Dried Out

We set our alarm for just after 6am. The gates to the Namib-Naukleft National Park didn’t open to the public until 645am, so this was our attempt to be there at “rope drop.”  There’s nothing resembling a cafe or restaurant for probably 100 miles or more, so our breakfast was a sad combination of hard coffee biscuits called rusks, and some other crackers. We arrived at the park entrance around 650am, and were pleased to discover a paved road throughout most of the park. Our main objective was to reach an area of the park called “Deadvlei,” an eerie pan of dead trees amidst pink dunes in the background. It is at the very end of the park, so we had to drive 60km to get there. We were hoping to get there before the tour groups and masses of people showed up.

   Lots of buses and other vehicles had pulled over at some other sites along the way either to climb up sand dunes or stop and take pictures. This was a good sign to us because we were able to keep pressing onward and ahead of them. The road eventually ended at what is known as the 2WD lot. From there, we hopped on a truck to forge the rest of the way on a track of loose sand. From a technical standpoint, we could have attempted the trail in our vehicle since it is 4WD, but I didn’t really think the Duster could handle it. After a few more kilometers, we were dropped off at what I suppose you could call the trailhead, except there wasn’t a clearly defined trail. Since it was early, there weren’t really people to follow. We saw one group heading toward a large dune, and we figured there had to be a more efficient way of getting there than by filling our shoes with 10 lbs of sand. I used my phone to help guide us toward our destination. We traversed a couple of smaller dunes, and after about ten minutes or so, crested over one final dune to catch our first glimpses of Deadvlei.

 There weren’t too many people yet, just a couple lone professional photographers that were easy to shoot around. For the next hour or so, we took in the alien landscape with eerie silence. The early morning light cast long scraggly shadows from the already ominous looking trees, and it was quite a thing to behold. Eventually some tours started showing up and had a way of announcing their presence by yelling loudly to each other. By the time we were leaving Deadvlei, people were arriving by the hundreds and when we hopped off the truck back at the 2WD lot, a long line of aggressive tourists was jockeying for the seats we had just occupied. I guess we timed everything just right. We drove back another 60km, where I spotted an oryx in the distance and was able to pull over long enough to take its picture, and then made another trip to the gas station where I topped off the tank and we purchased some more snacks to try and construct some sort of lunch. We bought a jar of pickles, some crackers, and a bag of chips. Options were limited.

 After our purchases, we went back to the Desert Quiver camp and plopped ourselves down for a while for recovery. The internet situation in the middle of the desert is unsurprisingly quite bad, so we tried to get some kind of signal to check emails and do some updates. In fact, I’m just going to post now because it’s too much effort to try and get this out anytime before tomorrow evening. Our mission for the rest of the afternoon/evening is to relax. Each of the huts at the Desert Quiver has a grill, and they had a sheet where we could order various foods to grill ourselves. We put in an order for some bread, potatoes, tomatoes, and some steaks, so it should be a nice evening in with some home style cooking.

Road Trip! (In Africa)

We had another good night’s rest at our hotel in Windhoek, the Am Weinberg (heavy German influence here you know). We had a very fancy breakfast downstairs. I had some crumpets, essentially just fancy pancakes. It was by far the best breakfast of the trip so far. I then hit up an ATM since some petrol stations only take cash, and going to petrol stations is very important in Namibia for reasons you will soon understand.

   If you teleported into our car and looked around at your surroundings, you might think you were in Arizona or New Mexico (other than everyone driving on the left side of the road at least). The road was in good condition, and traffic didn’t seem to have any dangerous bad habits other than taking the so-called “California stop” to a whole new level, as in they slowed a little but rarely would you see brake lights coming up to a stop sign. After about an hour on the paved, smooth, well-maintained road, we had to make a turn to something that was quite the opposite. Most guidebooks say the gravel roads of Namibia are in good condition, but I suppose that is highly subjective. One source even said one could drive around in a small sedan and be perfectly fine. I am here to tell you that we are glad to not be in aforementioned small sedan. We saw one Nissan Sentra coming the other direction at one point during our journey, but other than that, every other vehicle we encountered was at least an SUV or bigger.

