It had to happen eventually

We had planned to move further south from Lüderitz, but we were still missing the dunes of Sesriem and decided to head back instead of taking a slow route back to Cape Town.

I guess it wouldn’t be a road trip in Africa without at least one flat tire.

Africa’s roads are not kind to tires, which is why we were carrying two spares on the truck. About halfway back to Sesriem, we were going through a livestock gate and a little kid pointed out that our back tire was flat. Totally flat, and clearly had been driven on for a while. The road was so squishy that we hadn’t even felt the change in the tire. Two more boys appeared and quickly jumped in to get that tire changed. B had a hard time keeping them out from under the car while he was jacking it up. They had clearly seen a few flats in their short lives. Apparently they worked at the farm we were passing, and unfortunately they also looked malnourished and very poor. They only looked about 5, 7, and 12 years old, and it seemed impossible that they were going to school. These kids were super helpful and polite. We left them with a tip for their help, wishing we had done more. Here’s B supporting child labour.

Namibia and Botswana are among those African countries that have had effective shifts from colonizers to independent democratic governance, but there is a pretty obvious gap between white and black. As in Botswana, there always seems to be a white person in an office somewhere and blacks doing most of the work. It’s a bit tough to reconcile.

Our first spare was flat – we’re hoping it’s a slow leak and can be pumped up in case we need it – but we got the tire changed and were on our way.

We were noticeably less blown away by the views on the drive back to Sesriem. It’s sad how easily we can start to take magic for granted. We made it back just in time for a sunset visit out to the dunes.

On a road to nowhere

And we thought the drive from Etosha to Swakopmund and Walvis Bay was impressive! After reluctantly driving away from Sesriem – and after a wrong turn we very nearly turned back entirely – we headed further south toward Lüderitz.

The drive didn’t disappoint. It was long and slow going, but once again filled with amazing landscapes. As we left Sesriem, there was desert sand to the west and the rocky Naukluft Mountains to the east. Even better, there were zebra and giraffe crossing signs on the gravel highway and we spotted some Hartman’s Mountain Zebra. 

The mountains and dunes turned to huge desert plains. The road seemed to go nowhere forever. It felt a little like being inside a David Lynch film. In over 125km of the D707 road we saw only one car.

As we got closer to Lüderitz and back on paved highway for a bit, we entered the Sperrgebiet (Forbidden Zone). This is a national park formed out of part of Diamond Area No. 1 where Namibia’s diamond mining industry began. It was like driving over the moon. The winds were crazy, and shifting barchan dunes were driving onto the highway. Suddenly the German village of Lüderitz appeared out of the sand, and it was like we had gone from Namibia to the moon and landed back in Germany. There was no visible evidence that this town was actually in Africa. We stayed out on a point called Shark Island. It partly reminded me of home, but the winds put even the best nor’easters to shame. Thoughts of camping were quickly tossed to the wind and we rented a cute little cottage overlooking the ocean.

The next morning we headed back to Sperrgebiet to visit the ghost mining town of Kolmanskop. By this time sand dunes are forming in the truck! This place seemed like it could never have been habitable. It was a small cluster of houses and dorms on a hill in the middle of this windy shifting desert where the air was filled with sand and dust. Kolmanskop had been deserted when mining shut down in the mid 1900s. The old buildings had the windows blown out, and some had lost roofs or parts of walls. They were partly filled with sand dunes coming in through the window and door openings. Some of the floors and ceilings had collapsed with the weight of sand piled up. We went back to this place at sunset to take more photos. We were the only people there late in the day – quite an eery feeling in these empty buildings half filled with sand as the sun was dropping behind the dunes. 

Hot desert winds

We said goodbye to the zebras and giraffes of Etosha and headed off toward the coast and, ironically, the desert. The landscape shifted from forest and hills to the bleak moonscapes of diamond mining territory to dunes before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. (It seems so strange to me to think of this ocean as the Atlantic, so far from the part of it where I grew up.)

We spent a night in a coastal town called Walvis Bay, mostly to do some overdue errands and spot flamingos on the beach. Then we made haste for the Namib Desert. The drive through rocky desert, dry plains, and mountains on the gravel highway made the trip worthwhile before we even reached our destination. It was hard to get anywhere because we kept stopping to take pictures!

