No more dust, Please.

It’s June 24th and Will and I are still on the road, currently in Luderitz enjoying lot's of seafood and a lovely little self-catering apartment surrounded by our unbelievably dusty luggage and belongings. I think we may be getting a bit tired of being on the road as we are completely taken with this little place and how amazing it is (running water, refrigerator, stove, toilet just right there, nice beds and a table!). One thing for sure is that after living in a car, we're pretty easy to please.

The sights and experiences have been amazing but Namibia is mostly gravel roads and we often end up completely covered in a fine dust, down to our powdered wig looking hair. When we open the back of the car for camping a cloud of dust rises up, when we open the door the same, etc. Once you take a shower, you feel clean until you have to touch anything in the car. We are looking forward to hitting paved roads again, if nothing else so I don’t end up with permanent dread locks.

Namibia has been amazing. After Etosha we headed back to Caprivi to go to the border post in Botswana for new tourist visas and check out if the Okavango Delta flooding had subsided. Last time we passed through there many lodges were closed or only doing boat transfers due to the high Okanvango river. We also did a bit of tiger fishing and caught three small ones. The way the tiger fish fight, I’d hate to catch a big one! The lodges were opening again in Botswana and we got to take a mokoro canoe trip to some islands in the Delta. It’s a real water world and it was interesting to see the same animals we’ve been seeing wandering around in the desert completely surrounded by water.

After Caprivi, we headed to Sossusvlei and the NamibRand nature preserve. The scenery is so dramatic and beautiful that any you can just randomly point your camera and push a button can take amazing pictures. We did the obligatory climb the massive 300-meter dune for the sunrise and I think I swallowed lots of sand by people passing me by as I sat to catch my breath. Will made it all the way to the tippy top eventually but it was a hell of a climb. Did I say it was all in sand? Dead Vlei was a special treat and is as beautiful and otherworldly as the famous photographs of the area. I guess that’s not surprising but often a place isn’t as nice as you see in photographs – Namibia is actually just like the photographs.

We've been watching television here in Luderitz and getting the dirt off of our cuts and bruises, trying to look somewhat respectable again. We've been watching a bit of the world cup in preparation for SA and I'm amazed that the US is doing so well. The news states that most foreign ticket holders are Americans, which is surprising. The one frustrating thing is that the news tends to focus on England so we have to read the scrolling print news to see how USA is doing.

I’m also happy to report that Will has been eating his fill of oysters with no allergic reactions. He apparently developed an allergy to this favorite food when he was younger and decided to try it again while here in Namibia but only when we were in towns staying inside with hospital facilities nearby. Yesterday he did start feeling a bit itchy after about 13 oysters so we’ll take a break until Cape Town but they are really delicious here, especially in Luderitz where they have an oyster farming operation.

Next on our trip itinerary is Fish River Canyon then we finally head out of Namibia after more than a month of bumming around here. We're planning on crossing the border into SA through the Richtersveld transfrontier park then head to a little winery recommended by Scott - an American living in Namibia. There we hope to sort out lodging options in Cape Town, which may be scarce due to the world cup madness.

I have to say that we're a bit nervous about SA, mainly because we're worried that it's going to be crowded and expensive just when the weather is the worst possible for camping. We've bought thermal underwear in preparation but it's still really hard to get out of the tent when it's bitterly cold. We're looking forward to Mozambique and I'm really hoping it's going to be warm - even Africa hot would be welcome with a nice ocean to swim in nearby.

It’s been great to run into David Megill here in Namibia and keep in touch with the Sudan crew – two of whom are back in Sudan now! Although we’re very sporadic with email we do love getting news from friends so please keep writing.

