Harnas Wildlife Foundation

Harnas Wildlife Foundation markets itself as one of the few wildlife orphanages and medical centers in the world to take in abused, injured, and captured wild animals. Though it's location (300km NE of Windhoek, near the Botswana border) makes it less popular for tourists than some of the game farms just outside the capital, it has one of the highest profiles, given its international patrons are none other than Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

I'll probably add several separate posts with pictures (I have a ton), so I'll keep the comments in this post pretty general. We left Windhoek feeling quite excited (albeit a bit sleepy) around 7am Saturday morning. There were four of us: Brooke, Kaylan, Mark, and me. We rented one tent and the car, otherwise we were able to scrounge up supplies (another tent, sleeping bags, cooking equipment, headlamps, etc) from Marybeth and the Puccini House owners, which was wonderful. Thankfully Brooke can drive standard and was brave enough to attempt driving on the wrong side of the road and shifting with her left hand!

Gorgeous day, gorgeous drive. With a stop for groceries in Gobabis, it took us just about five hours to get there. It's not that many kilometers, but the roads are fairly narrow and the last 100km or so was on a sand / dirt road, so we didn't dare drive too fast!
To put it mildly, customer service in Namibia is a bit, well, more "relaxed" than in the U.S. At Harnas, however, we were all delightfully surprised at the superb hospitality of our hosts. After we signed some paperwork at the entrance gate, one of the staff members was waiting for us at the reception, holding four glasses of sparkling fruit juice on a tray covered with a white napkin. Wow!! We sat at a picnic table sipping juice while filling out the registration paperwork and Petier told us about the various activities and tour options. When he mentioned an afternoon game tour that involved baby lions, the others saw the look my face and we quickly agreed to sign up. They encouraged us to come back to the lobby area 15-30 min before the 3pm tour so we'd have time for coffee and chocolate cake. After five hours in the car, this made me giddy... and mind you, this is before we went to our campsite and saw a herd of springbok bounding through the air not 200m away.


Saturday was the Fourth of July, and although we were camping in a very remove area of a sparsely populated country, we did our best to celebrate in true American style. We couldn't find sparklers or mini-fireworks, which is a good thing, because dry season + explosions = potential fire and disrupting animal rescue. We did purchase some "Texas-style" steaks (pre-seasoned) in Gobabis, corn on the cob, and potatoes, which we cooked over the campfire. We couldn't find graham crackers or Hershey bars, but we made S'mores on thin tea biscuits with multi-colored marshmellows (very popular here) and Cadbury chocolate. Yumm. Being the dork that I am, I also brought StarPops (suckers that taste like a combination of blue raspberry and cola, not that yummy, but the wrapping is blue foil with silver stars and they looked so patriotic I just had to get them) and a book of "Obama's Most Inspirational Speeches" I received at the Ambassador's Fourth of July party so we could dramatically read a few lines over the campfire.To be sure, another day (or two, or three...) would have been nice, but I think we all agreed this was the perfect weekend get-away. Total cost of the trip (tent rental, 3-day car rental, gasoline for driving 5hrs each way, groceries, per-person camping fee, game drive fee): about $100 USD.