good fuel efficiency. However, the gravel roads and access routes to lodges were very difficult and stressful to travel on in this car. We are not inexperienced, and we drove very carefully - and slowly - which meant that we took significantly longer than most to travel a route. Despite our care, we could not avoid damage to our car undercarriage on the access road to one lodge. We managed to avoid other damage that we needed to repair (though we incurred several dents and knocks from stones thrown up from the road) - had our car had a higher ground clearance and a more robust undercarriage we could have avoided this.

The car was extremelyuncomfortable to sit in on the gravel roads if they were not freshly regraded, including in the centre of Etosha near Halali - neither we nor the car were built for all the vibrations that ensued. Given that this is was an expensive holiday, paying a little extra for a more robust and comfortable car would have been money well-spent. This doesn't necessarily have to be a 4WD but it would be the easiest way to ensure the car is up to the job, When the roads are long and empty and you have no mobile reception, you want confidence that the car is built for the job." Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 17 on a Namibia trip

"A VERY VARIED AND INTERESTING EXPERIENCE , NAMIBIA MET AND EXCEED ALL OUR EXPECTATIONS IN TERMS OF SCENERY AND WILDLIFE." Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 17 on a Namibia trip

"Another wonderful holiday in Namibia and Botswana visiting some old favourites and some new ones that will probably become old favourites now.

Everything went smoothly from the arrival of the brochure to our arrival in Namibia and our return home.
Sabina organised an excellent trip for us - was that Sabina that we met at Doro Nawas? we thought it was but perhaps were wrong.

Nothing can replace the absolute peace we feel either looking at the stars or sitting round a waterhole late at night . The long empty roads are a joy to drive and arriving at such magical destinations incomparable. We feel that we had several holidays all rolled in to one - a couple by the river, in Etosha, at wonderful Doro Nawas, the seaside, and then Sossusvlei.

Just one amazing adventure.

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Thanks for such a great trip from start to finish." Read full review: 22 nights in Africa; 13 on a Namibia trip