Christmas Time in Southern Africa- 2012
Mini Adventure One
Started with the usual airport mayhem and frustrations! Much as I love Air Namibia they are still an
African Airline, which means that of course the online check-in service doesn’t
work; so starts the song and dance of phoning up the call center to find out
what exactly you have to do to check in for your flight. It turns out that what you need to do is
arrive at the airport between 8:30 and 9:00 in order to check in at the desk
for your flight. However, there are also 108 other people who have had to turn
up at the airport in order to go through this process and it is not a quick or
easy one! In fact, despite the fact that
the flight had 112 seats on it, and 108 people booked and that we were umber 46
and 47 checking in, we were told that we couldn’t sit together as all the seats
were finished and we had the last two on the plane. You can only guess how surprised we were once
we had boarded to find that there were in fact empty seats and we could in fact
sit together after all!
Luckily it was only 4 hours 40 minutes and bit of a
sleepless night before we were sat in Windhoek enjoying a fantastic breakfast
and sat by the pool in the dry summer heat.
Mini Adventure Two
After the usual trials and joys of rental cars and the
endless games of swapping until we had something that was going to be
relatively comfortable for the trip we were off, and heading up and along the
Caprivi Strip for a few days of wildlife in Botswana and Victoria Falls in
Zimbabwe, both trips involved numerous border crossings, free condoms in
Botswana and plenty of waiting in Zimbabwe for the processing of Visas-
although not as long as it could have been.
I have yet to work out why Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa are easy
and pleasant to enter with friendly border staff who go out of their way to
make it fast and efficient, and yet Zimbabwe and Angola have quite a few
restrictions and barriers. You need to
be able to prove, with bank statements, that you have money to support yourself
(so that would be $100 then), buy a visa, and have an invitation letter from
someone to allow you to enter. I have to say; if I were going to choose to
enter a country and stay there illegally neither Angola nor Zimbabwe would be
in my top ten. 
Both experiences are probably best left to the photos
tho. I have very little to say about
either- except wow! Victoria Falls was
amazing and truly the picture I have of it, and the thundering sound (The Smoke
that Thunders is an apt name). However, a picture speaks a 1000 words so I will
let it do the talking.
Chobe National Park in Botswana is a national treasure. I have never see so many wild elephants in
one place, I am quite sure I saw well over 100 during that day. Not that the day was incident free… it
started with a puncture in a tire of the vehicle in which we were traveling.
Not such a bad problem. The guide had a spare and within three minutes of
getting out and him starting to change it the Botswana Army had turned up on
poacher patrol and they were more than happy to oblige and help in the process.
With six of them on the case it was done and over in about ten minutes flat.
The problems started when we tried to continue on with the journey… only to
discover that the spare was also flat. Again,
luck was on our side as within ten minutes of this discovery another group with
a guide had stopped to help and had inflated the spare tire. You would think that this would be enough
adventure or one day, but still no. The
spare was not just under inflated through lack of use, but did in fact have a
slow puncture that meant it continued to deflate over the next 15 minutes,
until we had to stop and look for another pump.
I know, most guides would think to carry these in the car, then again
most guides would also check that the spare was not flat, and most customers
would think to check these things out too.
The trip carried on in a similar vein… not only did the spare continue
to go down, but deflated to such an extent that the car ended up running on the
rim of the wheel, and we were forced to stop at the next camp site and have
some very helpful people patch and refit the tire enough to get us to Kasane-
the town at one edge of the park who could properly service the wheel and refit
the tire. Which meant it was back to
animal spotting.
Mini Adventure Three
Not so much an adventure as an observation- poverty is
unavoidable in Africa, I have yet to find somewhere that it is not obvious and
complete. Yet, I still often forget how what I find an adventure and an
exciting and new experience is just a daily struggle for survival for some
people. They are simply trying not to be
beaten by a landscape and a habitat that has been challenging them for generations
and I am there just to marvel at the differences and (in some cases) the
threats they face on a daily basis. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when
they just stand and stare for a while; the concept of this as a vacation and a
choice must be as bewildering to them as their life is to me.
