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Fish River Canyon, Namibia

5 days to go:
The road out of Swakopmund has epic waves on the left with huge rolling sand dunes on the right. Two hours in, the terrain changes again as we start entering the harsh mountain ranges. Still in the Namib desert but its all slate looking rock.

“Thought of the moment #58: They call it bush toilets for a reason, at no point do they call it desert toilets. I can tell you why that hasn’t caught on; because squatting behind a cactus bush – ouch, and thorn bush – itchy.”

When we stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn sign plonked on the side of the highway, I was surprised to see no ocean. And now we all know that its actually a meridian line drawn all around the world 22.5 degrees south of the equator. It’s on the same line that goes through Rockhampton, Australia and we may see it again in Chile. I tell you what, post this trip I’ll be a trivia queen.

Just before sunset we walked down into the Sesriem Canyon. This canyon was formed when the Tsauchab River carved a gorge 30 metres into the gravel deposits about 15 million years ago. It’s thought that this river once flowed to the Atlantic Ocean but its course was blocked by the sand dunes. Now when there is actually water in there, the river flows out to the dune fields that stretch for hundreds of miles up the coast, and dries up in a clay pan at Sossusvlei. The only sign of water we saw was a tiny pool a few metres wide, with cat fish in it. Poor buggers they are trapped there again until it rains enough to get water flowing in the gorge.

4days to go:
I have a new found understanding about the formation of a sand dune after being a part of the creation.
At 5am today we drove 45 km to ‘Dune 45’ and by 6am we were up the side of a sand dune. The wind up the top of this 100 metre dune was ridiculous. You could barely put one foot in front of the other because of the strong winds, not to mention the 30 degree slope. I don’t usually quit, but I could only make it 3/4 of the way. Dave did, and on the return trip he attempted to slide down on cardboard but to no avail due to sinking on the non slippery beer boxes.
7am, French toast in the car park. Flapping our plates dry with wet hands in the wind in 5degrees made my fingers nearly snap off with frostbite.
830am, we have already reached our next destination. We transferred out of the truck and into 4×4 jeeps to get us to the Sossusvlei area, and more dunes. I nearly cried (on the inside) when our leader said, ” it’s another walk over the dunes to get to the next bit, the Dead Vlei”. From the drop off point all you can see is red dunes and a crevass, which once would have been a river. There’s water in there once a year. Namibian deserts have flash floods but the water goes nearly instantaneously. We followed that ‘would be river’ along until it abruptly stopped. A tall sand dune created a dead end (which is what Sossusvlei means, dead end) It looked almost like a wall between the ‘river’ and the other side. On the other side of the dune wall was the Dead Vlei. Can you imagine a huge bowl or crater with white salt pan like rock covering the bottom while all four sides are surrounded by red dunes, including ‘Big Daddy dune’ 388m in height (highest dune in Southern Africa)? The significance of this place is the hundreds of petrified acacia trees that stand tall at the bottom. They died 800 years ago. There once was water there and it evaporated so suddenly the trees didn’t have a chance to fall over so they are still standing perfectly to this day, dead! Well worth the venture, even just the contrast of red, white and blue sky was magnificent.
11am, back to the campsite for lunch, tent down and on the road again – 5 hours until tonight’s campsite in a desert valley somewhere.
5pm, tonight’s campsite has a bar with big thatched roof and walls and an open fire. As warm as that was, there was something wrong about that. We have the option to upgrade to a chalet tonight for $20, oh how I would like to forgo tent up tent down, but we just can’t justify it every time it’s offered.

3days to go:
As soon as we got into our tent last night and peeled 6 layers off, we realised that we should have paid to upgrade, even if it was triple the price. It was minus 4 degrees. When putting down our tents at 6am we saw ice on the inside and outside of the tent, and a burst water main made an ice tree – and we were (attempting) to sleep on the ground in a tent. Who the hell would have thought an African desert would be cold… anyone who didn’t do research into the fact that its WINTER! In summer it’s high 40s.

First stop of the day is the Giant’s Playground. Large dolerite boulders are stacked up on each other as if a giant baby had used them as building blocks. The boulders are between 160 million and 180 million years old, most of which are over a tonne in weight.They were caused by magna that cooled before it reached the surface. Because of the different hardness of the rock, the softer bits were washed away and that left the harder bits… or something like that.
On the way to the Quiver Tree Forest walk, we finally saw cheetahs. Namibia has 25 % of the world’s cheetah population. At take off they reach speeds of 145km ph but although they catch their prey, they often can’t keep it. When they stop, their body temperature is at 60 deg so they have to wait 30 minutes to cool down before they can eat their prey. Often vultures will have stolen it before then. If they run for more than 200 m, they will overheat and drop dead. That was more of a highlight than the Quiver Tree Forest walk itself. A forest that doesn’t consist of more than a handful of Quiver Trees doesn ‘t constitute a forest but I’ll give it to them because it’s the closest they’ll get in a desert and quiver trees mostly grow in groups: but a forest, really???!!! They’re not even a tree and it’s not even called a quiver tree. It’s actually a plant called Aloe Dichotoma. Dichotoma refers to the forked branches. The reason it’s called Quiver is because the San – click click – bushman use the branches to make quivers for their arrows. These weird 9m high plant / trees things only flower at around 25 years old and live to 300 years.
Like most people on our trip, my enthusiasm for anything is drying out… trees plants rocks sightseeing it’s all just becoming a bit same, same. Everyone on the trip’s energy levels are dropping as it comes closer to the end. At no point are you ever clean, always dusty, always dirty. We are all living in our marino base layers or thermals, day and night. Some days are longer than others. Today, before 10am we had driven 4 hours and now (1pm) we have another 3 hours drive before another sightseeing stop before ‘tent up, tent down’. Its been 21 days overland and I’m worried about the 60 days overland tour in South America. Guess I can’t do much about it, so I may as well smile, even if days like today I’ll just have to fake it until I make it. “Just keep swimming – swimming -swimming”.

