Getting there
The journey there took 36 hours: Vancouver to Heathrow to Jo’burg to Windhoek by plane, and then we were picked up by our COSDEF driver, Laetitia, who drove us the last four hundred kilometers to Swakopmund. It’s Friday.
The drive was a good introduction to Namibia. Windhoek is in the interior highlands on the far side of the Kalahari Desert from Jo’burg, and at this time of the year was green. But as we drove West towards the coast, dropping rapidly out of the mountains, the land dried up: we went from shrubland and trees (and a small family of giraffes) to no trees, to not even shrubs, to just sand.
Swakopmund from Google earth>Skakopmund
Swakopmund offers the same surprise as Vegas: a bizarre town appearing unexpectedly out of the sand after four hours of driving across desert. The whole town appears to be single storey, with the odd two-storey skyscraper. The main drag is prosperous, with tidy tourist stores, supermarkets and pharmacies.
…and all very distinctly, well, German. Even though we haven’t yet visited South Africa, it was unexpected—although not unpleasant—to hear everyone speaking Afrikaans here. But it did used to be (German) Southwest Africa.
By the time we arrived, it was late afternoon and
cool. We drove down to the ocean and turned South along the beach into the Alte
Brucke Resort Hotel, which is in every sense the end of the road—ours and
theirs. We are shown to a very clean, modern, semi-detached bungalow with a
finished wood cabin interior. We have plenty of room, a sort of loft-bedroom, and
our own TV.
On the first evening, Laetitia takes us to the Tug restaurant, which is right on the beach, and we have an excellent dinner looking out over the Atlantic. The sky broods and gleams in a semi-sinister way which reminds us of...somewhere. Later in the week, during one of our several return visits to the same restaurant, we wake up to the fact that it’s all familiar—the clientele, the menu, the beach…we could be in California, or Vancouver, or anywhere. The global village effect might sometimes prove disappointing, but at other times it is a chance to enjoy the good things at home...while you're away.
Swakopmund is a coastal town just north of the mouth of the Swakop river (which only flows in heavy rains). Its companion town, Walvis Bay, just 30 kilometers to the south, is the nation’s main port,
site of the nearest airport and of the most interesting marine and bird life.
It is also almost twice the size of Swakopmund, so why Swakopmund prospers as a
hot real-estate market and center of commerce is hard to fathom. Quite possibly
it is because it doesn’t have the grubby commerce of Walvis Bay and has many of
the same retirement attractions as Florida.
One key feature is the presence, just to the
south of the town, of the northern end of Nambia’s famous sand dunes (the
“Wind” screensaver in Windows). We had the weekend to unjetlag so the next day
our COSDEF tour guide, David, drove us out to see them. We took the back route
first—out of town the way we came in, and then south, driving parallel with the
coast, behind the dunes, towards Walvis Bay. We have the bland, tawny plain of
the desert on our left, and to our right, only a hundred meters or so away, a
single line of distinctly orange dunes, like low hills between us and the
ocean. We eventually pull into an all but empty parking lot with a few palm
trees and climb the back of the curiously named Dune 7 (others are numbered too
but I couldn’t find out why). It’s only about 100feet vertical but it’s enough.
An African family is already at the top, the kids sliding down on the steep
slope and having a ball. After this (the first exercise for Lyn since her
operation), we circle into Walvis Bay, a typical port, and drive back into
Swakopmund on the coast road.
The following day, we make a similar circular trip towards Walvis Bay…on the ocean. We’re picked up by the failed jetty/port
in downtown Swakopmund, which now only hosts a small family of seals, and head
down the coast towards Walvis Bay. It’s a pleasant half-day out on the ocean.
We see plenty of seals and occasionally, one of the two species of dolphin. One
of the seals (a known character) has learned how to jump into the back of the
boat to earn a fish, which is quite entertaining. We skirt the enormous rusting
hulls of two Russian fishing ships, anchored a few kilometers off shore. They
are there to preserve some ancient fishing agreement that makes virtual
prisoners of the crew, who haven’t been home in 15 years.
In the afternoon, we walk into town and pick up some groceries at the modern supermarket, update the blog in the modern internet café, and go home to watch cricket and rugby, drinking the excellent local beer and eating chips.