That being said, the seemingly perfect replicas of medieval
present villages still intrigue me; each village was surrounded by a fence- in
order to keep out the elephants and the lions I had come to marvel at- and
featured mud built houses with thatched roofs. Different villages had different
designs- some rectangular, some circular, some had upgraded to tin roofs help
down with rocks and my personal favorite have a straw built garage with a 30
year old car inside. This was a novelty and not usual by any stretch. What was
much more normal was to see a two team oxen pulling a plough, no sign of
electricity at all, and people working the fields with mattocks and wooden
tools. The lack of electricity and the ordered layout of the villages were
distinctly different to what I am used to seeing in Ghana, where houses appear
to be in a hotchpotch pattern and at least one building in each village has
music blaring, and a TV with a satellite dish attached.
Mini Adventure Four
This trip really was a trip of two halves. The first part
being in Chobe and Vic Falls and then into Etosha with still more wildlife but
also with a scenic transformation happening.
Once upon a time, a long time ago… Namibia was German colony (1884-1915)
and yet in this surprisingly short period of time the Germans had a huge
influence that remains today. I am not going to get political here, nor am I
going to talking about colonial rights and wrongs in Africa, I am simply going
to mention the architectural impact that has been left in Namibia. It started
in Etosha- another National Park and a great place for game drives and viewing
the “Big Five”. On a side note there are said to be 20,000 giraffes in Etosha
and I think I may have seen them all, they are to Etosha as elephants are to
Chobe. So, imagine my surprise when in
the middle of the African landscape, waterholes, bush and savannah loomed a
whitewashed German fort. It was pretty
small, but perfectly formed complete with crenellations and a courtyard. It was
once used as a prisoner of war camp to hold British soldiers, and I am quite
sure they would not have remembered it as a calm and relaxing place that it is
today- if a little incongruous with the landscape.
The German influence was to continue as we headed south to
Swakopmund and then onto Lüderitz. Both
of these towns rose up out of the desert and then continued down to the sea,
which was surprisingly unnerving as a concept. I have a very clear mental image
of the vastness of a huge desert and the wilderness that accompanies it. I have
spent a good many hours looking out of airplane windows at the never-ending
stretch of sand that is The Sahara and the bleakness it creates. I have also
spent a good few hours driving thru very similar landscape on my way to both
Swakopmund and Lüderitz, and I was not expecting what I found at the end; a
sudden change from bleak, rocky, sandy desert to a bustling seaside town. 
Swakopmund had the beach and the surfing, along with the
German street signs, German being spoken all around, sending Afrikaans into
second place and then English into third for popularity. German architecture
was again present and gingerbread houses and Lutheran Churches dotted the city,
most of them still with the German names and the blue enamel numbers left over
to mark addresses.
Quaint streets on a rocky outcrop, and even larger
prevalence of German awaited in Lüderitz, menus were written in German,
greetings and questions were asked in German and giving an answer in English
could involve a certain degree of pointing.
Now, I am not being totally unreasonable here as English, not German is
after all the official language of the country, and after 1915 when the Germans
no longer had control Namibia did become part of the British Empire and was
governed by South Africa until 1990, I am not going to become all nostalgic and
dewy eyed over the British Empire here either, I am merely expressing a
surprise at how much the Germans influenced this small corner of south west
Africa in the 30 years they had a presence here, and how strongly it has
remained over the following 100 years of other politically enforced influences.
Mini Adventure Five
Land Rovers in the desert! 4x4 adventures, and more sand
than I thought possible. This was another benefit to being on the southwest
coast of Namibia. Once I had gotten over my surprise at the sea being so close
to the sand dunes it was time to enjoy what the desert had to offer, and that
involved off-roading along the Skeleton Coast. With the wind and the sea
creating a swiftly changing landscape it was one adrenaline rush after another.
I was forever expecting the Land Rover to tip over, apparently it can go to an
angle of 45° and still not roll, and I totally believe this having seen and felt
it rocket over the dunes, most of the time not even being able to see where one
dune ended and another one started, or just looking out of the window and
seeing nothing but sand or sky.
Eating lunch and picnicking in the desert was quite a surreal
experience, particularly as our dining companions were French, Italian and
Japanese, and we had no common language among us conversation was limited as
everything was repeated in French, and English, and then again in someone’s
mother tongue (a bit like a mini Eurovsion, Olympic announcement or an email
from the IB). But bring on the desert and the 4x4 again, I can’t wait.