 The unpaved road was not inherently dangerous by any means. There were no large boulders or potholes to negotiate, it was wide enough to easily accommodate oncoming traffic, and it was mostly flat and compacted. The problems came from the vibration of every bone in my body. So confidant is Nambia in its unpaved roads that the average speed limits for them are between 80-100 kph. I can assure you that doing 100 or doing 30 is about the same in terms of vibrations and bumpiness, so most of the time we were cruising down the road just trying to get it done with. We did this for about 3.5 hours before finally reaching the Desert Quiver Camp in the Namib Desert. The final stretch of road was by far the worst, and for that I did have to drop the speed down quite a bit. Nicole, uncharacteristically, announced that she needed a drink. And so we did.

   We checked in to our own personal hut and then walked over to the pool since that’s the only area that has WiFi. It’s what is called a self-service lodge where there isn’t a dedicated housekeeping service unless you specifically request it, nor are there the usual comforts such as a hair dryer, shampoo, continental breakfast etc... After sitting out by the pool for a while with a Windhoek lager in hand, we debated our next moves. We elected to go into the national park tomorrow instead of rushing things today. We’d done enough driving I think for one day. We went to the one gas station to fill up the tank and get some water and snacks for the next day. Then we went to the higher end hotel down the road that seems to cater to tour groups. Eating options are limited in the Namib desert, so we ended up at a buffet with various tour groups from France. Fortunately since there were just two of us, we were cleared to go to the buffet first, thus avoiding most of the germs. There was a bbq station where some men grilled various meats in front of us. I asked the guy what his favorites were, and he ended up throwing an impala and also oryx steak on the grill for me. Honestly, it all kind of tastes the same. I thought maybe the impala was a bit sweeter, but it’s all steak in the end. We had a pretty hearty meal and drove back the short distance to our hut with the high beams on.

   It gets quite dark in the Namib as you might expect. When we pulled into our driveway, and I killed the lights, it was absolutely shocking how dark it became. When we stepped out of the car and looked up, we were even more taken aback. The milky way was stretched out above us visible for the first time in our lives to the naked eye. I’ve had it pop up on a few of my photos in the past after doing a 30 second shutter or something along those lines, but never so clearly with my own eyes. It was quite a sight to behold. We immediately grabbed our cameras and did our best to capture this unreal view. Nicole got some incredible shots, so as you look at  mine below, remember that these are just “amateur” shots compared to hers.

Walking to Zambia

Nicole got some good sleep last night since we didn’t have to get up early for anything. In fact, we were basically just killing time until our flight at 615pm. Checkout time was 10:00am, so this was not necessarily an easy feat, but we asked for late checkout which was . . . 1030am! Wowzers. Then we left our bags in a baggage room which had about 50 bags in it, thanks to the very serious check-in/check-out policies. The temperature felt significantly warmer than the previous day. We decided to walk to Zambia today. It just entailed walking back toward Victoria Falls entrance and veering right up a road to the Zimbabwe exit border station. We were processed fairly quickly and given a piece of paper with a stamp with a not very official looking #2 written in pen to indicate there were two of us. Essentially, this whole charade was done because we just intended to cross the bridge to Zambia without any further adventures into the country. If they had physically stamped our passport over the Zimbabwe visa, we would have been in excess of our Double Entry Visa that we purchased. Complicated right? There was a large backup of commercial vehicles and trucks, but none of this affected us thankfully. Halfway across the bridge we saw a small sign that let us know we were entering Zambia.

   The actual Zambia immigration checkpoint wasn’t for another 10 minutes walk up the road. We went there to see if we could just get a stamp and turn around, but they were pretty adamant that they couldn’t do that, even just “for fun.” Why so serious? Anyway, we turned around and walk back toward the bridge. We watched a few people bungee jump off the side and went to a cafe while still on the Zambia side. I had a local Zambian beer so we can say we actually did something in Zambia other than just walk across a bridge and back. After this we continued back into Zimbabwe and then stopped at some of the stalls outside Victoria Falls to do a bit of shopping. Nicole bought a wooden hippo statuette, magnets for Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana, a pin for her backpack, and I got a Zimbabwean soccer jersey.   

 We then continued back toward the middle of town, but made a couple stops at the fancier hotels, eventually sitting for a bit at the Victoria Falls Hotel, which looks like something straight out of The Crown, because it was built early in the 20th century and large portraits of various monarchs decorate the interior spaces. We sat in a lounge area with some ceiling fans going full blast, so it was a nice respite from the oppressive heat outside. Eventually we got up to walk to some more shops. They all kind of have the same exact stuff, which is not super surprising I suppose. We found ourselves shortly thereafter at the River Brewing Company for a couple beers and some fries to snack on. After this, we went back to the hotel to get our bags and headed off to the airport.