Will added more photos to the flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos_by_will/sets/72157624346262464/

Getting Colder

We left Swakopmund for Etosha National Park on Friday June 4th after having the car checked out by good mechanics and getting everything cleaned up from all the dust of Damaraland. We went on a buggy ride in the dunes near Swakopmund and saw 4 of the “little 5” – Chameleon, Gecko, legless lizard, and beetle – all native and unique in Namibia. The only one we missed was the ghost spider. During our nature drive we also went sandboarding, which is like sledding but on sand dunes, and Will got to do a little hot-dogging on the dunes. Will has started uploading photos on his Flicker site, the link is http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos_by_will/.
Swakopmund is a bit like Vic falls in that it’s an area of extreme/stupid sports. We’ve been pretty conservative with just an ultra light flight and sandboarding so far. I’m sure there will be more opportunities for extreme sports such as great white sharks in South Africa, plus all the soccer hooligans.
Etosha is a very large national park that is 100 years old. Most of the game comes to the water holes so it’s very easy to see animals but it’s much more sitting around waiting than the Kenyan driving safaris. We’ve seen lots of elephants, black rhino, black backed jackals, black faced impala, kudu (not sure if lesser or greater), mongoose, giraffes, mountain zebras and springboks. At first we stayed outside the park and drove in during the day since camping is much more expensive in the park. Then we moved to Halali lodge inside the park for two nights. There’s spacious camping and a great waterhole at Halali lodge. The main benefit is that you can stay up late game watching and we’ve enjoyed cooking out more and being less rushed.

Namibia Visa Woes

June 2, 2010

We are now in Swakopmund, Namibia after spending time with Will’s Aunt Barbara in Windhoek then heading out to Spitzkopf, Brandberg, and the Twyfelfontein area before heading into the Skeleton Coast Park at Torra Bay.  The scenery was dry and dusty with great reddish boulder formations piled in improbable heaps in the more southern areas around Spitzkopf.  We spent extra days hiking and photographing the beautiful views.  The scenery then changed to colorful scrub, grasslands and more traditional mountains in the Brandberg mountain area.  We had great campsites and really enjoyed ourselves, though the camping in these areas was the most rugged we’ve experienced so far. 

Then the inevitable happened – we broke down.  It was an electrical problem, the alternator, we were in the middle of nowhere trying to head from Twyfelfontain into Torra Bay.  Luckily we were on a route that is traveled by folks instead of one of the more scenic tracks that we’d been taking.  We had to wait a couple of hours. A nice couple stopped and helped us get the Range Rover to a good place off the road, in case we had to camp for the night.  Then more cars came including a driver from a resort nearby and a great man from Namibia Road Products and Services who is working on the Torra to Terrace Bay road.  These two guys gave us jumps repeatedly to get us to the only mechanic in the area – a donkey cart repairman.  We slept in the junkyard next to his home that night and the mechanic and Namibia Road Products and Services gentleman worked with Will to diagnose the problem.  Amazingly, the donkey cart repairman happened to have a working Land Rover alternator and we were able to head to the coast the next morning. 

The Skeleton Coast is amazingly desolate and rugged.  It was very cold and windy, which was a welcome change as we were fairly well coated in dust.  We stayed at the park B&B and took many long hot showers.  The main activity here seems to be surf fishing but the weather was so bad when we arrived, we decided not to try our luck.  However, most visitors were avid fishermen and talking to them made us regret not trying the sport, especially if we were spending time with these great folk.   We did walk to the dunes from the coast, like shipwrecked sailors and it’s true that distances are deceiving.  We ended up going for a 3 hour hike just to see the dunes. 

After two days at Skeleton Coast Park we headed down to Swakopmund to get the Land Rover checked out, shop, get cleaned up proper and do some adventure sports.  We’ve found some great guys to look over the Land Rover and we’re hoping to hit the dunes in some dune buggies before moving on.  Next on the agenda is to get our tourist visas straightened out.  Americans are allowed 90 day visas but we were only given a one month visa at the border. 

June 3, 2010

We found out that we either need to take our chances with Home Affairs to get a visa extension or head across the border and return.  Lesson learned – always ask for the maximum tourist visa possible when entering a country to avoid any hassles later on – TIA (This is Africa).  So we’re off to Caprivi Strip! 

We did a great nature drive on the dunes today with Outback Orange and our guide was Earnst.  We saw 4 of the little 5 and we did a little crazy driving so an all around winner.  Also we tried the sandboarding and it was like sledding but on good snow.  Stupid sports accomplished!