We camped for 3 nights at a place called Sesriem, in Namib-Naukluft National Park. The park is a combination of the rocky Naukluft Mountains and the sandy Namib Desert – the rocky outcrops from tectonic shifts are to the east and colourful sand dunes go west all the way to the ocean. There is nothing in Sesriem except the campsite, a lodge, and – oddly – the best internet connection we found yet.

It is crazy hot here in the Namib. Today was 42 degrees Celsius in the shade. The winds are so hot they burn and it feels like being inside a convection oven. They also stir up wild dust storms that fill the sky with haze (and even a dust rainbow). We didn’t expect to see animals in such a place, but there are loads of ostrich (improbable creatures themselves), oryx, and springbok, and a few jackals.

We’ve been driving out to see the dunes morning and afternoon to catch them in the nice light of dawn and dusk. The sunset on the dunes is hard to believe. They turn colours of red, orange, purple, blue, pink, and yellow. The sand on the high dunes is very red in general, and the lower plains in between are yellow. We climbed up on some dunes to look at views of more, as well as a few mineral pans in the valley below. It is amazing to stand on the crest of a giant sand dune with nothing to see but sand in all directions. Also amazing to run down the steep sandy sides and run through the dune valley as the sun goes down.*

The park gates close an hour after sunset and the best dunes are 60km away, so we can’t stay out on the dunes as long as we would like or we’ll be stuck out there. (Actually, we have everything we need, so that wouldn’t be so back and we seriously considered getting “stuck” overnight.)

Once again, we will be sad to leave this place.

*Actually, even just running for 5 minutes felt amazing after so much car time. With no predators here, despite shocking numbers of antelope, so we can get out and walk around – when it’s not too hot. 

The great white place of dry water

That’s how they describe Etosha Pan in the local vernacular. It is a huge expanse of dry sand, clay, and minerals that makes up most of Etosha National Park in central Namibia. It was probably once a huge lake that ran dry because of shifting plates. It’s a shallow depression that now partly fills with water during the rainy season, but the water never lasts long enough to run into a river. It evaporates in the hot sun, leaving a white, salty residue like a huge desert. When water does come, animals come from the whole region to drink. Thousands of flamingos stop by every year to breed in the sand below the shallow waters. We were lucky enough to see them, but unfortunately could not drive close to where they were. They formed a bright pink line through the sand close to the horizon.

We had thought Etosha would not live up to all the things we saw in Moremi and Chobe and planned to drive through and stay somewhere outside the park. We ended up camping here for 3 nights because we didn’t want to leave. The campsites here are fenced to keep out large animals, so we can actually walk around inside the main area, which is a treat after so much car time. (You can’t get out of the car during game drives, or while driving on the roads of any of the parks and reserves we’ve been in, on account of the lions and elephants and such.) Some of the highlights:

• Lots of kori bustard, the world’s heaviest flying bird. Huge!
• The flamingos, of course.
• Seeing black and white rhinoceros. There were 2 black rhinos drinking from a waterhole just below us near a campsite. We nearly hit a white rhino yesterday while rushing down the main road through the park. Thankfully, we stopped in time to avoid both hitting him and pissing him off enough to instigate a charge.
• Driving out into Etosha Pan on a lookout road. It’s like being on a huge, empty desert planet.
• Seeing herds of antelope, giraffe, and zebra come to the artesian water holes near Etosha Pan to drink.
• Watching giraffes drink. (Their necks aren’t long enough to reach the water, so they have to splay their front legs and bend at the hips and knees to get their mouths to the water.)

The weather here has turned noticeably drier, which is a nice change from hot and humid with intermittent electrical storms. That said, we’ve been very lucky with weather while in the parks. It’s been mostly sunny. Etosha has been hot, dry, and clear. Because we’re almost always in the truck, I’m getting a spectacular driving tan on the left side of my body.

A series of unfortunate events that turned out fine

It was long, long drive from Livingstone, Zambia to Etosha National Park in Namibia. Fortunately, getting into Namibia was as simple as getting into Botswana, once we finally found the border post. We drove all day through a piece of Namibia called the Caprivi Strip and stopped for the night at a really nice lodge called Namushasha Country Lodge. We were the only people there, and the first to show up in 4 days. Slow season seems to be particularly slow this year. The next day we hoped to reach Etosha, but only made it as far as a town called Tsumeb.