The rest of the week (to cut a number of stories short) goes brilliantly. Lyn is
very pleased with her workshop. She’s just around the corner from the resort, in
a modern, convention center. Her “team” meets at breakfast in the resort (we’re
all here) to plan the day and then walks over to the center.
My workshop is at a computer training school and I get a twenty minute ride every day, usually from Laetitia or the robust Hennie Swiegers, who actually ends up teaching the workshop from my notes when I come down with laryngitis mid-way through the week.
Judging by later reports, the students from both courses learned a great deal.
ETOSHA
Getting there
While Lyn finished off her workshop duties on
Saturday morning, I made a quick spin around town to buy some ironwood heads
from a local carver. By noon, we pack up, and head out of town back towards Windhoek,
with Laetitia driving us again in the company car.
The terrain reverses the
changes we saw coming in…a hundred kilometers of desert suddenly becomes dotted
with shrubs then trees. Finally, after taking a left fork at about the 200Km
mark, we climb into the mountains and we’re in the middle of a thunderstorm! By
early evening we turn down a side road outside the town of Otjiwarongo and find
ourselves in a small game farm/resort: our stop for the night. We take a short
walk and see deer, ostriches and wildebeest.
The next day, we make a brief stop at the nearby
crocodile farm and then we’re on to Etosha. The roads are good—straight, like
arrows, through more or less flat bushland. There’s not a lot of variety to this kind of terrain. It’s all small trees in grassland.
The last one hundred kilometers gets more interesting: there’s a 50ft grass
verge on either side of the road and then a fence, to keep the big game off the
road (or it’s supposed to but we still pass a pair of Kudu—about the size of a
moose—browsing on our side of the fence). No, the constant problem for
drivers here is hitting the wart-hogs that scoot out of the grass occasionally.
They are only a goat-sized animal so it isn’t the kind of (human)
life-threatening collision that you’ll have with a kudu, but still. And the
guineafowl. Fortunately, these are less likely to run out into the road, but
once on the road (and they are, often) it is harder to convince them to clear
off the road rather than running along the road in front of your honking car.
We arrive finally at Andersson’s gate into Etosha, pay our fee, and drive the short distance into Okaukuejo village, one of the three resort villages owned and managed inside the reserve by the Namibian government. There are plenty of private and very upscale resorts outside the reserve but the government rates, at C$200 a day are small compared with the alternatives.
Okaukuejo
COSDEF has done us proud. We’re in the chalet closest to—about 75m from—the waterhole. Laetitia drops us off and we plan to meet a little later in the afternoon. It’s stinking hot; we find the air-conditioning and unpack a few things—bearing in mind that we only have a couple of days here—then take a quick walk around. There are dozens of varieties of birds, some of them apparently interested in what we have to offer, and there’s a huge nest of Sociable Weaver birds in the tree next to the watering hole filled with the chatter of young.
We drive out of the resort and head towards theLeubron watering hole, which according to the signposts is about 30km away.
Having barrelled across Namibia at 120km an hour in the last two days we’re
thinking 15 minutes to Leubron, but in the next three days we have to readjust:
30km is an hour or more on these potholed, dusty roads!
So we trundle off through the park, and…well, you
have to get into the atmosphere of the place. We’re on a large flat plain that
makes Saskatchewan look hilly. The sun is baking down, and we alternate between
having the windows closed and the air conditioner on, and the windows open to
allow a breeze. Laetitia is great at this: we bump along at 20km an hour
keeping our eyes open, slowing down or stopping if we see anything. There’s
only the occasional other car doing the same thing. It’s green here because of
the rains, but the green is sparse, with grass sprouting up in tufts from the
arrid, stony, soil. The trees are that short thorny kind of tree, or the
African kind that you see on all those safari shows—thornveldt.
We pass hundreds of Springbok, get steady
sightings of ostriches, zebra and wildebeest, and less often the large Gemsbok (Oryx)
with their spear-sized horns. We pass one giraffe carcass. There’s a meditative
feel to the place. The animals just graze, sometimes in large groups, but oddly
many seem to be on their own. That’s about it for variety today.
We haven’t seen any of the
big five—lions, elephants, leopards, cheetahs or rhinos—and this isn’t
the best time of the year to see them. This is the wet season, and all the animals
can find water almost anywhere (there are puddles in the road). During the dry
season, all the animals are forced to come to the watering holes...or "the diner"
as the big cats call it at that time of the year.
