We just had our lasts braai in Namibia – a goodbye party for ourselves. We’ve enjoyed having people over often, and the kids had a good time with friends they have met over the year. At one point, 16 kids were in the pool at once!
It’s hard to believe that our 13 months adventure in southern Africa is almost over. We’ve been very busy packing up our five suitcases (and weighing them repeatedly to see how far over the weight limit we are), giving away things we have accumulated over the year, and saying good-bye to all the fun and interesting people we’ve met over the year.
In our last month in Namibia, we went on three special last trips. First, we went with our friends, fellow Fulbrighters who are marine biologists who stayed mostly on the coast, on a camping trip to Etosha. While the animals weren’t at the Okakuejo waterhole like they had been the previous 3 times we’d been there, we did see lots of animals on our drives – a pride of lions, elephants, zebra, giraffe, all the antelopes, etc. It’s . One of the best parts was a treasure hunt that our friend made as a Christmas surprise for all the girls, which took them all over the Halali Safari Resort!
We had Christmas morning at our house in Namibia, and then left for our last long trip – a trip to the South. We first went to Soususvlei, the red sand dunes, where we camped in the beautiful Seserim campsite. On our Christmas drive over the mountain pass, we drove 200 kilometers without seeing a single car come the other way! The red sand dunes are an amazing site, and we enjoyed hiking up them dunes, and running down them.
We then drove south, stopping by the Duswib castle, a bizarre German castle that is way in the middle of nowhere. We then continued on what we all agreed was one of the most stunning drives we have taken in Namibia. We were on a D road (the Namibian roads are classified as B for tarred roads, C for good gravel roads, and D for not so good gravel roads, and F for farm roads – I’m not sure what A would be, but there isn’t one in the whole country) that is as far west as you can go in that part of the country. On the west side of the road were the red dunes with some green plants and white rocks, and on the east side were black jagged mountains. We saw lots of game, mostly gemsbok and springbok, both which are marvelously adapted for living in the desert. We camped at a really, really remote campsite, which still had solar powered hot water, even if it had no electricity.
Next we went to Luderitz, the southernmost coast town that you can get to without a diamond mine permit. This is a town that is set on the rocks, and the landscape is all grey and rocky, with no soil at all! It was a German settlement at one point, and has a nice harbor, which is unfortunately too shallow to be used too much anymore. As a surprise to Maxine for her birthday, we booked the Ludertiz Lighthouse to stay in there. This was a very cool place to stay, and we enjoyed sitting outside on the crows’ nest where we had a view of the whole town and the harbors and oceans. While we were in Luderitz, we went to the nearby Kolmanskop ghost town, a diamond mining town that was very fancy in the early 20th century, but has been deserted since the 1950s. The sand dunes have since marched through the town, and have filled up many of the houses. In true Namibian fashion, the entire town was open for exploration. We were told that we might not want to go in a few buildings because they are soon to collapse, but it’s your choice.
Luderitz was a great place for beach combing on the rocky parts of the beach, and . Our marine biologist friends sent us on a mission to look for a new sea worm they discovered, so we thoroughly enjoyed spending the day collecting and analyzing mussel l shells. On Maxine’s birthday, we took a four hour sailboat trip in the Luderitz Harbor, where we were able to see the African penguins up close and the dolphins swam by the boat for almost two hours. It was magical.
Next – to the Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon. We had a little misfortunate on the way there though, as once we were on the D road, I had stopped to take photo and turned the car off. When I went back in the car, I found out that the fancy security system that we had in the car had stopped working. We were miles from anywhere, so all we could do was to try to disconnect the security system and wait for another car. We couldn’t figure out the electrical system and no cars came, so we were considering camping on the side of the road as it was 5 pm. In Namibia, you have to BE PREPARED, as there’s often no one around at all. After an hour and a half, finally another car came, and it turned out to be a South African electrician on safari with his wife. So this very generous guy towed us for kilometers to the campsite, and then completely rewired the security system. We camped with this nice, interesting couple that night, which was an excellent way to spend New Years Eve.
The Fish River Canyon was spectacular, and we also loved where we camped the next night – the Quiver Tree Forest, near the Giant’s Playground. We also stopped by a very funky community based tourism site near some other quiver trees, which had 100s of little sculptures. Admission was 10 cents per person.
As we were driving back from this trip, we went over our year in Namibia and realized that we had made 19 trips while here, so it was just perfect that we were going for one more short trip to a brand new Game Lodge only a few hours a way called Erindi. Unlike most of our 19 trips were we camped and cooked over the fire, Erindi was an all-inclusive place where we got two all meals, drinks, and two game drives thrown in. Erindi is an old cattle farm that is 200,000 acres, which is about 300 square miles. On our game drives, our primary activity was leopard tracking, as they had some leopards with collars on them for a woman who is staying there dong leopard research. We had a lot of fun off-road tracking of the leopard, driving at night through riverbeds with a tracker sitting on top of the land rover and using spotlights. We had some beautiful and fun drives, but never did find the elusive leopard. We did see a pride of lion up very close, a white rhino, a large family of giraffe, and many other animals. This was an excellent last trip in Namibia.
So, in a year, we went on 20 trips together as a family, and put on more than 45,000 kilometers on the combi. What a great year!