There was more thunder and lightening, so we decided not to camp on the roof of the truck and headed for a cheap backpacker place in town. It seemed fine at first – a basic, clean room with a bathroom – and we were just planning to sleep and leave early in the morning. Once we agreed on the place, we realized we were the only ones there and the owners didn’t live on site. There was no telephone, the satellite phone didn’t work indoors, and my Botswana cell didn’t work in Namibia. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, except the town seemed to be a bit of a fortress and all the houses had guard dogs and high gates. Our place had a razor wire fence, but really cheap little padlocks keeping it all together. There was a sign on the wall with the phone number for armed emergency response. Once the owners left, we decided this was probably fine but were unnerved by all the town’s security features (that were largely lacking in our current situation). We headed straight to the biggest hotel, which was not much more money, clean, and friendly (and populated).

We were chatting with the owner at breakfast and he commented on the uncomfortable way I was sitting with my purse on the chair. When I told him I have a habit of leaving things behind, he told us how once he chased a guest down the block when they realized he had left some very expensive camera equipment behind.

Why do I tell this uninteresting story, you ask?

On the way out of town we noticed that B’s credit card was missing. We ultimately decided it must have fallen on the ground between the bank machine and the truck the night before. We went back to the hotel to call Visa and put a hold on it. The next morning, we got a message at our campground in Etosha Park to call the hotel because they found the credit card. I had mentioned that we were moving on to Etosha, and they had spent the day calling all the places in the area until they found my name on the register. The security guard had found it outside just an hour after we left (and were probably still in town looking for it!). Ironic, no? We pass through that town again and will stop by to pick it up. (And still have no idea how this happened).

And . . . when B was putting things in the car to leave that morning, he found this guy sitting on our pillows in the back seat.

[pic of baboon spider to follow]

I have no idea where he came from, how he got into our back seat, or how long he’d been with us. [Shudder]

Goodbye Botswana

We spent much more time in Botswana than planned because we were (unexpectedly) able to access Moremi and Savuti (Chobe) parks. We were sad to finally leave, but realized we were halfway through January and still had a lot of distance – and desert – to cover before reaching Cape Town.

Our first stop was Victoria Falls in Zambia. In hindsight, this would have been better/easier/cheaper had we signed on for an organized day tour from Kasane. The Zambia border entry was rainy, muddy, and chaotic. We got some “help” from a tout who turned out to be a sketchy moneychanger and possibly a fake insurance agent. We knew he was a tout, but figured the confusion of poorly signed bureaucracy was worth the few dollars we would have to pay him. We were also used to Botswana where nobody ever tried to cheat or hassle us, and when he first approached we thought he was just being nice to us. After an hour and half of me waiting with the truck and B wandering around from office to office, we got through the border. We paid visa fees, which we knew about, and also over a hundred dollars in other costs we didn’t know about, including liability insurance for the truck that was definitely overpriced and possibly fake. This all had to be done with Zambian kwacha, which had to be bought at a criminally high exchange rate from the tout/moneychanger/insurance agent because the bureau de change was conveniently closed. It was unclear to what extent the bureau, the police, and the insurance were all in cahoots with this guy, because the police told B to go with him for insurance.

Anyway, we got through and spend too much money on a mediocre room. We’ve had some trouble with camping on our roof because of frequent torrential downpours and electrical storms. The Falls – though maybe not worth all our hassle and expense – were amazing. There is a wall of water that plunges down into a narrow canyon perpendicular to the river flow, so the water sprays straight back up. Walking near the edge was like being in a heavy rainstorm, and there was so much spray we couldn’t see the entire falls at once. Apparently the locals, were too afraid to go anywhere near the “place of smoke,” which they considered sacred. David Livingstone (the first European to see the falls back in the mid 1800s) first approached them by canoe and stopped on a rock island just before the lip of the falls. No doubt an impressive, though risky, view.

