Namibia

The gang and I set out for a 10 day whirlwind tour of Namibia on April 22.  After  little hiccup on the way there, we passed briefly through Windhoek, the capital, and went to our first big stop, Soussevlei.

The road in was a little, uh, notional

The dunes

Climbed on top of them

 

and rolled down, of course.

Namibia is the second least densely populated country in the world, just after Mongolia, so we would rive through miles and miles of beautiful terrain and not see a single person.  These pictures are from our drive from Soussevlei to Swakopmund. 

Just a few of those miles.

Consequently, visiting Namibia necessitates many long hours in the car.

Which is fine when the views are like this.

Some parts of the country are a little more desolate.

Swakopmund

We headed north out of Swakopmund to see the seals. 

There are a lot of them.

They are very loud, smelly, and silly. 

 I have a lot of seal pictures, but I will spare you. 

The skeleton coast lives up to its name.

 We tried to go and see Welwitschias, a plant that is considered a living fossil and found nowhere else in the world, but our efforts were thwarted when the river flooded for the first time since 1974. 

The raging torrent wiped out the road.

After our failed adventure, we turned north and headed to Etosha National Park.  We saw 81 giraffes during our two days in the park.

Just a start.

There are so many zebras living close together in Etosha that they are a hotbed for disease and infection.

 These next few pictures are just a few selected from my upcoming coffee table book, Etosha National Park: Things Standing in the Road, available wherever fine books are sold. 

Hyenas

Mr Elephant.

The most terrifying thing I have ever seen. 

Lions!  A little further away this time. 

After our Etosha adventure, we headed back south and spent a day in Windhoek, which is a really beautiful city. 

Downtown.

The gardens around Parliament, currently hosting a wedding.

After Windhoek we began the long trip back to Gabs.  I then spent three days in Gabs taking care of all of my finals for the semester and then headed to Cape Town for a week before my internship started on the 16th.  Pictures of that to come. 

Lately

Well I’ve certainly dropped off the radar over the past several weeks.  My internship only started last week but so far it has been very interesting.  I will be working here until July 8, and then my plan is to travel around some more for a few weeks and leave for the Land of the Free on July 21. 

The past several weeks have been busy.  I finished with classes on 21 April and then left on the 22 for a 10-day trip to Namibia, which was fantastic.  I was then in Gabs for a few days, doing finals and such.  Then I left for Cape Town for a week, which is the prettiest city I have ever been to.  Now that I am back to Gabs and the one Zimbabwean man who runs the internet company has found the time to set it up at my house, I should be able to update about those adventures within a few days.

Zimbabwe and Vic Falls

A week ago Friday I set out on another adventure, this time to Victoria Falls via Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.  We left Friday morning and spent Friday night in Francistown watching a terrible Stephen Seagal movie.  Saturday we woke up and caught a bus to the border with Zimbabwe, which boasts the highest per capita number of Dolly Parton fans of anywhere in the world, as well as the coveted no. 4 spot on the most recent Failed States Index.  After a little bit of a delay at the border crossing we were able to catch another combi to Bulawayo and made it there by mid-afternoon.  Bulawayo is Zimbabwe's second city and the largest city in the western side of the country.  Despite its size, being in Bulawayo is like being on the set of a zombie or post-apocalyptic movie: the streets have very few cars, the stores that are open have very few goods.  Bulawayo is poor but it is a different kind of poor than I have seen anywhere else.  The city is much larger than Gabs but has hardly any traffic, and most of the vehicles that you do so are public transport or taxis.  Most of the stores we saw were closed, but the few that were open were almost bare inside.

Bulawayo city center at rush hour

After a few hours of wandering the streets we made it to the train station and bordered our overnight train to Victoria Falls.  The train itself is from the 1950s and most of the windows and mirrors still bear the 'RR' of Rhodesia Railways.  The train ride was fantastic.  The full moon was out Saturday night so we had a very good view of the countryside.  As we approached Vic Falls Sunday morning we were able to see the enormous spray produced by the falls from miles away.  

Choo choo

We were in the town of Vic Falls by midmorning and first went down to the gorge below the falls to get a sense of things.

The gorge below the falls. 

