Want to Visit Natural Africa?

After about one month here, we now know that Namibia is a great place to experience natural Africa. It is very empty (in some places even desolate) and easy to drive yourself around. There are lots of places to camp, or guest houses/chalets or more upscale game lodges. You can see wild life, desert, dunes, and the coast…and not be around hordes of other people. You can also go to some nice restaurants in Windhoek, and meet interesting people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The busy times of the year are around school holidays (now, and in August), and generally during the rest of the winter months (June-July). Most of Namibia is also malaria-free. We’d love visitors – let us know if you are planning to come! We have room in our flat, and an extra row of seats in the combi.

We just got back from a quick camping trip to a newly dammed lake about 90 kilometers south from Windhoek called Lake Oanob. Although I’ve never been, it reminded me somewhat of photos I’ve seen of Lake Havasu in Arizona, except WAY smaller, no houseboats and lots of rocks. (Ruby keeps calling every rocky point she sees, "pride rock"). It’s not surprising the lake is small, because we haven’t seen anything but a dry riverbed so far. This lake drains 2700 square kilometers of land (we looked up the metric conversion – it’s about 1050 square miles), and is not too wide to swim across and must only be about a few miles long. It’s a DRY country. We had fun swimming in the lake, camping on the top of a rocky hill and exploring the rocky hill side. We saw lots of lizards and butterflies at this campsite, and met some nice folks who were from the neary town of Rehoboth.