Baobabs and other sundry delights

We finally managed to reach the Savuti camp area of Chobe National Park after an uneventful drive in from Maun. We didn’t see many animals on the way in, which was a surprise because Chobe is supposed to be more dense than Moremi. We did see a few elephant carcasses – apparently they get too dehydrated during the dry season, and when the water comes they drink too much too fast and die. Sad. Too avoid another unfenced campground fiasco, we pre-booked a swish lodge at Savuti. This was a tent structure similar to what we had before, but fully decked out with air conditioning, fine linens, and a bathtub, and a fancy dinner at the lodge. Way too much money, but a nice place.

The more we drove around Savuti, the more we saw. Savuti is a water channel that had been dry for years but water returned a few years ago. Animals come from all over in the dry season. We saw some rare wild dogs, huge roan antelope and tiny klipspringer, tons of baby impala, and got quite close to some giraffes and a large herd of zebra. We found a whole grove of ancient baobab trees. Many had evidence of a lot of elephant tusk damage, but they somehow seem to survive even when the elephants have dug into the bark by 30cm or so.

On the way out of Savuti, we hit some deep dry sand and had to fly through the road as fast as we could with partly deflated tires, hoping no elephants wandered onto the narrow track. We made it. And we saw a herd of elephants with babies once we were able to slow down. There were loads more elephants even once we reached the paved highway. And more baobabs.

We arrived in the town of Kasane at dark, wishing we had stayed longer in Savuti because we saw so much on the way out. We had been told it was a 2-hour drive, but it was closer to five. There seems to be a habit here of drastically under-estimating driving times on the back roads. We camped at a lodge in town the first night here and woke up to torrential rains, but also a mom and baby warthog and a giant family of tiny banded mongoose in our campsite. We were exhausted from all the driving, so decided to stay here a few nights to do nothing and rest up, but we moved to an indoor place for better sleep.

We took an afternoon boat cruise along the Chobe River, and saw some fantastic hippos and a crocodile. The next morning and afternoon we drove along the Chobe River from within the national park. We saw some rare birds- I think we saw a kori bustard, which is the world’s heaviest flying bird. We got very close to a hippo bathing in one of the huge puddles in the road, and saw some very young elephants. Amazing. Also amazing how quickly seeing things like elephants starts to feel normal (if not a bit scary). They are a road nuisance here like moose are in Newfoundland. It’s hard to imagine what this place is like in dry/high season when there are many times more animals, and thousands of elephants all over the place.

Oh, and I finally had my first African gin and tonic at the bar of a swish lodge in town overlooking the river. Perfect combo of some of my fave things: hotel lounges, Africa, a good G&T, and B.

Next up: Zambia and Victoria Falls.

The front fell off

Moremi Game Reserve is one of the two major game viewing areas in Botswana, the other being Chobe National Park. Moremi runs into the Okavango Delta, which is a flooded delta region that can only be accessed by very expensive luxury (as in $1000 per person per night) fly-in safari operators. We didn’t think we would get to either of these places, partly because we’d read that they are so busy you need to book campsites up to a year in advance. The rainy season can also make the roads impassable. It’s rainy season now, and many areas get washed out or flooded and it can be easy to get stuck. We have gear to get unstuck, but we weren’t keen on the idea of having to wait overnight for someone to pull us out or doing outside work when there could be a lion hiding under a tree. So far, we’ve had no trouble with accommodation and most places seem quite empty. We found out the roads weren’t too bad, so we headed off into the bush with our Toyota Hilux. We had an amazing drive into Moremi Game Reserve in northern Botswana. There were some pretty big puddles but nothing serious. As with many days, the weather was constantly changing from searing sun to torrential rains. On the drive in, we saw our first hippo, giraffes(!), zebras, and elephants, and loads of different antelope and fantastical birds. We drove straight through a herd of Cape buffalo, which look a bit like ladies with pigtails because of their curved horns. They have incredibly human faces, somehow.

We were planning to camp two nights at Third Bridge campsite inside Moremi. (I’m still amazed I even considered that idea, what with the elephants and lions and all.) It’s tricky to camp in these places, because you are not supposed to walk around after dark, which is at 7pm. We had heard that you shouldn’t even walk to the bathroom a couple of campsites away, but everyone seemed to be doing that, and it seems to be common practice in the camping areas. It’s a bit trickier with our rooftop tent, because the truck can’t really be driven with the tent set up. Anyway, as dusk approached, I wasn’t excited about the idea of waking up at 3am to the sound of elephants eating the tree next to us, and we actually slept in car (justifying it with our plan to leave by 5:30am for a game viewing drive). Our early morning drive, timed to correspond to prime animal activity at dawn and dusk, brought a few more giraffes and zebras, but not super close.

