Namibia: Gocheganas

Gocheganas was our first stop after leaving Windhoek. We started seeing wildlife pretty much as soon as we turned onto the gravel road: two meerkats that crossed the road, some baboons (which apparently can be quite aggressive), a kudu, some springboks and waterbucks.

Gocheganas lodge is on top of a hill – beautifully positioned with views over all the valleys around. While relaxing by the pool, we saw more wildlife in the distance (springboks, warthogs, blue wildebeests), as well as some very colourful birds (starlings of different colours, sandgrouse, red-eyes bulbulls). There were lots of swallows filling their beaks in flight with water from the pool.

All the cabins are named after minerals found in the area – we stayed in cabin no 6 / Rose Quartz. It had a nice, big king bed with a mozzie net around it – and I’m glad it did as on the balcony there were several wasp nests, and inside the room there were lots of bees loaded with pollen, either dead or struggling to die near the windows. Soon after we put the bathroom floor towel down, we noticed some hairy worms (which Google informed us are carpet beetle larvae) taking residence quite quickly.

We went for a sunrise walk along the bird watching track – down the hill from the lodge, past a water hole that only had some tiny fish in it but not watering any creatures. We kept walking till we reached the road without seeing any wildlife, so we turned around. We saw lots of very interesting plants including some that looked like orchids (but didn’t have any flowers), acacia and other thorny bushes that I had no idea what they were.

After breakfast we went back on the bird watching walk trail and kept going through the river beds and across roads for about 4 km. We saw a big snake, which I think was a black mamba who had just had a feed, as the belly looked fairly big and it was struggling to get into a hole. Apart from this slightly scary encounter, we saw more springboks and zebras, interesting birds (including grey go-away birds that hunters hate), a warthog near another waterhole (frolicking in the mud and rubbing itself against rocks) and a plant that was probably wild basil as looked and smelled very similar to it. Good quality acacia thorns were stuck in our shoe soles and took a while to get them all out.

The evening game drive was amazing. It was just the four of us and the guide, Nicklaus. We saw springboks, water bucks (with the target / toilet-seat / follow-me mark on their bums), oryx, zebras (with babies), giraffes (with babies), ostrich, red hatterbeest, warthogs and many birds. We learned about the Acacia mellifera bush that the giraffes eat as well as another bush that is supposed to be good for headaches, toothaches or other types of pain. We then went to look for the rhinos – they have four of them on the property, and they guard them with armed men who work shifts. The guide took us to their favourite water hole but they were not there so we kept looking and eventually found them feeding – a male, two adult females and a baby female.

In that same area we stopped for a picnic which was magical – sunset light in various shades of orange basking the surrounding hills, giraffes very close to us, rhinos in the distance. Our guide was from Etosha and worked here two weeks on, two weeks off. He told us that rhino poachers were still a thing / quite active and they killed five of their rhinos a few years ago, so that is why they now have the rhino guards.

It turned out that for acacia thorns tyre rubber is as good as shoe soles.

There’s a short video from Gocheganas here.