The end of Africa

Saying good-bye to Africa was a lot harder than I imagined. The farther we went south the more I enjoyed myself and by the time South Africa came I really didn't want to leave. There is still much to see but I feel that given the short amount of time we managed to cover a great distance and explore the high-life and the under-belly of the massive continent.

At Hammerstein Lodge in Namibia. Notice the side of the fence that I'm on.

Hiking through the mountains of Namibia.

The streets of Bo Kamp, Cape Town, a Malay neighorhood.

The western coast of Cape Town.

Penguins of Simontown, Cape Town.

If you look closely, you can see a little animal the size of a hamster. That is a Dassie, a close relative to an Elephant. Seriously, I'm not lying...look it up. This is on the top of Table Rock, Cape Town.

On the boardwalk of Durban, South Africa.

Facing my fears at the aquarium in Durbin.

The shark attack. Durbin

Waiting for our chicken on the beaches of Maputo, Mozambique. It Was Good!

More photos from Namibia

Sitting in comfort at Gabe's (Heath's friend) house in Maputo, Mozambique, I finally have time to throw up some photos to let my dear followers know that, yes, I am still using this thing. I'm also still alive.

A quick brief of our travels. After Namibia I've tackled Table Mountain in Cape Town, enjoyed a fantastic meal at a rotating restaurant in Durban and finally tried my very first oxtail meal home-cooked to my liking at the home of our gracious hosts, Julian and Frances, where I was treated like royalty. All of this will be properly blogged soon.

This vacation is actually starting to feel like a vacation. South Africa is well worth the long flight, everyone. A quick thank you very much to my new friends in SA for their stunning hospitality.

These are some photos from Sossusvlei, Namibia where the sun was hot, the air was dry and I was thirsty. It was spectacular.



Why I love Namibia and the poisonous trail.

Touring around Namibia in a two-wheel drive is not ideal. Especially during the tail end of their rainy season, the rainiest season in 11 years which even brought the Swapkomund River flowing into the ocean.  The rain ensures extra water sources for wildlife through-out the dry season and brings on new life of high desert plants and the rebirth of trees.

The difficult task of maneuvering our car through the land is a small price to pay to experience the overwhelming growth brought on by the ever-needed rains.

Just east of the coastal town of Swapkomund is a small pit stop turned hotel/ bakery/ restaurant called Solitaire.  We arrived there in the early afternoon with intentions of a quick stop to taste the famous Afelstrudel made by the German owner, bringing a little bit of his home to the high desert town.

We were blown away with the landscape and the price of $10 camping so we pitched our tent for the night and enjoyed the 3.8km sunset walking trail just behind the property grounds.

I made the wise decision to switch into my full sneakers, socks and long pants and set out on the trail expecting the worse of harassing bugs.  Apart from "bees" (more like flies that take the sweat from your face and use the moisture to make honey) constantly in your face, the only bug visible were huge crickets the size of my hand scrambling around the trail and running quickly away as we approached. They looked like massive armored-out spiders that ran away too fast for our cameras.

You ask, what was posionous about this trail, Connie. As you will shortly see below, we came upon a weavers nest (a little bird that builds colonies in one giant nest which ever-so delicately hangs on tree branches. They get so large that a third of the tree is swallowed up by them).  Dangling in the middle of them was a huge, thick yellow snake which we continued to stare at for sometime.

It was eating its way through the nest and just once poked its little head out to see what all the trouble was.  After the bees had officially scrubbed my face clean of sweat I decided it was time to walk away from the snake and continue on our way.  We, of course, took loads of photos to take back to the staff in hopes that someone would be able to give a name to our new slithering friend.

Further and further we went until a startled shout came from Heath when he almost stepped directly on this cute, little scorpion. This marks my first actual scorpion sighting so I was quite happy.  The little bugger was scrambling around, digging in dirt without the slightest interest in us at all. He would even walk up within a few steps of our feet and happily poised for our camera, loving the limelight.

Happy with our decision to take this walk we headed back and soaked up the moment. The wind was warm and blowing slightly, the air was sweet like honey. A huge cloud hovered over the mountains which only looked threatening but it never made its way over to us. For some reason it was being held on by the mountains which made for a fantastic photo.

