Neuras Winery

I dragged myself out of bed early on Saturday for our five hour drive to Neuras, the research arm of Na'ankuse. It was a pretty uneventful and bumpy ride, and we switched over to a 4x4 for the last hour of the drive. The resident dog, Noodles, got us to our new base camp in one piece.

We had time to unpack, and I foolishly volunteered to take the tent rather than be in the rooms with the others. But I think it was worth not being put in a room with others - I'm a light sleeper and I also tend to sleep-talk.

Neuras is a fully functioning winery and is also the driest winery in the world.

We got a quick tour of the place, and let's just say it's a lot, lot prettier than Na'ankuse!

There are fountains all about the property, and later in the week, I took a chance swimming in the largest of them despite the greenish bottom and the many fish swimming around in it. I figured, when am I going to get a chance to swim with weaverbirds again?

There wasn't time for much else that day, so we all piled into the trucks with a packed cooler for a quick drive to a nearby viewpoint to enjoy a "sundowner" - basically drinking as we enjoyed the sunset.

The night was much quieter than those at Na'ankuse, and I missed the roar of the lions in the night. Neuras is in the middle of nowhere, which means that you could see the stars clearly without any light pollution. I fell asleep looking at the clearly visible Milky Way through my tent window- pretty amazing.

Sunday was our first "official" day at Neuras, and we kicked it off with some GPS training. It was a bit like a scavenger hunt, with clues leading us to the next clue. It was pretty straightforward, and we had lots of fun making decoy cairns for the next group. We decided to fill the decoys with various facts and riddles. Teehee.

We checked on some camera traps afterward to collect memory cards and to ensure they were charged and working. After we returned to camp, we looked through the photos on the memory cards to see what animals we could identify.

After lunch, we all hopped on board the open game-viewer to go on a game count despite the threatening clouds that were gathering in the distance. Once we were out in the bush, the raindrops began to fall, but we continued on with our binoculars to record any animals we saw and to jot down the relevant details. We spotted some kudu, ostrich, springbok and a jackal or two. My vision is pretty terrible so I usually caught on to the fact that there was even an animal there only after someone pointed out exactly where I should be looking. But I did spot the rainbow all by myself!

The drive was nice, but I was glad to be warm and dry back at camp. We were enjoying the evening bonfire when the heavens split open and big, fat raindrops came down while the thunder and lightening gave us quite a show for the next few hours. It was honestly the most amazing thunderstorm I've seen in my life, made even more amazing by the fact that it normally doesn't rain in Namibia in May!