Big cats and boobies

We start this week with a parental advisory warning. The boobies are not of the blue footed variety – if you know what I’m sayin’. Hurr hurr hurr (dirty old man laugh).

So, with around 2,800km already under our belts we set off on the Northern leg of our great Namibian adventure – first stop Africats.

Africats is a charity which rehabilitates big cats for release into the wild. Basically, farmers trap cheetahs and leopards and send them to Africats to ‘re-house’. They also have volunteers from England who, according to our guide, do nothing (because they can’t be trusted not to hurt themselves with anything more dangerous than a small stick) but poke around the bushes feeling busy. They do however pay a small fee, which Africats use to hire locals to actually do the work the volunteers should be doing.

They have several enclosures of thousands of hectares housing cheetahs and leopards which we were shown around.

 

Why is this exciting? Well, we haven’t yet seen a leopard (except for in a small cage and even then they are difficult to see) – it is the one animal lacking from the big 5. Now, I know it is debatable as to whether or not this sighting counts – zoo/enclosure, wild/not really wild. It also sparked the debate of which is more beautiful – leopard or cheetah (I am sorry but lions do not even get a look in). You shall have to decide for yourselves on these important but difficult questions…

Eventually we took our leave of Africats and continued North to Etosha. This is a gigantic salt pan which used to be a lake, formed when the rivers that fed the lake changed course. Regardless, it is the premier game park in Namibia and covers 22,000 square kilometres. The beauty of it is that it is extremely dry, but does have a spattering of waterholes and so in essence all one has to do is sit at a waterhole and the animals come to you.

Now let me vent my spleen a little about lions. The old Lonely Planet maxim regarding safari fever changes here to ‘enough freaking lions. I want to see a freaking leopard’. Lions are rubbish. We saw thirty odd, and did any of them do anything? Of course not. They just lie in the shade relaxing whilst tasty morsels such as giraffes saunter by, barely a bounce a way.  Booooring. Even the zebra are better.

 

What was exciting was the leopard relaxing under a tree by the side of the road. We had a blissful minute of collective gasping (with all the time the leopard looking extremely bemused by all the attention). It then walked 3 meters away from the road and just disappeared – proof that they can turn invisible.

So yeah – big five. So yah boo sucks to you Tom (and also all the Millwards who haven’t seen buffalo – not enough water here – but saw everything else).

So the burning question, is Etosha better than the Mara? Well, the Mara’s big advantage is that you  can drive off road and so get really close to the animals. But Etosha has campsites at some of the water holes and so one can sit up at night watching rhino and elephants drinking the night away (which we did with a herd of 20 elephants). Both are amazing – although we saw more lions at Etosha, had jackals running around our tents and the elephants there are twice the size. And Etosha’s Zebra are better looking. And the birds are better… (yawn).

All too soon our Etoshan adventure came to an end and we found ourselves once again on the road, this time to a Himba village. The Himba are one of the two Namibian ethnic groups that have retained their tribal traditions, being clothed in skins (although as little skins and as much skin as possible – in fact James found it hard to meet the ladies eyes), coating their bodies in animal fat and ochre, and not washing. Ever… Obviously, being a tourist village we all ended up getting married off, and some of the ladies were definitely more pleased to see us than others (the men buggered off as soon as we arrived). We ended up playing with the kids (fun but dirty).   The other jarring note was struck  when we learnt most of the kids do not go to school as traditional dress is not allowed. Difficult issues…

 

From the village we made our way to the coast by way of some rock art and a petrified forest. We were underwhelmed by these - apparently we have been jaded by our privileged upbringing, true playstation generation.

The petrified forest is 250 million years old (although who they found to count the rings we don’t know) and we walked around making bad jokes and pretending to be petrified ourselves. The rock art was cool, the problem being that huge significance was attributed to it (‘this is a shaman doing xyz ritual etc’), but who they were made by and when they were made remains a mystery. The artistry appeared to be around my level so I guess we can safely say that if they were not made by kids (‘put a hand on that tail there, it will really confuse our descendants’) then the artist was seriously wacked. When one is with hardened cynics like Jo and James it is hard to take these things seriously.