Fortunately alcohol fixes everything, at the end of the 2km walk along the edge of Fish River Canyon I was feeling tip top. The truck was waiting there with our esky and our bottles of wine ready for sunset. I suppose I should mention the importance of our last included highlight of the trip rather than just the mighty fine sav blanc from South Africa, straight out of the bottle. Fish River Canyon is the second biggest canyon in the world, second to the Grand Canyon. It’s 161 km long, 27km wide and 550m deep. Namibians have really got to work on their naming conventions though. Fish River…. There is a buckets worth of water down there and enough fish to feed a family of four!
….And there’s my real smile!!

2days to go:
A sleep in today! We weren’t on the road again until 830! A short drive this morning to Orange River, via a stop on the way at Ai Ais Hot Springs. But you can’t swim in it at 65+ degrees and the pools were 30deg. Whipping 5 layers of clothing off unnecessarily in these temperatures just doesn’t happen.

Today is the last
day in Namibia. We are staying the night at Orange River, which is just before the border between Namibia and South Africa. We can see South Africa, just past the hills and a vineyard coming into the campground. I was thinking how do they grow grapes without water, we have not seen even a cloud in the sky for weeks. Sure enough, here it’s cloudy with light showers.
It’s Sunday and our goal from here on in is to make our way to Cape Town by midday Tuesday, our last day on tour. I’m thankful that the majority of this trip has been in Namibia. The last animals we saw in Namibia were the many ostriches. Poor stupid animals, they have a brain the size of their eye. They are so intellectually challenged that unless they leave an egg in the nest to remind them what they were supposed to be doing, they would forget their job and stop laying. Sounds like old age! We never got to see the rhino or meerkat which was a shame, but there’s always next time – or the zoo. We have had nearly two weeks here to discover the Namibian diversity with its immense solitude and far horizons, arid deserts, jagged mountain heights of rock then sand dunes, and its rough ocean shoreline. You can never pick a favourite but certain highlights come to mind: sleeping under the stars at Spitzkoppe, the first animals we saw at Etosha and the click click bushman.

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Swakopmund, Namibia

Once we had left Etosha and the national park area, the landscape vastly changed on us, again. Since arriving in Namibia we had been trekking along the edge of the Kalahari Desert, but not in it. It’s quite obvious to see when we entered into our first desert, the Namib Desert. The Namib Desert is 81,000sqkm long, very narrow and is the worlds oldest desert. Among many things, a desert is defined by a lack of water with no vegetation. What makes this desert so diverse is the Namib starts on the skeleton coastline and rises to an altitude of 1,000 m above sea level. Within ‘this’ desert, there are sand dunes, salt pans, mud flats, granite mountains and deep gorges.

After 9 hours on the road, we arrived in the wild lands around the mountain of Spitzkoppe – ‘the Matterhorn of Namibia’. The mountain, which is 700 million years old, is 1,987 metres (5,857 ft) high. I’m told Spitzkoppe has similarities to Uluru, Coober Pedy and the Arizona desert. In time for sunset, we climbed one of the smallish mountains, often on hands and knees. This was Dave’s or any rock climber’s dream. The granite mountains and ground soil gives beautiful red and orange colours at all hours of the day. It wasn’t that long ago someone fell to their death on this mountain. It’s not like western countries where there are handrails up the side of these mountains. We were free to climb wherever we pleased.
After a campfire dinner, we grabbed a bottle of red, our foam mattresses and sleeping bags and headed for a formation of rocks about 20 metres directly above our campsite. Our leader said if we were to sleep under the stars it had to be up on the rock mountain not the ground because of the scorpions. That freaked all but 4 of us out, but it was well worth forgoing our tents for a flat piece of granite. I was flipping out slightly about the scorpion issue but I didn’t want to miss out. My eyes and nose were the only things poking out of my tightly drawn sleeping bag cords. The stars from the top of these mountains, plonked in the desert, was something simply breathtaking. Within the first 20 minutes, 8 shooting starts zoomed across the already well lit sky. Dave feel asleep holding the bottle of red, but was rudely awakened when it tipped all over him. Before we knew it, it was sunrise. The bright orange sun rose from behind the granite rock formations and made the rocks shine bright with the colour red.

We’re on the road again. This time we’re on our way to Swakopmund. We drove along some of the 600 km Skeleton Coastline alongside the Atlantic Coast. The Skeleton Coast is a graveyard to thousands of ships. The last shipwreck was less than a year ago. The 6 hour drive was an interesting one as we were surrounded by the massive dune fields of the Namib Desert on three sides, and the Atlantic Ocean on the fourth. Further along the coast was home to 80,000 olive-coloured cape fur seals, bathing on the Cape Cross shores. As soon as we stepped out of the truck we could smell this god awful smell. There were so many seals that they stand on each other. The smell is the decomposition of seal. They sound like moaning goats. You could barely see the beach as it was so heavily populated, and the ocean had thousands of bobbing black dots. There is a management programme (culling) underway to keep the seal population as it is. The bull (male) seal mates with each cow (female) one week after giving birth. Therefore seals are pregnant all but one week of the year, every year. Im glad I’m not a cow!

