Erindi Game Reserve
About 2 hours outside of Windhoek, and 1 hour from Okahandja, lies a gorgeous private game reserve complete with leopard, wild dogs, a troop of elephants, buck galore, and more! With 79,000 ha of land our trip to Erindi was the closest thing I've ever done to staying in the bush.
The accommodation at Erindi is called the Old Traders Lodge. The rooms are set up in semi-detached buildings all situated around a man-made watering hole. The watering hole is lit-up at night so we could see all sorts of wildlife all throughout the night from the comfort of our bed. While located in the wilderness we didn't exactly have to live like bushmen. The room had all the modern comforts of home, complete with air conditioning, mini-bar, and over sized bath.
The dining facility at Old Traders was absolutely exquisite! Each meal was buffet style and delicious. As a semi-vegetarian/picky eater I was a little bit worried, but there were more than enough options for me. Although the food was fabulous, the best feature of the restaurant was its location overlooking an enormous and popular watering hole. Hippos and crocodiles are the most common sight at the watering hole during the day, but at night everything came out to play! Elephants and buck took over the watering hole and put on quite a show. We watched the elephants play in the water for hours. So beautiful.
Of course I also have to talk about the game drive! Included with our stay were two 3-hour game drives, one at night and one in the morning. We attended the evening game drive and more or less slept straight through the one in the morning, oops! The guide took us out onto the property, leaving the road behind and drove right through the bush. We saw so many furry friends, unfortunately no leopard though. I swear I will see all five of the Big 5 if it is the last thing I do! We were lucky enough to see a pair of brother lions first thing on our drive.
I still can't believe how close we were to them! Amazing! We also saw our fair share of buck, and giraffe, and we caught a quick glimpse of the endangered Black Rhino! We stopped out on our drive for a lovely sundowner.
On our return to the Game Lodge we came across our lion brothers once again, but it was a bit more unnerving to come across them in the darkess. I was sitting in the front of the truck and I literally could have reached over and touched them. Our guide however was as cool as a cucumber.
I was so sad come time to leave, I honestly could have done 2 weeks there, but my wallet does not permit such frivolous things. It cost R1400 per night, per person. This seems like quite a fair amount of money, but once you break everything down it really is not so much.
-Beautiful accommodation
-3 meals + tea & cake
-Sundowner
-2 game drives.
Also when converted into dollars it is about $175 per person per night. You will pay more to stay at a 2 star Howard Johnson's 45 minutes outside of New York City. I would say that it was worth the cost, but seeing as it was a birthday present for me I won't say anything. :)
All in all I give our stay at Erindi a 5 out of 5. Everything was just wonderful. A teeny tiny problem for me personally was the amount of bugs because I'm slightly terrified of them, but even with the creepy crawlies I had a 5 star time at Erindi!
-Beautiful accommodation
-3 meals + tea & cake
-Sundowner
-2 game drives.
Also when converted into dollars it is about $175 per person per night. You will pay more to stay at a 2 star Howard Johnson's 45 minutes outside of New York City. I would say that it was worth the cost, but seeing as it was a birthday present for me I won't say anything. :)
All in all I give our stay at Erindi a 5 out of 5. Everything was just wonderful. A teeny tiny problem for me personally was the amount of bugs because I'm slightly terrified of them, but even with the creepy crawlies I had a 5 star time at Erindi!