But
there are compensations, for we’ve come just after spring, and all of the animals
we see are accompanied by young. The young springbok are the funniest, as they
don’t merely move off the road but take the chance for a bit of sprinting, bucking,
leg-kicking, and poinking about as though literally on springs. The wildebeest and
zebra young are equally boisterous.
And birds! (click here to see the few birds we photographed in Etosha) There are dozens of birds of course:
- White Cattle Egrets are everywhere, especially around large animals
- around the watering holes: shorebirds, doves and water birds
- out in the grass we occasionally see the stork-like Secretary birds but also once saw the strange Kori Bustard
- overhead and sometimes in nearby trees, there are plenty of raptors
- bushes are partial shade for some very colorful birds
But this gets frustrating. We cannot find a single book on birds and only a few books on wildlife.
That evening, we have dinner at the resort
restaurant and have one of the few disappointments of our trip. The food is
buffet style and indifferent enough but the staff—mostly men—add a
discomfiting mix of disdain and servility. This could all have been innocent:
a novice and nervous waiter at our table, and one overly keen to bolster his tip
at the next, in what was clearly a bad time of the year for them.
We left the restaurant and returned to our cabin and found the watering hole floodlit. In the comparitive gloom, on this side of the fencing, sat a watchful crowd of people in complete silence. The night, however, was alive with bird calls, and the floodlights were attracting a snowstorm of moths and other insects—thankfully, because that meant they weren’t around us. There were a few mosquitos but not many, which is good because they carry malaria here.
>At the watering hole, two white rhinos made their way slowly around the edge,
grazing as they went, the occasional snorted breath or kicked stone the only
sound of their presence. There was the occasional flash of a camera as they came
within twenty meters of the wall, yet even with
this they remained apparently unaware of their rapt audience. Lyn turned and
saw a pair of black-backed jackals, no bigger than border collies, trotting
around the cabins in the darkness and taking advantage of our distraction to
see if there’s anything they can snap up. It’s a wonder that the dozens of
ground-squirrels in the area don’t keep them here permanently.
The next morning, we emerged at about 8:30am and found it blissfully cool. Out in the grassland there were again only the sounds of doves. A couple of jaunty African Hoopoes were checking everything out. We spent that day too around Okaukuejo, seeing but not tiring of much the same animals; we did see two enormous kudu up relatively close. We avoided the restaurant the following evening, and the animals avoided the watering hole.
Namutoni
The following day, we packed up early and began the long drive to Namutoni. It’s only 100km but it took us about four hours.
But now, as we passed through Halali, we suddenly
began to see impala and hartebeest. There aren’t a large number of them, but
enough of a change to our viewing to keep us on our toes. And suddenly we also
begin to see large numbers of giraffes. These are huge animals, unlike the
smaller ones we saw by the road outside Windhoek: they appear like dock cranes
along the horizon, and sometimes we find them lurching about on the road, not
keen to see our car but not panicked in getting out of our way.
We checked in to Namutoni and then headed out to
drive the salt pan. This is the famous Etosha pan, a huge shallow lake in
summer that becomes salt flat in winter. We are hoping to see really big
game—like the rest of the big five—before we leave, but no luck there. But we
aren’t disappointed overall as we see a large variety of birds, and animals. At
one point we come across two black-backed jackals tearing at something (we
can’t see) only 100m from the road, while around them an audience of about
twenty vultures and a Maribou Stork wait their turn in solemn silence.
The restaurant at Namutoni was better, and after
we sat by the watering hole for almost an hour. We could make out a group of
zebras faintly in the darkness as they made their way across in the distance.
Four of them broke towards us, two of them quite boisterous—young bucks probably—
and as they raced about for a few seconds we were surprised to hear the booming of
their hooves at this distance. They eventually all drank nervously at the waterhole
and moved on.
On, to South Africa
The next day, we packed up and headed out, driving back to Windhoek. We stopped in to visit the two COSDEC centres, and said hello to some of the people who had come down to our courses. Then we were
back, rocketing through the countryside, making Windhoek by late afternoon. We
had dinner that evening at a very good Indian restaurant with our hosts from
Swakopmund, who were also in town. The next day, we headed out, to the airport
for our plane to Johannesburg, and the next stage of our trip.
This was a fabulous two weeks. Thanks Lawrence Pringle of COSDEF for your wonderful hospitality, Pat Salt, for making it happen...
