It has been a while since I posted anything about our South Africa plans. I am still working on the trip. I’m almost done.

We originally had wanted 4 nights at the Mountain View Guest Lodge. Saturday night was not available so we had booked a single night at Naries. Fortunately, Mountain View had a cancellation so we are now in one location for 4 nights. This is so much better.

For Cape Town, I finally decided on an apartment for our 6 nights. It was so hard. I debated between something along the coast but we decided to go with a self-catering cottage in the suburbs. We are thinking that the suburbs will be easier to do day trips. Our rental is Clarkia Guest Cottage. It should be nice with a convenient location.

I rented a car through Auto Europe. They had the best prices on the cars with 0 excess. It is really thorugh Avis. We will pick it up downtown Cape Town, hopefully close to our hotel, and then return to the airport. I am also going to rent through Auto Europe for Namibia. That is one of the last things to do.

We paid our Namibia accomodations. We used Cardboard Box to make the arrangements and they were excellent. I’ll do a separate post with our itinerary for Namibia.

We are also thinking about arranging a day trip to Richtersveld National Park while we are in Springbok. You need a 4-wheel drive to tour Richtersveld so we are thinking about booking a day trip. It is a very long day. They will pick us up at 7am and we will return later in the evening (11pm?). Basically that is the only way we can do it without renting a 4wheel driving and camping. There are many unique succulents in the park and outside that we really want to see.

So far, it has been great working with people in South Africa. They are so responsive by email. Typically, it looks like they are paid through bank transfers. Fortunately, many will also take credit cards. A few will not. I understand since there are fees associated with the credit cards. A couple of places have mentioned that there is an additional cost if you charge (10%!!!!).

Now we need to start to plan what we are going to do day-by-day. And deal with the stress. It is starting. G and I have both mentioned that we have had dreams about the trip. And it is less than 6 weeks away.

I also went out today and splurged. I bought a new digital camera; a Canon 20D. I’ve been wanting a digital SLR and this camera is very close to my older SLR. I also got a zoom telephoto so I can take pictures of animals. Now I need to get used to using it. Tomorrow, we’ll go to Rainier and take some photos.