South Africa / Namibia 2016: South Africa and Namibia by air, November 2016, the photos

Photographic account, in about 170 pictures, of our South Africa and Namibia tour in November 2016.

The tour started south of Johannesburg, at Brakpan, (FABB) on the right side of the picture.
In BLUE, you will see the first half of the trip; the return trip is in RED (follow the arrows).
The direct route is about 3300 nautical miles, (6000 kilometers). Actually we flew a total of 45.8 hours, which corresponds to about 4300 nautical miles, slightly less than 8000 kilometers.

Some airports have no codes, as they are privately owned by the lodges, and are therefore not indicated on the map.

From Brakpan, close to Johannesburg, we leave southwest to Kimberley (FAKM)….

…. and further west to Upington (FAUP), the exit airport from South Africa.
Upington has the longest runway of the Southern Hemisphere, 4900 meters.

The reason for this huge runway in the "middle of nowhere" is to be a back up runway for the NASA space shuttle, should it need to land outside the USA in an emergency.
To illustrate the size of the runway and the airport, look at the jet planes parked on the right side of the photo....

We stop in Keetmanshoop (FYKT), Namibia for customs and immigration and continue to Luderitz (FYLZ), on the Atlantic coast

In Lüderitz we refuel amidst a huge sand storm. I need to protect the fuel cap with a cover to avoid sand entering the tanks while the attendant refills.

Lüderitz is a large fishing harbor. We spend the evening at the hotel with an engineer who installs huge deep freezing equipment to flash-freeze fish as soon as it reaches the harbor.

On the way north along the coast, there are a few stranded boats.

We reach Windhoek (Eros) ( FYWE), the general aviation airport of the capital of Namibia.
Lots of Pilatus PC12 on the field.

Northbound to Mokuti (FYMO), close to the Etosha park and the wild animals we came to watch.

The landing strip in Mokuti.

Our airplane, with luggage and jerry cans in the shade under the wings.

Here we start viewing lots of animals.

Not much traffic on the road to the safaris.

On the 2013 tour, we had aimed to view all BIG 5 of Africa, but missed the Rhino.
On this tour we saw four of them on different occasions.

Supposedly the largest bird able to fly. It can reach 17 Kgs (about 30 lbs).

Zebra.

We continue north toward the Angola border, and need to stop on the way to fuel our plane at Ondangwa (FYOA).

Our lucky day. There was a fuel station and an attendant to man it.

More PC12's in sight.

We are about to line up for take off.

A local village.

You miss the intersection, it takes a while to find out you are on the wrong track.

Another rhino for our collection. ALthough he looks as being white, he is the "normal" color, but has covered himself in dirt.

A so called "zebra crossing"!

Ondangwa in Northern Namibia.

On the other side of the river is Angola.

This is the landing strip of Epupa Falls (FYEF), right on the border with Angola.

It is warm as we get there, and the pool is welcome.

Every small shop sells SIM cards, and we buy a Namibian SIM...

...as well as a few Tetra Prisma cartons at the Arsenal Mini Market.

We visit a local village…..

….and go on a rafting tour on the Kunene river.

Lots of sun screen to protect ourselves from the sun.

Sundowner and fire place after dinner.

the following 10 pictures from the ground are taken by Mario, a Belgium pilot... of a "peniche" boat on European intercostal waterways, who kindly took the photos and sent them to me,

and now again my pictures from the air.

The Kunene river separating Angola from Namibia.

Overflying Angola, our mobile phones pick up the Angolan signals in the air.

The small house above is the lodge at Aloegrove (FYAL), and its private landing strip below.

The park has a few wild animals walking around, luckily behind fences.

Fuel has been a major issue during the trip. In order to be safe, we had to carry jerry cans with fuel, in order to refill our tanks at those airports where fuel was not available.

Swakopmund (FYSM) is again visible on the coast, famous for its morning fog. Temperatures falls from 37-38 C inland to close to 20 C (daytime) and as low as 13-14 C nighttime.

On the way to Wolwedans (FYWD), we overfly the famous sand dunes at Sossusvlei.

The landing strips in Wolwedans, barely visible behind the "reception" building.
There are actually 2 strips, one going straight up past the "reception", and another one barely visible from the right corner of the trees to the right of the building towards the middle part of the left side of the picture. Non-pilots need some imagination to find them...

Lunch on the terrace….

...and a swim to cool down.

Sundowner.

A jeep drive into the desert to look for animals.

The rooms are "tents" built on concrete floors with all the amenities of a modern hotel. Consider we are in the middle of the desert, 100's of kilometres from "civilisation".

Another refuelling exercice. We had to buy a drum of fuel, refill part of it into jerry cans and part of the balance into the wing, with manual pumps.

The balance for e drum goes into the wings.

We did not know why, but noticed that the moon was much brighter than usual. Only later did we find out that it was a "super moon", the brightest moon since 1948, and that the next such occurrence will not happen for many more years.

The lodge and the "tents" after take off.

Our next stop is Karios, on the Fish River and its famous canyons.Being the dry season, there is very little water in the river.

Fish River Canyon lodge (FYKC), and the small houses nestled in the rocks.

This was the warmest place during the trip, and the pool was welcome.

This canyon looks like the Grand Canyon (USA), it is not as deep, but impressive since there is basically no one around. We were the only car on the various overlooks.

The lodge and the small houses nestled between the rocks, after take off.

Back to the exit airport from Namibia in Keetmanshoop (FYKT).

A nice reception by the Upington (FAUP) Police lady officer (she checked all my documents, license, medical, airplane papers, insurance, etc.) and the border patrol officer who carefully checked the passports.

And again Upington (FAUP) with its longest runway of the Southern Hemisphere.

At the intersection of RWY 17-35, I have 2150 meters on my right and 2650 meters on my left.

The controller asked me if I accepted an intersection take off, with over 2 km runway on each side, and I did not dare asking to "back track"...

A huge solar power farm, where the panels are oriented towards a tower, heating water in its center and generating steam to generate power.

Augrabies (ZA0047) airfield is located in the middle of farming land, mainly grapes (for human consumption, not wine). Grapes are packed in boxes, on pallets, into refrigerated containers and shipped to Europe (3 weeks sailing, plus time in harbour in S. Africa and time from harbour to final destination).

The Augrabies waterfalls are the 6th highest falls in the world.

The lodge owner gave us his car for a tour of the falls and a sightseeing tour in the area.

We had a mechanical problem on the front strut and had to improvise with a plastic garden hose and some strip-bands to keep it all together. Our last landings happened uneventfully.

Grape fields as far as can be seen.

Prieska (FAPK) was a short lunch stop on the way back. Luckily we had packed a snack and drinks in the morning, as there was not a soul on the ground. Only a small hut with some shade could be found for our break. (the small white house barely visible close to the middle of the runway).

Low flight over the river.

Workers in a field planting or picking produce.

Another very nice runways in a X shape in Kimberley (FAKM).

In Kimberley (FAKM) they found a snake on the tarmac close to our airplane as we arrived;
luckily they caught it...

Kimberly has the biggest / deepest manmade hole in the world.
They excavated manually, starting around 1870, a 215 meter (about 700 feet) deep hole and about the same size in diameter, to search for diamonds.

During the peak years of operation, there were as many as fifty thousand men working on the hole. They estimate to have excavated 22 million tons of rocks (hard to figure out…) and 2.270 kgs (about 5.000 lbs) of diamonds. Lots of carats...