The next three nights were spent on ‘holiday’ in Swakopmund. We are midway through the trip and were in need of a break from the road and planned activities . Like many, we had paid for a room upgrade. This meant our own chalet (BATHROOM &amp; A BED!!!), with a good shower which was needed after going a few days without.
Like all major settlements in Namibia, Swakopmund has a German culture /influence. What a fascinating town it was. It’s like all of the German Tudor style houses (and German street names) are plonked right on an English beach. It’s rather odd, and definitely not Namibian, or is it? It has this cold coastal town feel, a long way from the desert of that morning. It’s so cold you can see your breath.
Dave and I, like everyone else, escaped from our group for the night. We are on holiday. What does one do for a night? Go on a date of course! We headed down to the fanciest place in town, a tug boat shaped restaurant plonked right on the coastline. We were there prior to it opening and we took the only non booked table. If I had a yummy descriptive word to describe the meat Oryx, I would use it now. All I can say is Indians have got it right, cows are over rated – they should be eating the antelope, Oryx, as it’s a gazillion times tastier. I now have to find a way to farm them back in Australia. It did feel, just slightly, odd only admiring them in Etosha N.P yesterday and now chomping away on our four legged friend…but I got over that vegetarian thought as soon as I had the first bite!
Our only activity in Swakopmund was quad biking on the sand dunes. My experience was very different to Dave’s. Firstly, the dunes are freaking huge and go forever. Some would say we are in a desert! Dave grabbed the manual 250cc bike and I grabbed the auto 125cc. The group of 11 all headed off together with two guides. When on the dunes you have to really ‘go for it’ to be able to make it up the dune or otherwise you’ll end up stuck in the sand. Dave was fine, totally fearless and carefree. He went as fast as you could on the steepest of dunes. He got higher than all of the group. That was what I was like before I had my quad biking accident a few years back. Me and that bike went our separate ways, after flying off the side of the cliff. I didn’t realise it but as soon as I got back on (today) and up on the peak edge of the dune, all those memories came back. I was freaked out. I was brave and carried on but with caution, tears steaming down under the dark glasses. It wasn’t hard to tell my fear was holding me back from being able to keep up with the group, all varying levels of difficulty. Half way through, 1 hour in, I was ready to give it in but they split me up with my own leader. That made me feel like a right goose. But it was the right thing as he started me slow and built the confidence back up. It wasn’t long but at my own pace I got back up to driving on the side of the dune again. I graduated and before I knew it, I joined the rest of the group and was smiling again. I’m glad I jumped back in and gave it a go but I’m more grateful for the way they handled the situation. Dave was stoked with me too. He even gave in and let me buy the two, near life size, wooden giraffes from the market as a reward!!! To airmail them back it was to cost $400USD, we went with seamail.

“Observation #93: All the ‘lower paid workers’ anywhere in Zimbabwe, Botswana or Namibia are of the non white variety and that bothers me greatly. It bothers me as it would be like every time you went out and had someone serve you they were Aboriginal or Maori – it doesn’t seem very equal to me. I chatted to the scientist in our group about it, he said that these countries are relatively new. 20 years ago there may not have been the same equal rights to eduation, and to get a good job you would need better education. I might be completely off wicket with this one but it’s just an observation. I just hope that in years to come it becomes more equal.”

When Chris our leader gave his spiel on Namibia, I had my pen and paper with me so I have more on Namibia than I did on Botswana. Probably, the most important fact is that Namibia is a very stable country. Namibia split from South Africa and only came to be its own country in 1990/94. There are 11 tribes all over the country. There has only been 2 presidents and both are from the same tribe. The reason I mentioned the different tribes is they are so obviously different in their dress and customs. The average income is $300 USD per month, but only 50% of the country is employed. In 2006, 72,000 Namibians wor
ked in the tourism industry or 17.9% of employed people – by 2017 this will have risen by 8%. Those unemployed often live off the land and in the countryside where you can grow your own food.
Education is free for children from grade 1 to grade 7. Heath care is free however the queues are extraordinarily long. 15% of Namibians have HIV. The country spans over 825 sqkm, 66% of it is desert (part Kalahari but mostly Namib desert). About 1.5 people per sq km and 1 in 4 people live in urban areas. A lot of produce is imported from South Africa due to the fact most of the country is desert. Both currencies (S.A &amp; Namib) are always 1 to 1.
It has a stable economy because of diamond and gold mining. 23% of the GDP is mining followed by tourism at 14%. Namibia has said to have the “best diamonds in the world”. There were once so many diamonds you could literally ‘pick’ them. Believe it or not, those sites are now protected. In 2010 a famous travel magazine voted Namibia “the best country to visit”. The year following 2.7 million tourists visited and there are only 2.1 million people who live here.
Well that’s slightly more knowledge than a few days ago, when the extent of what I knew was Jolie giving birth to her daugther in the little city we are in now, Swakopmund. Are you thinking who the hell cares? me too!

We are particularly enjoying our time in Namibia because of the country’s diverse landscape. Sadly there are only 5 more days to go.

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Etosha National Park, Namibia

We are now in Etosha National Park, which translates to The White Place. It’s 22,935 sq km in size and 4730sq km of it is salt pans. Both of our game drives over the two days are done in our truck. It works well as all the large windows can be drawn down, we are much higher up off the ground and the truck can go anywhere without issues. Elosha’s landscape is very different to Chobe N.P as its has a lot of sparse, vast landscape with fewer trees. It makes for easier game viewing. Etosha is known for the concentrated amount of giraffes and the 86 natural and manmade waterholes. Etosha is where David Attenborough filmed that famous giraffe fight and where the baby elephant who died and the mother had to make the decision to leave it occurred.

Day One: On the third water hole of the day, we came across the first animal worth stopping for, meaning not the thousands of antelope in about 20 varieties. We saw a giraffe at this waterhole and waited about 10 mins for it to take in some water. Watching a giraffe drinking is something very awkward because it has to bend its long legs in a weird way. A giraffe’s tongue is 45cm and it only bends down for 30-40 seconds at a time before it gets dizzy. Namibian giraffes grow to 5metres tall and 28 years of age. The older they get the darker in colour they go, to almost black heads. They are the only animal who gives birth to a baby with horns built into its skull. Male giraffes eat higher on trees and have shiny horns and females eat the lower branches and have fluffy horns.
Over the next hour, 7 giraffes, 3 oryx, 20 impala, 15 zebras and 2 elephants all came for a drink. The two male elephants starting having a bit of a play fight but then I wondered why his 5th leg (which is literally the size of a human leg) came for a very big stiff look at the world. I’m unsure what happened next but if an elephant swings its truck into ‘himself’ and blows… what would you call that? But seriously, seeing all of those wild animals all having an afternoon drink was pretty mind blowing!