We headed back with our photos, happy and content. We approached one of the staff members and questioned him about our new friends. A look of shock and horror came over his face, he muttered "what did you see".  Look at the photos, I said.

Our happy yellow snake in fact was a Cape Cobra, the deadliest snake in Namibia, with a neurotoxic venom which can kill you 2-5 hours after bitten if not treated. Even then, without immediate artifical respiratory help your chances of survival are 30%.

The cute, little scorpion turns out is a yellow dune scorpion which also has neurotoxic venom. Yikes. To think of how close we were!

A dusty old worn-out truck bidding us good-bye as we pull out of Solitaire, leaving our deadly friends behind.

Deadly Desert

Solitaire, Namibia

A giant thunder cloud tears through the sky and crosses south bringing with it massive droplets of warm rain that will more than likely flood our campsite in a few hours. The rainy season in Namibia is still baring her teeth making it the wettest season in several years.  Dry rivers are now bursting with life causing shock and surprise to all the locals and giving extra swim holes to their dogs.

I enjoy watching the excitement but also fret severely because we rented a measly VW Polo which is already struggling on the dirt and trenched-out roads.  It’s not only painful for the car but also your rear-end trying to maneuver over the “Main-Gravel Roads”, as they call them, with crevasses shaped into a deep V which we manage through sideways. 

To top off the fun we came across an empty section of the Aba Huab River which gave us 50 meters of sand to drive through. After some contemplation and a few large rocks removed we nailed it straight on at a barreling speed only to get marooned in the center.  We tried to dig our way out getting our entire bodies under the car digging and digging through the hot sand when a 4x4 vehicle came up and happily (easily) pulled us across.

We continued our journey to the next stop of Twyfelfontein, ancient rock carvings now turned national park, and for only $5 you can have a guided tour with a man who ever-so-discreetly compares women to low life forms such as centipedes and talks your ear off about how wonderful Texans are and sometimes puts in a few words about the carvings themselves. What a jerk. Needless to say, I was rather upset when Heath tipped him $10 Namibia dollars. He didn’t hear the centipede comment.

Now we were off heading east to Khorixas, opposite the way we came to avoid that darn river, when we hit it again on the other side and this time we weren’t so lucky.  It was flowing rain water about 3-4 feet which we wouldn’t dream of crossing and had to double-back stopping at a corner store for a well-deserved Coke.  We aimed to follow a different route, the C39, which meets up with the first route we couldn’t take but, luckily, I asked the shop owner about the road and he said it was completely overflowing. Back to the sandy Aba Huab for us.

We got stuck again. This time a safari truck came along and four guys jumped out of the bed and pushed our car through.  Why Budget Auto rented us a 2-wheel drive, I don’t know. It’s obvious these roads are not made for them anytime of the year.

We were finally off to Torra Bay, dead center of the Skeleton Coast national park, which was the direction we originally wanted to go anyway. A quick history of Skeleton Coast:  The San call it “The Land God Made in Anger”.  The coast line is hit with the cold Benguela current and has a similar cold feel of the Pacific Northwest. Mix that with sandy dunes and you have a perfect blend of thick fog for the majority of the year. It almost never rains.  Boats would get lost in the thick fog and crash onto the shallow, sandy shores only to be faced with miles and miles of desert nothing.  Zero survivors.

I have never seen anything like it, not in the movies, not in real life. A land full of nothing.  Well, except for the rusted-out old oil rig, date unknown, which looked straight out of the movie Saw.  And then a few miles down a small shabby sign pointed us to the “Ship wreck” which was literally, a ship wreck dated sometime in the early 19^th century.  You get a creepy, spooky feeling standing on that beach knowing that so many lives have been lost there; so many people have been stranded.  As neat as it was to see, it wasn’t a place I wanted to hang out in so we jumped back into the car and reached the end of the national park.  

The end gate.

Here are a few more animal photos just to give you something more than nothing too look at:

Mr. funny-face elephant at Etosh National Park, Namibia.

A wild and crazy Springbok at Etosha National Park, Namibia. Very pretty and also good eatin'.

A male lizard. I tried to get his name but he wouldn't tell me.

I'm finally back.

Etosha Safari Camp, Namibia

Yes, I know, it's been a long time.