 We endured about 40 minutes in the check-in line before going through security and ended up boarding the flight about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. We spent the next hour and a half on board an Embraer 135 regional jet over to Windhoek, Namibia. I enjoyed my snack box design which was made to look like an old-timey suitcase with various destination stickers on it. Once we arrived in Windhoek, it was a fairly easy immigration line, and then we went to get our rental car. The lady behind the counter said, “We have no cars! We sent you an email two weeks ago! Didn’t you get the email?” I found that a bit odd, so Nicole and I were questioning her a bit, but she was adamant that an email was sent. After about 30 seconds of back and forth, she admitted she was kidding. The African sense of humor is a curious creature. Anyway, apparently not many people are renting cars because we were the only people on our flight at any counter, and when we went to the parking lot, another employee was waiting at our car to show us all the features which was quite exhaustive. We will be driving a Renault Duster, a 4-wheel drive, 6-speed, diesel-fueled small SUV. We had a  roughly 25 minute drive to our hotel in Windhoek since the airport is out in the middle of nowhere. Despite arriving early, the sun had already set, so we had to drive in the dark. And it was DARK. There were absolutely no buildings or anything to give off even the tiniest bit of light until we got within half a mile of our hotel.

   We checked in to our room, grabbed a light (and late) dinner on the hotel’s roof and called it a night. Tomorrow another adventure begins . . . 

Wildlife of Chobe National Park

This morning we got up fairly early for a 715am pickup to take us into Botswana. We were dropped off on one side, and picked up on the other, and it wasn’t the most efficient process, but the day’s events had allowed for this. Around 10am, we had arrived at Chobe National Park in Botswana. We first boarded a boat on the Chobe River in hopes of spotting some animals. I’d like to think I had realistic expectations before taking part in this day-long safari. I would have been perfectly content if I was able to spot a few elephants, maybe a giraffe or something if we were lucky. As it turns out, these expectations were not realistic. I should have expected much much more. Chobe is the kind of place that could guarantee that you see elephants numbered in the hundreds, not just single digits. For the first half of the day, we cruised the river and saw crocodiles, hippos, puku, water buffalo, and elephants. My camera battery went down to 9%. I imported just a few for you to see here...

 We had a lunch back at the lodge where we boarded the boat, and then got on a jeep for a game drive around the park. Chobe park is essentially an oasis of water and vegetation in an area that is extremely dry this time of year. This is why there are such large numbers of animals, as they become more and more concentrated in a smaller area until November when the rains fall again. Nicole and I had both seen pictures on the web of some other national parks where there are 20+ jeeps all stationed around a single water buffalo. This was not the case at Chobe. At most, I think there were maybe six jeeps from what we could tell. And there were certainly plenty of animals to go around. We even saw a lion up close, lounging next to an elephant carcass. The guide told us the elephant had died of natural causes about three days ago from disease, and the lion was essentially free loading. I guess ecoli is not a concern for the lion. Enough with my words, I’ll let a few of my pictures describe the day more accurately. Africa certainly is wild.

The World of Zim

We had to wake up early . . .again because we had to catch a plane that departed at 830am. We were unsure of how long customs and security would take, but from arrival at the airport to arrival at the gate took maybe 20mins tops. It was very quiet at the airport compared to something like LAX. We departed on South African Airways Connect on time in an ERJ-190. I have a type-rating in that plane, so I could have flown it if the need arose. Aren’t you impressed?  

 Anyway, it was about 2.5 hours to go from Cape Town to Victoria Falls in Northern Zimbabwe. It was a pretty small airport, but relatively modern and we had to complete a visa-on-arrival. We got a double-entry visa since we’ll be leaving and returning the country for one of the days. We received a visa the size of an entire passport page, so that’s kind of fun. We then took the shuttle to our hotel, but were told it was too early to check in to our rooms. We had some time to kill, so we figured we might as well walk to the falls themselves. It was maybe 1km or so to the entry point. It was $30 per person to access the falls, which seemed a bit steep, but I suppose anyone who goes out of their way to get here will pretty much pay anything, so they can get away with charging as much as they want.