After talking to the very helpful ranger, B managed to wrangle us a stay in a safari tent the next night. This was amazing. These are huge (the size of a hotel room), permanent canvas tents on wooden platforms with en suite bathrooms and an attached outdoor shower. There were a few of these at the campsite that seemed to be out of use for the low season, but they let us stay, and it was great. There was a herd of impala grazing outside when we showed up, and we watched a herd of elephants go by as we sat on our deck in the afternoon. More elephants later when we took another drive around an island in the game reserve.

On the way out the next day, we drove through an amazing forested area (the vegetation changes a lot from place to place. There were a few pairs of impala bucks wrestling with their antlers right next to us. We saw the remains of a hippo that was still being picked over by vultures. The poor thing’s head was still intact, but otherwise it was down to a huge ribcage surrounded by scavengers. There was a sable antelope – these are one of the big ones. Amazing.

That’s when the front fell off and things started to go awry. We hit what seemed like a never ended series of huge water pools along the last stretch of road toward the exit gate. We were planning to head straight to Chobe National Park from Moremi. The challenge with these pools is that is was impossible to know how deep they were – and they were several truck lengths long – and impossible to know whether they were rutted and muddy at the bottom. The road is very sandy, so we figured they were fine. We flew over a bunch of them by flooring it and hydroplaning, but they seemed to be getting bigger. We didn’t want to find a bad one by getting stuck in the middle of it, so we turned back. We met a group of two other trucks going in, who decided to try it and offered to let us go along (in case anyone needed towing out of a hole). We considered it, but then noticed that the force of the water had already left the front grill and bumper of the truck hanging off. It had been loose in one place when we picked it up, but now it was really bad and we didn’t want to loose it entirely. We decided to take a different route – longer but apparently drier. It was drier, but not dry enough for our shaky front end, so we had to turn back again once we were almost out of the park. We stopped at the ranger station at the park exit and strapped on the front end with tie-downs and high-tailed it back to Maun.

We stayed at a place called Crocodile Camp, which was one of the first safari base camps in the area. (Maun used to be a frontier town for people entering the park. It’s still a hub for that, but now most people fly there and fly straight out in a bush plane.) After a few days in Maun, we managed to rest up a bit and get the front end sort of fixed at the local Land Rover garage. It involved a lot of glue, extra bolts, and cable ties. Most of the flimsy plastic connection points were broken off. But, we felt pasted back together enough to get to us through Chobe Park.

"In Africa, God is very big."

That's what the man in the gas station in South Africa said. I think I get what he meant. EVERYTHING here is big. The skies are huge. The animals are huge. Everything is big: gas tanks, bugs, potholes, speed limits (120km/h on 2-lane roads covered in cows, donkeys, and goats), and smiles. We've mostly been in Botswana so far, driving from Johannesburg to Maun via Gaborone. The people here seem very quiet and lovely. Life is pretty simple compared to many places we've travelled. Botswana operates formally in English (with many other languages) and is very safe and hassle free. And there are goats everywhere!!!! (I really, really like goats.)

We've crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, drove though clouds of butterflies, dodged much livestock, and seen crazy things that start to seem commonplace at an alarmingly fast rate. Our first excitement was at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. We saw a real live rhino wandering around in the wild, and many other things (list to come) that are almost unbelievable. The next night we camped at a place owned by a lovely couple near the entrance of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. We were in our roof top tent when the biggest thunder and lightening storm we've ever seen started up. We retreated to the truck for a few hours on account of the metal framing of the tent. We almost got a speeding ticket driving towards Maun, Botswana, but B managed to sweet-talk our way out of it. (Even the police here seem nice!)

And life goes on....

It turns that life does in fact go on after the PhD. It also gets more interesting.  With newfound freedom (an unemployment) for B and I, we spent Christmas with his family in Ontario and then flew off to Johannesburg to spend just over a month driving around southern Africa looking at large animals, desert sand dunes, and who knows what else. We're in one of these:

I've decided to keep this blog going for at list a while longer to share stories from the trip. Internet has not been plentiful so far, but I'll update as much as I can.