Only minutes after we got back on the road a herd of over 50 elephants came past us. Three of them came as close as 1 metre from the truck. Elephants eat 270kg of food per day over the 18 hours that they are awake. They live to about 60 or however long they keep their molars. Molars are replaced 6 times. As soon as they go, they starve to death, normally among the soft grasses which become elephant graveyards. Elephants are up there with my favourite animals. They communicate via infrasound, the sound below our threshold of hearing. In Etosha certain atmospheric conditions allow elephants to send infrasonic sounds great distances. Under a veil called a ‘thermal inversion’ elephants bounce sound off the inversion sending it more than a hundred kilometres further at certain times of the day. At sunset and sunrise for example, the inversion is sometimes so clearly visible that you’ll see a line in the sky. Sound waves made by elephant’s feet can be detected by elephants up to 32km away. Knowing that information makes it even more amazing that although 50 elephants passed us by, there was no sound as they are ridiculously silent. The only noise to be heard is when they crash through the trees or bushes. They are very placid creatures, and it is so nice to see all with tusks. The elephants in Etosha are the biggest in Africa (shoulder span of 4.2m wide) yet their tusks are some of the smallest because of the type of food they consume. The elephant population in Etosha has grown by 9,615% (now 2,500) since 1954 due to the boreholes drilled along the 19th latitude, primarily to draw elephants into the parks from the farms.

Further along the road we saw a honey badger playing cat and mouse with a jackal. The importance of this was it’s very, very rare to see a honey badger. It wasn’t impressive but looked like a rat being chased by a dog. But I did the, “ooohhhh aaahhh” at the appropriate time.

We could never get sick on this tour as 90% of the food is cooked for us 3 times a day.We have to wash our hands before every meal with soap, then Dettol, then rinse. The same goes for all the cooking eating utensils before it’s flapped. The Dettol drys your hands out but the other tour companies who aren’t so strict on hygiene have people getting sick. I wouldn’t have expected all our bodies to be so dry. The skin all over our bodies is cracking and it stings. Namibia is the driest of all African countries with next to no humidity whatsoever. All water, although perfectly safe to drink or shower in, has a slight salty taste, even bottled water.

Day Two: as per usual we have the tent packed down by 6am, breakfast is at 630am, and we are in the truck and on the road by 7:15am sharp. Today we are going further into Etosha N.P. Both nights are spent at camp grounds in the park. The landscape is changing even more so, with the salt pans now easily visible. Eland antelope and Oryx antelope roam for salt, as all animals like the taste. Eland are the biggest of the antelope family, growing up to 1.8 metres. In the last blog I said Eland were chewy animals, that was actually the Kudo antelope. The Eland was a spectacular meat, hands down much tastier than cow. I’m told the Oryx is the best but we’ll have to wait until Swakopmund to try it. We had giraffe the other day as it was made into a biltong. It tasted like day old lamb chops.
The black faced impala antelope was nearly extinct in the 70s. Now Etosha is the only place in the world they can be found. We have seen thousands of normal and black faced impala. When two Impala antelope have a fight, occasionally they lock horns. If this happens they cannot unlock them then they’re an easy lion’s supper.

There are plenty of man made water holes at Etosha which makes spotting easier. Today’s mission is to find a male lion, rhino, cheetah, leopard and meerkat as we haven’t seen them, and a warthog as Dave likes watching them and likes the taste. All we seem to spot are giraffes, elephants and zebras by the dazzle. The black stripes on a zebra absorb the heat while the white reflects. Each zebra’s stripes are different, like finger prints, so the first thing a baby zebra does is remember the mother’s stripes. There are 8 types of zebra, the ones we saw on day two had brown on their coats.

We had been driving for 2 hours without seeing much, then a car stopped us and advised us lions are only few kilometres back. There sure were lions, only 10 metres from our truck was a zebra carcass, maybe 12 hours dead with only the head and ribs remaining. 2 male lions, 1 female and two 4 month old cubs peacefully lay after their breakfast feast was finished. About 30 metres away lay 6 more females sleeping under a tree.

I understand why wilderbeast are a part of the Ugly 5, but I do feel sorry for the poor animal. Not only are they unfortunate looking, once a baby is born it has 7 mins to start walking and within 1 hour they have to run as fast as they possibly can to escape from their predators.

At our ‘safe toilet spot’ (no sporadic squatting in this territory) we followed Richard and Liz on their GeoCache treasure hunt. In the fork of a tree we found the little canister and code hidden. That was their 1800th one and our 1st. I don’t think I have the patience or stickability to keep up with this treasure hunt.

After spotting a leopard, which is next to impossible as they are sooooo hard to find, we learnt what dictates the Big 5. It’s because of how aggressive these 5 are. Of the big 5, elephant, black rhino, water buffalo, leopard and lion, the rhino is the most aggressive and dangerous. We later saw our second leopard of the day. We were searching for this flipping leopard for about an hour in some white rocks under beautiful green trees. Seriously the hardest animal on earth to spot, it’s very camouflaged. On and off this frustrating animal was hiding, then finally we found the perfect shot and BOTH OUR CAMERA BATTERIES DIED! The big cat family sleep for about 20 hours per day and eat for the remainder so if you’re not th
ere for the 4, luck to you finding them. I have no patience for this animal finding stuff, which is probably why I like elephants. They eat most of the day, they’re hard to miss and make for perfect photo opportunities. Wham, bam thank you mam!

Further along we go, there becomes less and less trees, then none whatsoever, we then reach Etosha Pan – The White Place. In the salt pan you can stand anywhere and for 360 degree there is nothing but white. The horizon isn’t far and it looks like glittering water, and there is even what looks to be a water inlet. It’s in fact not at all, it’s a mirage. A whirly whirly (mini tornado) of white salt is seen in the distance.

