Africa and beyond: Namibia

Windhoek

Outside of the cities and towns, there's no public transport system in Namibia, so to be able to

see the sights it's either a self drive job or it's an organised tour. As we did the driving in South Africa, we decided to let someone else deal with the worsening road conditions, worry about the amount of fuel we have (or not have, remember Grahamstown??) and of course do the compulsory texting. So for 10 days we sat back, tried to relax (text,text text) and we saw the sights. The tour was great, the guide less so. The guide turned out to be more of a glorified taxi driver than a fountain of knowledge. His old fashioned communication skills were non-existant, i.e. vocally, he was a miser, very economical with the chat, a donkey could have talked off his hind legs, he suffered from an atrophic tongue.......you get the picture. However, his modern communication skills were impeccable, second to none, yes, you

guessed it, he was a habitual texter. His thumb gymnastics were so great I gave him our mobile number so he could text us snippets of information instead of having to talk to us. U R NOW @ THE S& DUNES.

When he did speak he would tell us stuff we already knew. For example, one of the biggest attractions in Namibia is Etosha National Park, a huge salt pan famed for its abundance of animals (especially rhinos). People come to Namibia just to visit Etosha. We had driven past road marking for miles telling us we were getting closer to Etosha. A huge "Welcome to Etosha" sign welcomed us to Etosha. We stopped at the park entrance to pay our entry fee. The guide, who hadn't spoke for hours then turned around to us and came out with the classic statement of the obvious, "Now we are in Etosha" (as if we didn't know) "Here we will

see the animals" and that was it, until an hour later, mid text he nearly hit a giraffe. "Ah" he said pointing out the window at one of the most recognizable creatures on the planet, "Giraffe". I don't think we necessarily needed to get so close to that one to identify it.

So to ease to uncomfortable silences we started providing our own obvious commentary. "You are now back in the bus", "You are now eating your lunch", " That man there has a head." Childish? Who, us?

Anyway, the tour was great, we saw the 50KM long Waterburg Plateau (U R now @ the Wtrbrg PL8O), Etosha was magical, we saw lion (lying), leopard (stalking), elephants (bathing in the mud), white and black rhino (drinking and generally rhinoing), and playing second fiddle were the hyena, jackal,zebra, mongeese, warthogs, heaps of antelope and not to mention the amazing birds, and I think I mentioned the giraffe.

Next we had the opportunity to get up close to a fascinating tribe, the Himba. The Himba are a semi-nomadic tribe who continue to live a traditional lifestyle. The women are famous for covering their skin and hair (resembling dreadlocks) with a fragrant mixture of ochre, butter and bush herbs, which dyes their skin a burnt-orange hue and serves as a natural sunblock and insect repellent. Instead of using water to wash, they perform a daily hour and a half smoke cleansing ritual on their skin and jewelry. The women also have their 4 lower front teeth removed when they are 11 yrs old so they resemble their cattle that they so admire! As their language is one of the sucky, clicky ones, the lack of these teeth also helps with the pronunciation of some of their words. It was a fascinating tour.

At Twyfelfontein we saw some 6000 yr old San rock engravings, one of the most extensive

rock-art galleries on the continent. We then headed to the sea and the magnificently eerie Skeleton Coast with its constant heavy fog masking the usually brilliant blue sky. It's a graveyard for many early European vessels of discovery. Further south at Cape Cross is the nasally challenging home to 100,000 fur seals who either frolic in the cold waters of the Atlantic or lie on the beach and moan at each other like disgruntled tourists.

In Swakupmund, where civilization and the sand dunes meet, we had some great encounters

with the beasts of the dunes, well, the so-called little 5. Burrowing skinks and beautifully coloured geckos, sidewinder snakes who can 'walk' up sand dunes, the amazing dancing white lady spider who makes a tunnel nest in the side of the dunes with a little trap door who can actually cartwheel (very quickly) down the slopes of the dunes to escape its predators and the awesome desert chameleon with it's 40cm projectile tongue which we saw in action. Well, we did the equivalent of hand feeding the chameleon with some tok-tokie beetles that we caught!

Namibia's other famous draw are the towering red sand dunes of Sossusvlei. We walked up the

150M high Dune 45 and watched a magnificent sunrise. Just for the record walking down a sand dune is a hell of a lot easier than walking up one in the dark. After the dune we headed to Deadvlei which is a old river bed that hasn't received water for eons but the remnants of life remain. Eerie looking trees sticking out of the cracked dry river-bed surrounded by red dunes sets the scene for a surreal, unique landscape.

Back in Windhoek we ummed and arghed what to do next - a long trip to Zambia or a shorter more expensive trip to get into Botswana which is renowned for being an expensive (A