And so we started our last camping night around the fire, entertained by a local choir under a blood red moon.

The next day we drove to the coast and visited a seal colony. This numbered 100,000 odd animals and was smellier than you can possibly imagine. People were gagging - it was just horrendous and the smell lingered on us for hours. The coast of Namibia is called the Skeleton coast, either because of the whale skeletons dotted along it or due to the fact that if you were shipwrecked there you were dead and the ribs of your boat would be your only monument (we have been told both). Offshore, the currents are strong and freezing cold, coming from the Antarctic, and inland it is a desert for miles, where life survives by harnessing the sea fog. Nevertheless James plucked up the courage to paddle in the Atlantic – he says it was cold. No one else can vouch for this.

   

But the whole focus of visiting the coast (other than the seals and landscapes) is Swakopmund, a quintessentially German town on the Atlantic which has morphed into a major holiday destination with many adventurous activities on offer. We went quad biking into the desert which was excellent (I rolled a quad – didn’t even know it was possible before I did it). Believe it or not it is a lot of fun tearing up and down endless sand dunes at 50kph (for Jo 30kph, although in fairness that was the max speed of her bike).

  

Much to everyone’s surprise and alarm Baron, who you may remember from the snakebites, went skydiving – an experience he claims is terrifying and not to be repeated.

So we are coming to the end of our Namibian adventure with just one sleep in Windhoek before we are off, and what a beautiful country. Mainly desert, it is a tough environment and is absolutely vast. But it is incredibly beautiful and just driving through it gave me the heebie jeebies - although thank goodness we did it in camping luxury. The people too are very perceptive, giving Jo the nickname ‘Grumpy’ at the start of our tour after seeing her in the morning.  We would very much recommend a visit.

But now… …Victoria Falls. Life is truly tough.

Namibia part Zwei

So, we are sitting on the bus on the way to the North of Namibia. There are 11 people this week instead of 7 but we have a bigger bus. We also have a few Americans who are busy taking pictures of ‘poor’ kids. From the bus of course  - don’t want to get dirty…

So, I think it is time to fill you in on the last few days – which have been action packed. Okay, we left you at Aus – and no diamonds had been found…

From there we went to Luderitz, via Kolmanskop. This is an abandoned diamond town 15 miles from the Coast which is gradually being swallowed by the Namib Desert.  The story goes that some German chap came here, set up camp, and whilst he was having dinner sent his ‘boy’ to look for diamonds. The boy returned with pockets, as well as his hands and mouth, full of diamonds. But did the German say thanks? Nope. He said ‘a fairy tale’, which of course it was – for him.

But we have mixed feelings about the diamond industry here. A vast swathe of the country is designated ‘restricted diamond area no 1’, which you cannot enter, let alone tie your shoe laces in. However it is desert, there is no one there so who cares. What really irks of course is that we can’t go searching for instant wealth off our own bat.

From Kolmanskop we went to the seaside where we saw Flamingo’s (they seem to be everywhere in Africa), before arriving in Luderitz, a very picturesque, old (for these parts) German town.

The next day was a stonkingly long drive, via a vulnerable teenagers choir singing traditional Damara songs, to Sossusvlei in the Namib Naukluft national park. This is the image of Namibia (for me anyway. We lingered here for the evening and next day, climbing three gigantic sand dunes (one was some 220 meters tall) and getting very, very hot. Surprisingly being a desert and all, the area teemed with wildlife, with glimpses of springbok, oryx, ostriches and many, many tracks.

 

And that, as they say, was that. We were on our way back to Windhoek where we had dinner with the Namibian prime minister. And when I say ‘had dinner with’, I mean he was in the same restaurant. And when I say ‘Namibian prime minister’, the car had a Botswanan flag.

So we leave you with a continuing lack of diamonds – although we did find some quartz which we like to think of as more precious…

Exciting news

We have finished the first week of our Namibian adventure, but I am not going to talk about that. No sirree. Something much more exciting has happened.

So exciting in fact that we completely overlooked writing about it! One of those things that seems unreal until it happens, but then becomes normality in the blink of an eye.

It concerns a new baby, and a certain taking on of new responsibilities for Joanna and I.