Day two, evening: The only thing we haven’t seen yet on these game drives, is a real must. The black rhino. Etosha has the single largest population of this nearly extinct animal. The actual count here is kept a secret so that this fact and the population of rhinos it defines is never threatened. There’s been a 3000% increase in poaching in the last 5 years as they fetch $60,000 per horn. It’s sold as Chinese medicine yet there is no proof of medicinal value. In some parts of Africa, people guard the rhinos 24/7 to protect them from poachers. 30 poachers have been shot dead this year alone. If something isn’t drastically done within 5years, they will be extinct.
After dinner we got out the sleeping bags, 5 Marino base layers, gloves and a woolly hat for me and we waited and waited and waited for these rhinos to appear at the well lit waterhole on the outer part of the campsite. Straight from the bottle we all shared swigs of ‘saint Julia’ shiraz and some ‘monkey gland flavoured chips’ and still nothing apart from 6 giraffes, zebras and antelope. 10 years ago someone fell asleep snoring at the waterhole and got killed by a lion so we were under strict instructions not to fall asleep – my limit was 10:30pm before the lids got heavy. Animal spotting is luck of the draw. The night before 11 were there and at 3am that night I heard someone saying they saw one. It wasn’t a total waste of time though as in the depth of the darkness, in complete silence comes the almighty roar and grunting of a lion. That in itself was worth staying up late for!

Our leader shoots out these animal facts as we see them so I managed to capture them and write them into our blog over the two days on the road. You wouldn’t think its possible to not even look up when hundreds of zebra dazzles pass us by or not whip the camera out when 10 giraffe towers munch on trees, but after spending nearly 20 hours over two days in the truck game driving we can safely say that we’re ready for a change of scenery. For someone who doesn’t have an animal bone in my body, I have throughly enjoyed the African wildlife.

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Grootfontein, Namibia

Hi Ho hi hi it’s off to Namibia we go!

And we’re back! But this time we are staying in Namibia for the rest of the 12 day tour we are here. The group split for our free afternoon. We chose to go on a village walk with a local who was our age. This particular local showed us in his house which he proudly built for his wife and child. Like all of these houses, it was one room and about 2m sq. The walls are made of this sand stuff used for concrete with tree branches used to support the cement and for the roof long grasses (from the delta). For the locals it’s expensive to build a house like this as it costs them $10 to bring the sand from another town. Most poor villages in Namibia are like this one and some villages houses are made of tin. On this whole trip we have seen no houses as we know them, anywhere at all. In this particular village the land of about 12m sq is free if the house owner can prove to the local tribesman leader that he is a good person with no wrong doings. I’m looking forward to learning about Namibia over the next few weeks. The extent of my knowledge was that Angelina Jolie adopted a Namibian baby who’s now 7 and Dave’s was to try a springbok shot (which he did and loved). Needless to say, travel broadens the mind…

“Africa today #1: Our Zimbabwean leader advised us that today is the Zimbabwean elections. I read on my BBC App that only a tiny 7-10% of the population have employment. Meaning their employment rate is the unemployment rate of other countries. To educate a child cost $4.5 per year yet few can afford it. Zimbabwean independence has slightly improved and violence isn’t as it was in the 2008 elections but it will be very doubtful if the elections prove to be anything but a predicted result, with Mugabe getting another term”

I swear the Intrepid chef and Dave have a little plan going to improve my wife capabilities. The other day I learnt to chop veggies properly (I started with a small knife and worked my way up) and this morning I was cooking 60 pieces of toast on a frying pan (without a toaster).
“Note to Mum: you said to me before I left I wonder how long it would be before you start eating bananas that haven’t been refrigerated and heaven forbid, slightly bruised. Well,after 2 months warm bananas came and after 3 months bruised ones. This came to mind just this morning when I was eating cold toast. But I made it so I just had to enjoy it! Dave said how proud he is that I am more adventurous than he is (initiating the eating of scorpions etc), I said that’s because I have a reputation TO GET RID OF!”

There’s something about banks and ATMs in Botswana and Namibia. You can wait hours to be served. The queues for locals to do everyday banking are always hundreds of people long. The town of Rundu where I’m writing this paragraph (on the border with Angola) is known for card skimming at ATMs, so we had no choice but to wait 1.5 hours for money exchange.

We have just left our visit to see the lives of the San Bushmen. In particular the Ju Hoansi San tribe. About twenty San men, woman and babies speak only their unique “clicking language” – also known as Khoisan Language. Over 70% of words in the dictionary of this language begin with a click. Clicks are articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue. The forward closure is then released, producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language.
The San are very animated when they speak. Although we had a click click translator it was fascinating just watching their passion and enthusiasm mixed with such a beautiful language. Often when interpreted, you wouldn’t think what was said matches up. The clicking language has more to it than just click click clock click, although that’s what makes up most of it. Other sounds which seem to be one syllable are like ga, tang, ah, gaga and other weird sounds. Each word is made up of 4 clicks and there are about 10 clicks per sentence.
The Bushmen are the oldest ethnic group in Namibia and have inhabited Southern Africa for an estimated 20,000 years. Around 30,000 San live in Namibia, but only 2,000 of them still follow a traditional way of life.
Traditionally they would eat 20 kilos of meat each over 36 hours. As food didn’t come often, evolutionary adaptation of their body actually stores the meat/food inside their bottoms. This group of people we saw have a slightly different shaped tush, but their ancestors would have had bottoms so big, I’m told children could stand on them, kinda like a platform. The eland antelope is the best food to eat as it’s the biggest antelope with the most amount of meat. We actually ate eland antelope for dinner last night. It’s very tasty but very, very chewy.
The San have a deep understanding of nature and ecology, living in harmony with their environment. The leader (and his translator) took us on a walk through the bush (sand with trees) and showed us their traditional way of life, how they hunted with giraffe bone arrows with poisonous plant inserted, how to find medicine underground and in trees, how to find water in trees and showed us grass houses they would have lived in. An example of medicine is if they have a headache or get bitten by a Black Mamba snake they would cut a gash into their skin and insert part of the plant, then go for a quick nap. When they wake up they are fixed.
The San we met today were all really tiny people, but particularly the ladies who are just over shoulder height next to me – I’m only 5ft. They don’t have much meat on them. The employment rate in their village where they now live is 1%. The San Bushman are the poorest people in the country. They were dressed in absolutely nothing except for a cloth. This cloth is the skin of a dik dik or springbok which is rubbed on a plant to make it softer before it’s shoved between the bum cheeks. They have no hair on them whatsoever. Their skin colour is unlike any other African, a provencal apricot yellow and their skin will never burn in the sun. Cheeks are high boned and eyes are wide but slightly slanted. Although they have brown eyes it’s not a normal brown, they say it’s the same as an antelope. Their face is heart shaped, ears pan like and their hair is black and grows in thick round clusters. The most interesting thing is women have a natural little apron over their genitals and men are born, live and die with a semi-erection. The San found dignity in this fact and never tried to conceal it. The San smoke rabbit poo instead of cigarettes and I think it must give a hell of a head spin, based on their reaction to it.
To end our visit to their village, they performed traditional songs and dancing. In one of the welcome songs those ladies who wanted to participate were welcomed to do so. I can tell you I have never enjoyed dancing as much as I did with the little naked ladies. That was the highlight for me. Our leader said he has never met a race who is so kind, welcoming and polite as the San Bushman, I would have to agree. It is said that them being so kind and gentle is one of the reasons this race is being slowly pushed out of their land and moved around the country. One other observation – I have never seen so many boobs, of all shapes, sizes and dimensions!