We then walked down close to the falls themselves and waked out onto the bridge that runs right by them and serves as the crossing point between Zimbabwe and Zambia.  We had to put on our ponchos at this point--standing near the falls is a lot like standing in a torrential downpour that never ends.

The bridge with falls to the right.

One of the consequences of standing in the midst of so much mist is that taking pictures is pretty much impossible for most of the time.

Oh, and there were elephants around.

We spent the rest of Sunday afternoon at our hostel resting and showering.  We went back to the bridge that night in pursuit of the moonbow, which we did manage to see.  The moonbow can only regularly be seen at two places in the world: Victoria Falls and Cumberland Falls, Kentucky.  Of course, I have now seen the one on the other side of the world and not yet the one practically in my backyard.  Regardless, it was very impressive.

Monday we woke up bright and early and were the first people into the Vic Falls NP, just in time for dawn.  

Unfortunately the weather conditions weren't the best early on so it was actually quite difficult to see the falls, despite them only being 40m away.

However, we stuck around for a few more hours and things cleared up significantly.

A side view of the falls.  The falls are on the left, where I was standing earlier is on the right.

 

Because the falls are so close to the cliff walls, it is almost impossible to get a real perspective on their size.  So here's an aerial view I found online:

The Zimbabwe side, where I was, is on the left.

After a morning at the Falls we went to the big curio market in town and bartered with money, clothes, and random items for hand made stone carvings.  We took the train back through Bulawayo and then caught a bus back to Gaborone.  The bus broke down towards the end, but we still made it to Gabs only a few hours late. 

Midterm break, pt. 2

Tuesday morning of midterm break we woke up and started the long drive into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).  We spent most of the day driving on a paved road, followed by a dirt road, followed by a bush road.  We set up camp, ate, and listened to the lions roar in the distance before heading to bed.  Because the Kalahari is so hot, our schedule for the next few days would mimic the schedule of the animals: active in the early morning and evening, hanging out in the shade during the day. 

A view of the park.

A much cooler picture and one I didn't take. 

Gemsbok.

Springbok and gemsbok. We saw hundreds of them. 

Ground squirrels.

Look at that tree!

Papa was tired.

The whole gang.

A little perspective.  The cubs got adventurous. 

There were 7 lions in this pride: papa, two mommas, and four cubs.

With my new friends.

Play time.

Posing.

Looking regal.

At this point the sun was setting quickly so we had to say a temporary goodbye to the pride and head back to our camp for the night.  Around 4:30 or 5 in the morning I woke up to the sound of a huge rustling sound just outside my tent.  I initially thought it was someone trying to go the background, but the noise lasted too long so my next guess was that there was a warthog outside.  My question was answered a few minutes later when one of our guides announced, "Stay in your tents, there are lions in the camp."  The guides ran over to the other side of the camp and pulled one of the safari vehicles around, which illuminated the pride of lions sitting mischievously with a tarp from our camp.  Naturally I did not stay in my tent and threw on some clothes to pile into back of the safari vehicle.  The lions only see vehicles (and tents, for that matter) as very strange, enormous, and inedible blobs and so it is possible to slowly drive a vehicle at them to spook them off, which is exactly what we did.  Fifteen minutes of slow chasing behind them managed to drive them a few hundred yards from our camp, which is where they spent the remainder of their day.  We heard the full story of the night once we got back to the camp.  Apparently the pride had been unsuccessful in its hunting that night so they had been returning along the road when they smelled the remnants of our kitchen and decided to investigate.  They wandered into the kitchen area and then walked along a line of tents, with momma and a couple of cubs stopping to sit and roll around right beside the last tent--also known as my tent. 

There are a few paw prints circled in the picture.  The scuffed dust to the right is where they were laying down.  My tent is in the not-very-distant background.  Lions now easily top the list of Cool Things That Have Been Ten Feet Away From Me As I Slept. 

 

We found the lions again later (and by "found" I mean "drove behind our campsite") and this time they were gracious enough to provide excellent material for the upcoming Butswana commemorative wall calendar, available wherever fine books are sold.  

Another busy day.

Another departing sunrise.

The four days we were in the CKGR were fantastic.  The setting was beautiful and being able to be that close to lions was definitely not what I had anticipated.  The past two weeks I have spent taking care of various schoolwork but this weekend I am off to Victoria Falls.  I'm taking my rain jacket.