Daan Viljoen Nature Reserve, Windhoek

We had a few grumbles as previously noted, with the Manager not turning up on time so we missed breakfast altogether and the toilet broke.  But it was still comfortable, with air con and we'd stay there again.

As part of our starting to push for more birding on our birding holiday, we'd asked if there were other nature reserves we could visit on our last morning.  It turns out there are indeed a few, and we were taken to the Daan Jiljoen Game Park.

This was a good birding spot and we managed to add a decent number of lifers and trip birds on our final morning, including Black-crowned Tchagra:

Common Scimitarbill:

Golden-breasted Bunting:

Long-billed Crombec:

Green-winged Pytilia:

Rufous-vented Tit-Babbler:

Short-toed Rock-Thrush:

It of course had to end, so we packed-up, drove back to the Guest-house, packed-up there and headed to the airport.  Gys's sister-in-law had very kindly spent a few hours helping us move our booking to an earlier Windhoek-Jo'burg flight, taking the pressure off our connection back to London (BA had cancelled the day flight and there were now two evening flights only) and so we headed home.

We saw a total of 281 species, of which 123 were lifers, taking our Africa list to 650 species and our overall list to 1,650 or roughly 16.5% of the species of the birds of the world.

We would recommend Namibia to anyone.  Personally speaking we'd have added a day north and south of Walvis Bay and picked better accommodation for the bulk of the trip and done more planned birding but another lesson learned there too.  We'll almost certainly stop using guides now other than dipping in to new areas to help get us started and we'll do much more of our own arrangements as we don't feel we got value for money from the trip given all the short-cuts and indeed the lack of birding expertise.  But Namibia is amazing!