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Okavango Delta, Botswana

It’s 7 am, Day 80. I have long since forgotten the day of the week, which is why Every Day is actually a Saturday. Border crossings are the only way of tracking what date or month it is. Just after sunrise, we’ve already had French toast (with cinnamon and golden syrup) for breakfast, packed down the campsite, are in the truck and on the road. By 8am we are out of Namibia and into Botswana, again. If you look at the top right side of Namibia it’s easy to see how we pop in and pop out all the time. They accidentally stamped the exit Namibia stamp with yesterday’s date into most of our passports, so we have just been in ‘no mans land’ last night. Not even a quarter of the way through this trip and our new NZ passports are 2/3s full.

We are on the way to the Okavango Delta, home for the next 2 nights. The Okavango Delta is unlike anything else in the world. It is formed by the Okavango River as it flows from the highlands of Angola down to a basin on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. The river has no outlet from the desert and spreads out into thousands of small streams to form a wilderness that is totally unspoilt. The streams or channels through the wetlands are dictated by the paths made by the larger animals. Each year they change so the locals only know their way through byusing their own navigation skills.

Just after lunch the truck dropped us off at the furthest point possible into the delta. Local tribesman poled us on 2 person mokoros through the maze of wetlands (in total it spreads over 16,000 sq km). The delta has many green islands, hippos, crocodiles, elephants and big cats. The path way through the maze is the width of a canoe and the reeds and tall grass around us are twice the height of us. So fortunately while we were travelling through this maze we didn’t see any animals otherwise we would have had nowhere to run to. We can clearly hear hippos grunting in the reeds only a few metres away but stay very quiet. We arrived at Gao Island, you wouldn’t even know it’s there, as it’s covered in long grasses as was the delta we came through. We didn’t sleep in a campsite as such that night, we slept right in with the wildlife. All cooking and camping stuff was brought with us. As there’s obviously no toilets, you would expect we could just go anywhere but due to the wildlife we had to have a designated randomly selected hole so that we didn’t run into any unexpected visitors. At 2 am elephants were spotted metres from our tent, right next to our leaders – Hippos and Lions could also be heard in the distance. Thankful now, I forgot to pack cider in the chilly bin! Elephants are super quiet at night, they can only be heard by the branches breaking around you.

Before dinner we headed back out on the Mokoros for a sunset cruise. On our way to an opening where we were to watch it, we were halted by two elephants who decided to have dinner on our pathway. There is no way on earth you’d want to cross them so after waiting 30 mins for them to move we changed our sunset location. The picture with the astrixs indicates the two trees we needed to pass between. The elephants were beside the tree on the right side which is a tiny little island just like all little trees located on little islands in the wetlands.

How our Intrepid chef managed to make the best zucchini soup and spag bol on a camp cooker I have no idea, but it was enjoyed immensely under the stars, around a massive campfire. The night ended with the local tribesman (our mokoro polers) dancing around the fire and singing in their native tongue, not before we were asked to get up and join in.

After brekkie, we went for a 2 hr nature walk around the little island we were staying on. Seeing elephants when you are on foot is a completely different perspective as you are completely vulnerable. The tall golden grasses are shoulder height so I was thankful to get out of there without seeing a camouflaged lion. For those who say that between me and Dave, I’d be the one who wouldn’t try anything, well it’s me who doesn’t miss the opportunity to try everything. Even a branch pulled off a tree and used as a tooth brush!After a quick pack down of the tent we took the 1.5 hour trip back to civilisation on the mokoros. We can clear a 24 person campsite in 20 mins including tent pack down. Getting ready in the morning doesn’t take long when you have no desire to put any energy into looking even half decent for the wildlife.

Our second night in the delta is a contrast to the first. Although another Mokoro ride there, it’s in a tent site with permanently standing tents, beds, linen and hot showers. (the last three words are not something to be taking for granted). The last few days of little sleep had finally caught up with me, so an afternoon nap was required. Just looking at my book “1984” also makes me sleepy, I’ve been staring at page 39 for 3 weeks. While Dave was in the bush bar, I had a go at poling the mokoro. It takes serious upper body strength and balance. I managed to do it without tipping me or my teacher in too! As for the showers, it needed to happen as we hadn’t had one for a few days but let’s say getting 2 of the 3 promised things was pretty good. I just wish it was the linen or the bed we were giving up not the hot shower, particularly as it was outdoors and it’s freezing.

It’s been a very relaxing 2 days in the delta. I’m told you are not here for the game (as its impossible to find in the long grasses /reeds) but for the world’s most fascinating ecosystems. I’d have liked to have known more about it but it was enough to know that it was nice to be so remote for a few days.
(It’s just before dinner time on the second night as I’m writing this in the tent by myself. I can hear something grunting not far away. I must stop writing and get out of this tent and get back with the group before I’m greeted by a hippo).

