Taking one of my high school buddies on his first trip to Africa next April. Booked a six day hunt on low fence ranches in Southern Namibia with Kalahari Hunting Safaris, for trophy Kudu, Gemsbok and Springbok, plus some culls, free jackals and baboons. We'll probably take a couple more animals since I need a Hartmann's Mtn Zebra rug to go with my Burchell's and my buddy wants a warthog.

I got a heck of deal using my United miles so we got business class seats from LAX to Windhoek and back.

I went to Namibia a month or so ago and had a great time. I am sure you will as well.

Good for you!. Whats the route you are flying? Frankfurt?

No, it's a weird one.

LAX to Addis Ababa (Ethiopian Airlines) with a one hour refueling stop in Dublin. Then Addis Ababa to Windhoek

On the way home it's, Windhoek to Addis Ababa to Vienna (on Ethiopian), then Vienna to LAX on Austrian Airways.

I guess the bright side to those long flights is that you used miles (free), you avoided J'Burg, and you're going to Namibia, which you will fall in love with. Good for you!

Yep, really looking forward to it. I hunted Namibia in 2008 and I loved it then so it's great to be going back. Really, I'm hoping that my friend has a fantastic trip.

Fjold, I was there last month and it was a great time. Just a word of caution on tha Addis route. I took Ethiopian through there from Dulles and had issues with my guns, they didn’t make it (I won’t belabor it here, I talked about it in a thread on this forum). Working up the postmortem on what happened there were two problems,

1) the gate agent in Dulles didn’t do all of the paperwork and send it forward to the Addis airport. I had the 4475 and all of the US paperwork in order, I even printed blank copies of the Ethiopian Airlines forms so that they wouldn’t have to scramble to get them at the airport. What she should have also done is scanned a copy of my passport and emailed all three docs forward to Addis. That didn’t happen and it caused the guns to hang up longer than they should have (they arrived the last day of our safari).
2) the flight was running late into Addis. All of our luggage made the leg to Windhoek (also with Ethiopian) but not the rifle case. On the way back through I was pulled out of the security line and taken down to the basement where I had to open my gun case and verify them. When I asked about it I was told that it is policy at the Addis airport and that no guns can transit through there without being opened and verified. Just watch your connection times and make sure that you catch an Ethiopian agent to tell them you have guns. If the gate agent at Dulles had done it right the guns would/should/may have arrived the next day but it took several calls by our PHs wonderful wife and another trip to the airport to get it straight.

If you have any other questions I would be happy to help any way I can. Enjoy and good hunting

Thanks for this information, I'll make sure that they at least know of this when I check in at LAX and see if we can head off any problems. I appreciate the help here.

I flew to Windhoek via Addis Ababa as well! Pulled off the plane both ways to have rifle inspected lol. Bit unnerving but rifle made it there and back to Canada

Who is the PH?

Hendrik Kotze

You will have a great time. We with with a Kalahari Safari (I guess there are more than one) but not that PH. Namibia was a great country, saw lots of game.