Joanna is… …a new God parent (sorry Tom and Christina, no nephew yet – although a God-nephew if you will) as am I.

He is called Matthew Justin May, and is a cute version of his poppa. He also brings the total of the May children up to six, a ‘perfect’ number (1+2+3=1*2*3=6). Amazing.

One nation, one Namibia

Well here we are in Namibia, joined by family Millward – sans Christina, sitting in front of a wonderfully hot fire and drinking variously beer, cider-  and nothing (poor neglected me). We are on a tour with two randoms – a Japanese ninja enigma (whose name I can’t pronounce let alone spell), and Baron (not ‘the Baron’, Baron is his name). Baron, it would appear, likes his booze and has a predilection for snakebites as well as having bought three bottles of wine.

We arrived a few days ago, expecting a driver to meet us at the airport. However there was no one waiting for us, just a few locals chatting. Our Kenyan phones were not working and it was quite late so we ended up running around for a good half hour looking for the guy. Eventually pity was taken on us by a lady who phoned our safari company. 5 minutes later, our driver (a fat, useless lump) disengages himself from his very interesting conversation (yes, he was there watching us run around the whole time) and tells us it was our fault he didn’t see us because the plane was late (it was early). Eventually, we arrive at our hotel. They haven’t heard of us. We stay the night before being told we have now been booked into another hotel. They too hadn’t heard of us. Not a good start, and fortunately a theme that does not continue.

So eventually, and with considerable relief that it exists, we get on our vehicle (which is not a matatu, joy!) and  speed south to the quiver tree (kinkerboom tree) forest . Of course, these are not trees but tree aloes, but let’s not permit semantics to bother us (especially seeing as we do not know the difference). More upsettingly, the quiver trees do not quiver and jive. The bushmen just made quivers out of them. As a consolation, they were surrounded by rock hyraxes (which I suspect would make a tasty snack).

Just round the corner there is the giants playground, a jumbled collection of basaltic rock caused by an old volcano where we went for a little walk. Again, there were many hyraxes. We then progressed to the Fish River Canyon. This is, err, a canyon - although I doubt there are fish in the river as it is more of a stagnant pond. Nevertheless, the view was amazing. Before we knew it we were in Ai-Ai, a name meaning hot water after the hot springs (as a challenge, try to work out which Ai means hot, and which Ai means water), for a night under canvas.

 

The next day started with a long drive, with periodic potters along the Orange and Fish river valleys. Namibia is a very dry country with many mountains but the locals, who are used to this, do not find this at all interesting. Rather they prefer to show us rivers, small oases of green amongst an otherwise desolate and unforgiving landscape. I very much wanted to jump off the bus and climb a mountain (and maybe find a diamond), but suspect I would quickly have regretted it in the heat. Finally we ended up at Aus and went to watch the sunset.

 

Namibia (which was called South West Africa) is a bit of a strange country –vast and empty. Many superlatives could be used to describe it, but let us just say that it is desolate and very, very beautiful. Whilst it is in many ways one of the poorest countries with many people living on practically nothing and unemployment at 50% it has amazing resources, Gold, diamond, uranium, zinc mines etc. And after Kenya, the towns are just heavenly. They have wide, clean roads (which have lines painted on them!!!), there are very few people, no matatus, cars which stop at traffic lights and even look roadworthy!

Okay, Namibia achieved her independence in 1990 and so is a very ‘young’ country. They have a very good and workable constitution (which the Kenyans could have just copied if they were serious about change - sorry, ridiculous suggestion - too many vested interests),  loads of natural resources and improving education. So is the future rosy? Who knows, but I fear there are storm clouds on the horizon.

Weirdly (at least for me) the Namibians have some strange fascination with words/names with double vowels, such as Keetmansdoorp. Weirdest of all (after Kenya anyway) is we have seen white people working. Eugh. We got to our hotel and there was a white person behind the counter – I actually caught myself looking round for the receptionist! Nevertheless, I shall try not to let this put me off too much and shall endeavour to enjoy myself, whilst stuffing myself with dried Kudu - delicious.

Let me leave you with our Japanese Ninja striking a Ninja pose…