Botswana has such a fascinating history but unfortunately when being told about it I didn’t have any writing material so my sieve memory failed me again. I do remember, however, the reason why there are big condom signs everywhere saying “wear it”. Botswana is one of the 3 African countries with a major HIV Aids problem with the country’s life expectancy at 37. On a positive (pardon the pun), it’s the only African country not in any debt, due to the major diamond mining. Its wealth is also supported by the beef export and tourism industry. When coming into Botswana we had to stand on this mat soaked with chemicals to stop the spread of foot and mouth – better than nothing I guess. The education standard is very low as it’s not seen as a priority because money literally was found in the ground, in the form of diamonds. 75% of the country’s 582,000 is the Kalahari desert, with the country’s population at 2.1m.

Botswana animals spotted: lions, buffalos, elephant by the thousands, hyenas, antelopes, eagles, vultures, warthogs, zarzu, crocodiles, wildebeest, zebras and hippopotamus. Hippos are my least favourite animals, they are extraordinarily scary and noisy next to your tent at night.

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Chobe National Park, Botswana

“Flapping” is the word used to describe our 3 times a day chore. After washing up, all the cutlery, culinary, crockery, pots, pans and utensils needed to to be flapped. To complete this, swing as many times as needed until dry. You can imagine how amusing that would look to the other fellow campers, watching 25 people flap objects. Dave and my permanently assigned duty is to put the table and wash bowls out. The other duties are on a rotational roster and include: food prep, washing up, pots and pan cleaning and sweeping the truck. Food shopping every few days is done by whoever wants to help the Intrepid Chef. I tell you, by the end of this I may even make a half decent domesticated wife… Dave can only hope.This camping thing is definitely the way to travel. I wouldn’t do it any other way. It’s a lot of fun being ‘a part’ of a group. Tents take 1 minute to put up and down and we eat much better than if we were in hotels as it’s real home cooked food with meat, fruit and veggies (often 2 course dinners), and you can’t get much closer to the Chobe National Park than this. Our camp ground is plonked on the banks of the park with a river in between and a sign that says beware of the Hippos and Crocs. From the bar (as every good campsite has) 40 elephants can easily be seen drinking from the river. Chobe National Park is the most heavily populated elephant sanctuary in the world with a massive 120,000 elephants over 11,000sqkm.

Before sunrise we did our first game drive of the tour. I hadn’t met cold wind until then. 3 Marino base layers, 2 hoodies, a windbreaker, 2 pairs of pants and a blanket, mind you I do wear that in Aussie! So worth it though, to see so many lions, hundreds of giraffes, antelope and eagles in their own environment. By lunch time, the layers are stripped off and we’re laying by the pool in bikinis drinking Savannah Dry cider!

Our last outing in Chobe N.P was an afternoon cruise on the river. Fantastic way to see hundreds and hundreds of African elephants and buffalo as they like being at the waters edge in the afternoon sun. The water is still and suddenly from nowhere hippos poke their noses out. Many are hiding, but with so many out and about its easy to get to see the 2 tonne sausages. Crocodile alley didn’t disappoint and neither did the bird life. It’s a Mecca for wildlife photographers. Even with a point and shoot you can’t go wrong, but there’s always one or two with a camera lens the length of me. Africa is the first place ever, Dave and I have both had a surreal moment and been like “we are in Africa”. We haven’t felt that way in any other country/continent. I’d say it’s because Africa is so different to anything in this world, so vast and natural. That feeling was unexpected, yet the landscape is exactly how you picture it. Kind of like you’ve jumped straight into the pages of a National Geographic mag. This time of the year is the best time to visit. The sky all day, everyday is brilliant blue, the miles of parkland is brown with those trees with with not one leaf but a lone vulture sitting there. The wildlife is so natural in its surroundings, using the sweeping river to its full advantage. The huge orange sun sets over the land. It’s so breathtaking, I’ve never seen a sky so orange and red. The sun descends behind the earth so fast, the lit up sky only lasts seconds before the night sets in.

After leaving Chobe National Park, we are heading to Namibia for the night before heading back to Botswana to the Okavango Delta for a couple of days. I’m writing this on the 7 hour drive to Namibia. On the truck we were speaking to this couple in their 60s about a travel hobby of theirs. They do this thing called GeoCaching which is a bit like an outdoor round the world treasure hunt, using a GPS to hide and seek containers / codes with other treasure hunters. There are over 2million containers hidden around the world waiting for people to discover them. This couple have a GPS with an app that places them as close as a few metres to the vicinity of this hidden code. They were about to search for one near the Botswana Namibia border. Previously they’ve found them hidden on a bridge inside a dummy bolt with the middle drilled out, in a fence paling, a seat with a loose end, in a tree or have had to solve a puzzle first. Once the code is found you sign a piece of paper inside the capsule and put the code on the website as proof you found it. Containers are hard if not impossible to find, like the one in Canada which required a 4 day trek though wilderness. It was then still so hard to find it took 10 years before the first person found it. There is even one on the International Space Station. Anyone can hide a code which is why they are in most of the countries around the world as tourists often hide them. It may sound like an adult’s travel game, but guess where it started? Well, it all started when Bill Clinton sold some satellites. The more you speak to fellow ‘full passport’ travellers the more travel envious one gets. This year away is a speck in the ocean compared to this truck full of people’s stories. Everyone needs a bucket list full of destinations and things to do. Mine is to find a GeoCache in the Serengeti!


Random facts about African animals – part 1:
– A group of giraffes moving is called a journey, whereas not moving is called a tower
– Rhinos and lions generally only roar at night
– A giraffe who has just been born falls 3ms. Neck problems are common, a parachute would help
– A pregnant mum hippo hides from the dad hippo. If the mum gives birth to a baby boy hippo, the dad will kill it as it’s a threat
– Rhinos kill the most people, yet are vegetarians, as their stubby legs can’t climb over logs it’s best to run over logs when running away
– On heat lions mate about 60 times a day and it lasts for about 10seconds
– As you would know giraffes have black/ blue tongues, but the reason is so their tongues don’t get sunburnt as they stick out so much
– Impalas can delay their birth by up to a month if there isn’t enough food around for the baby. If they still can’t find enough food it can also perform its own abortion by eating a poisonous plant that kills the baby not the Mum.

