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…