Instead of a long-winded blog describing our adventure from Malawi to Namibia I'll just put up some photos of the journey. I do have to mention the teeny problem we came to at the border of Malawi. I was almost arrested.  When we came across the border from Tanzania the immigration officer gave Heath 30 days to travel and me only 7. We stayed for 10. They didn't like that much and said that we would have to travel back to Lilongwe (7 hours) and pay an extra $30 to get an extension and then come all the way back.  So, while Heath pleaded and pleaded with them I just stood by because they wouldn't speak to me at all even though it was my passport and not his.  We managed to get through and I told myself that was the last time I will ever visit that country...ever.

So...here are the photos:

Fighting back against Malaria by killing mosquitos in our hotel room Chipata, Zambia.

Victoria Falls, Zamiba

Baboons at Victoria Falls, Zambia

A cute and not-so-friendly little baboon.

Hanging out at a corner shop just up from our campsite in Maun, Botswana.

Getting ready for our Mokoro camping trip in Maun, Botswana.

On the Mokoro floating down the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

At the front. Those reeds hurt.

A fellow guide in his Mokoro boat (dug-out canoe).

The hippo pool covered in lilly pads. Yes, there were hippos in there...somewhere.

Our two day campsite on the Delta.

Crusin' along.

On our safari walk in the Delta we came across on this old guy.

I skipped ahead a bit and have now taken you to Etosha National Park in Namibia. This is a cute little Jackel.

You've seen a lot of these pictures everywhere but I had to put it up to prove that, yes, we were that close. Namibia

Alright, that's it for now. When I find internet again I'll give you a full update on how we came to beautiful, wonderful Namibia. It's my favorite country thus far. We had to hitch 8 hours to get here with many people, including one fantastic man that gave us a free 3 hour lift from the border to Windhoek, right to the front step of our hostel. Thanks Stephen Lewis from Edo's Camp Safari in Botswana.

Until next time, y'all.

MV Ilala photos

My one hour of sleep on the boat just under the owner's cabin who came out during the slumber and almost stepped on my head.

2nd class all the way.

Off loading logs from the boat.

Getting off the boat. Hooray!

Finally settled on shore at Monkey bay and learned a new game called Bao taught by our new, patient, local friend.



Bugs, bugs and more bites.

Ten mosquito bites on my arms and legs. One big, nasty spider bite on my right arm. A total of ten unidentified bites on my pinky and ring finger on both hands, yes, both hands which made typing near impossible. All of these undeserved bites have come from our journey across Lake Malawi on an old converted-to-diesel steam ship called the MV Ilala which took us from Nkhata Bay to Monkey Bay.

The boat itself was dreadful but Heath will tell you otherwise. We bought a "first class" ticket which meant that we had the privelege of sleeping on the top deck under the only covered section, the bar. After I had the bartender turn the music off, around midnight, we were hit with sideways rain which soaked us and everything we had and hurried to the second deck which was crowded with other passengers leaving only a small section for standing the rest of the night. No sleep for me.

The second day (two nights on the boat) I was sick from smelling the diesel fuel and the rotten fish smell from the local fish which they transport from port to port to sell at the markets. All of this and the fight with mosquitos made me wish for home more than ever.

We did finally dock in Monkey bay and found a cozy little oasis to set up camp. It was truely a perfect spot minus electricity. The following day I was lounging around on the shore when a pack of monkey's and a huge baboon snuck down to steal the last remaining banana a local was chewing on and just happened to leave alone for a minute. They were adorable. The baboon took off and the monkey's stayed behind taunting me from the trees. They would run to the end of a branch and pounce up and down to get my attention. They seemed only interested in me because when Heath came up they took off. Apparently, they don't like boys. One point for me, I guess.

So, here we are in the capital of Malawi, Lilongwe, at another campsite over-run with Expats and their screaming children. It really feels like we are camping in someone's backyard. Doesn't really fit in to our "African" experience but at least it's cheap and only one night.

Tomorrow we are off again to hop on another bus to the border of Zambia and then another one to the capital. Eventually we will make it to Victoria Falls.  Bring on another long bus ride. As for now, this one dollar 200ml of brandy we bought at the store mixed with pineapple fanta in cups made from a jury-rigged plastic bottle will do the trick. Cheers!