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Livingstone Zambia, Zambia

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Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

The extent of my research into Africa had been watching a few David Attenborough episodes on the flight over. He failed to mention Africa is freezing at night! It’s as low as 2 degrees overnight and jumps to mid 20s in the day. Quite the contrast to Asia’s 40 degree scorchers. No wonder we are sick AGAIN. I’m thankful Brother Chris insisted on base layers, as we are sleeping in tents for the next month, therefore we’re sleeping in Marino. It’s day 4 in Africa, however the first two days were spent in 4 countries over 35 horrendous hours travelling here, and the last two were spent in the tent, sick. My goal when we reach a first world country is to visit the food pyramid and devour 5 fruit and veges per day. (On day 5 here, I realised Africa has the best steak and veges).

Victoria Falls is our only stop in Zimbabwe. From the air it seems like its in the middle of a brown desert. From our tents at night time you can clearly hear the crashing of the falls, it sounds like the beach. The lovely little town has about 50 shops. There are a lot of tourist police. The rest area camp ground we are staying in, seems bigger than the town. It’s surrounded by electric barb wire fence and security everywhere, including a man who sits guard all night in front of the 10 tents (after the 2nd night there, I realised it was a rubbish bin that looked like a man in a chair at night). It’s odd as we have had no reason to feel unsafe here what so ever (hence, the rubbish bin was keeping guard). Every single person we have met has been ridiculously friendly. Even the man who sold us 51 billion, 850 million, 200 thousand of Zimbabwe’s old currency, for their new currency, US dollars. ($5 USD buys $51,850,200,000) As they don’t have any US coins, often when buying something in the shop for say $2.50, they will say: here have some lollies, or choose something little for .50c or when Dave bought a beer for $1.50, they just wrote .50 on a piece of paper with the bar’s logo. Unsure if having the currency in US dollars is the reason, but the activities are too expensive in this town. Any ‘optional adventure activity’ is around $100pp. We will stay entertained by watching the monkeys climb all over the tents. As an observation, there is not one white local. I know they exist but they must not live here. I’m not keen to ask as curiosity can sometimes be taken the wrong way. At Johannesburg Airport, I asked for brown sugar with my porridge and the waiter said “its on the table but it’s in a black sachet – we have a problem with colours in this country” On day 5 here, I can now safely say that was a joke. I reckon my knock knock jokes are funnier but I giggled awkwardly anyway.

Our first outing in Zimbabwe was to actually see the the Victoria Falls. It’s about a mile wide, falling 108 m into a narrow gorge below. You can see the spray from kilometres away and it sometimes reaches up to 400 m. The local name is Mosi oa Tunya meaning the ‘smoke that thunders’. It’s a rather an impressive sight. But with that out of the way and completed by 10am there was no way on earth we could justify a $250 for a 12 minute helicopter flight over the falls. The ‘only’ other option was to change country for something to do. So, we decided Zambia would be the best place to have lunch. Don’t worry Mum and Dad, I didn’t go willy nilly crossing African borders without first checking the safety implications. I first checked with Dave about the likelihood of getting smuggled into the back of a truck and having my life sold for my teeth… he said that was ridiculous, but just to be sure I checked with Zimbabwe immigration about their thoughts on Zambia. She said it’s perfectly safe. And boy am I glad we went across. Such a great bunch of people and just between you and me, Victoria Falls is MUCH better from the Zambia side. It’s a lot bigger, you are below the top of the falls, looking up at it and its easy to see all the gorges. The falls are currently on the 8th gorge. Within 5,000 years, the falls will go to the 9th. The gorges look like a big S or a snake. Now, the all important Zambian lunch was the best lunch I’d had in 3 months. Who would have thought we’d have to go to Zambia for a good glass of vino, a Greek salad and to see zebras in the restaurant grounds! To really set the mood their band played on their African drums ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle awoombawayyyyyy”, followed by none other that the traditional African “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”. Following our venture we took the 5km journey by foot back home (wherever the backpack is) to Zimbabwe for dinner with our new tour group.

Our tour group consists of 21 (inc. 3 David’s) well travelled bodies and our leader, driver and cook. About 10 of us are joining onto another Intrepid group who started in Nairobi. The group is split pretty evenly in ages from ours up to 50+ and are from all over the world but with Kiwis and Aussies claiming half. Unlike Intrepid Original (what we did in Asia), Intrepid Basic has twice as many people and not as many activities are included. Its camping all the way and participation in all duties….and you have to pay for this luxury!! The advantage of doing this here will mean being more amongst it all. The disadvantage is my neck and back are protesting at spending 23 nights 2cm from the ground. I’m sure I’ll toughen up, just like a microwave steak. I am thankful we invested in good, warm sleeping bags – thanks Chris. I’m now glad I’m lugging my head shaped pillow around the world with me. Poor Dave is sleeping on his clothes bag.

“Love a useless fact #690: the ZimZam bungee (the local name given to the bungee people who do bungee from the bridge between Zimbabwe / Zambia) have gone from using 4th hand bungee cords to 2nd hand. One would assume that’s after the cord snapped with no safety boat below. But don’t worry the girl survived, and since then they now offer life jackets (even though you don’t touch the water) so that you can swim to shore with your broken collarbone – she however got offered a second jump for free…. Wish I was kidding”

Our first thoughts on Africa is what a fantastic place, but as always it’s the people that make or break a place. It took a few days for us to stop thinking that the locals weren’t actually looking at us like walking ATMs, as they did in Asia. The people are incredibly friendly and genuinely want to chat to you or take your photo without wishing for $1. Touristy or not, I love the local musicians everywhere dressed tribally (nearly naked) playing the drums, singing and dancing African music. I’m sure you won’t be surprised but I got up and had a dance. Gutted that we didn’t have the camera but I’m told these performers (and that “happy and you know clap your hands”) are so common you get to that stage of not even taking a second glance. How I doubt that!

Animals spotted in Zimbabwe and Zambia: monkeys, zebras, baboons and just as we went to dinner a warthog ran across the campsite. This is the Africa we had imagined.

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Bangkok, Thailand

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Ko Tao, Thailand

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