Namibia

I think I’m not going to write so exactly sequentially for Namibia. Why? because Mark was in charge of the planning so we did A LOT.  I’ll try to restrict myself to the highlights, but firstly about Namibia.  Starting with the negatives because then you finish reading on a happy note.  It was EXPENSIVE.  Accommodation was more expensive that most European capital cities, camping pricier, and the food hurt the budget, this was something we heard a lot of people bemoaning.  Not great for travellers, but can you imagine what it’s like for a local.  Also, and this was more based on the time of year of our visit, but wow it was hot.  42 degrees, and we had no air-con in the car.  Which leads my nicely to my next point, very poor transport system, you have to hire a car to get around, get on board a overland truck or sell a kidney to pay for the very expensive in country tours, we were told that even hitch hikers were expected to pay a huge fee to get picked up.  And finally, it is basically all dust!

What was interesting was how usual the country was.  The cleanest cities in Africa, with German architecture (Namibia was Germany’s only colony) in a very dusty dry country.  Also, the landscape; or as one fellow traveller told us when we first arrived, ‘you’ve never seen so many different types of nothing’.  The supermarkets stocked with German produce like sauerkraut and rye bread and then typical African dishes like pap and biltong.  Massive, modern cattle farms in most of the country contrasted with the northern small rural tribal farms with foot and mouth and anthrax troubles.

So what did we do in Namibia?  We headed north first to Etosha national park for some desert game viewing.  What makes Etosha so amazing is the quantity of game, but also the environment.  Flat landscape with not much in the way of trees to block your view of huge herds of game wondering the plains, and a desert with just a couple of waterholes with guaranteed amazing game viewing.  Mark picked a great rest camp with a waterhole that with flood lamps lit overnight.  Mark got up at about 3.30 each morning to watch leopards, lions, elephant, hyena, rhino’s and more buck that you could braai* in a life time come to drink the water.  Hopefully he’ll be able to post his photo’s of this soon.

I also feel in love with Spitzkoppe, where we camped on a giant kopje (a hill or rocky outcrop set in an otherwise flat plain) in an area with no light pollution and watch the stars while toasting marshmallows and cuddling around the fire.  Again, once he’s edited them, Mark will post (what I think) his amazing photo’s from the evening.  We climbed the world’s biggest sand dunes by Swakopmund and explored a dead lake complete with dead trees.  We hiked to 3000 year old SAN bushman paintings.  Helped fellow travellers whose campervan had a flat tire (the whole time feeling incredibly happy that it wasn’t us this time) and then fixed our own flat tire the following day, thinking we shouldn’t have been so happy the day before.  We went wine tasting in Namibia’s only winery.  And finally I really enjoyed watching just how extraordinarily excited Mark was about the different varieties of barren nothingness that passed us by in the window.

We spent ten days in Namibia in all and while it is beautiful I’d suggest to all travellers to not go in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, pack a warm sleeping bag and only hire a car with aircon.  Also a stuffed wallet would help.

We left Windhoek, the capital on an overnight bus for Cape Town on one of the most comfortable buses I’ve ever taken, the InterCape.  Tragically they too make us watch terrible terrible movies played so loud my ipod set at full volume wouldn’t drown out the sound.  Sigh.

 

*Southern African for bbq