 Nicole and I were both surprised by just how few people there were on the trail inside the park. There were a dozen or so different viewpoints, and at most, I think we had to contend with a group of six at one of the overlooks. This time of year is a bit warmer and drier, so the falls were not at full force, but we were still able to see some good groupings of waterfalls. And perhaps this is why there weren’t many people as well. Even with just a “few” falls, the mist generated made it seem like it was raining on us. We had to shield our cameras a bit.

   The horseshoe, as it is known, was completely dry, so we missed out on that, but I think I might still take a lack of crowds over a fully pumping waterfall. The trail ended near a bridge that goes into Zambia, so we doubled back, checking out the same viewpoints again, and made our way back to the hotel to finish check-in. We went out to eat dinner in the very small surrounding town, and returned to find that a turndown service had put up mosquito netting, placed an air horn on the bed stand, and we noticed that there is an electric fence surrounding our lodge. I guess there is a legitimate concern over animals attacking. Tomorrow we have to get up early again, but this time to go into Botswana and ultimately Chobe National Park.

Penguins

We had initially planned to go to the top of Table Mountain and then see the penguins in the afternoon, but we calculated it would be about an hour drive to go to the penguin colony, and there appeared to be heavy traffic to Table Mountain as well. Given the time constraints of the day, we would have to take the cable car to the top of the mountain, which wasn’t cheap, about $25 per person. Aided with this knowledge, we elected not to go to the top, concluding that the view of Table Mountain from below is perhaps the best view of Table Mountain anyway. And for an elevated view of the city, we can just go to the top of our hotel. We summoned an Uber and enjoyed the views on the scenic drive down to Simons Town to the south of Cape Town and ultimately Boulder Beach Penguin Colony.

   I had read online that September / October are slower months for the penguins, who aren’t as active during these months because they are mostly at sea looking for food during this time. I was expecting to see maybe like five penguins wandering lazily around the beach, but I was pleasantly surprised to see them numbering in the hundreds. There is a boardwalk to separate people from the African Penguins as they are now an endangered species. While this has the advantage of keeping other tourists out of your shot, it does keep all the other tourists together which is often unpleasant for people like me. At one point I was boxed in by some Chinese tourists who would not budge, so eventually I just had to give them a bit of an aggressive shove to not be pinned in against the railing anymore. Later on, I put on my comically large long 400mm lens, just to play around a bit with an unnecessary amount of zoom. People walked by staring at me like my zipper was down, but eventually I realized it was about the lens, and decided to put it away to avoid further awkward glances.  

 I ended up taking way too many pictures of the penguins, but it was all very fascinating. Some waddled around aimlessly drunk, others hesitatingly went into the waters for a swim, while others simply found themselves belly down on the beach or a nearby rock. They are an interesting creature that are monogamous and have the same mate for life. The African penguins, unlike their Antarctic neighbors, have also adapted to the varied and warmer temperatures of South Africa. They also live at Boulders Beach year round. After thoroughly seeing the penguins from all angles, we summoned another Uber and took it back to the waterfront area in Cape Town.  

 We grabbed an early dinner and bought a few last souvenirs as we hadn’t yet acquired an ornament to add to our international christmas tree. We caught the free shuttle back to the hotel, did a load of laundry in our room, and enjoyed a couple drinks at the bar on top of the hotel before calling it a night. We would have to get up quite early tomorrow to catch our flight to Zimbabwe.

Enjoying the Cape

As it turns out, we were able to enjoy a good night’s sleep, interrupted only by a Muslim call to prayer around 5:15am. Fortunately, we were both able to fall back asleep and woke up around 9:30. We had breakfast on the top floor of out hotel, enjoying a panoramic view of the city as we had omelettes and drank rooibos tea (a South African specialty). By the time we actually left the hotel, it was after 11, but we also didn’t have major plans for the day. The wind was still blowing quite strong, so Table Mountain was actually “closed,” however that is made possible, and I suggested we go visit the penguins on a day we don’t get blown away. We elected instead to walk around our neighborhood, which unsurprisingly is historically muslim. The immediately adjacent streets are known as the neighborhood of Bo-Kaap, one of the oldest areas of Cape Town. The buildings are painted in vibrant pastel colors — the kind of thing an Instagram influencer really gets off on. Luckily, we didn’t encounter too many of this type of person.

   We did have one interesting encounter, however, with some royalty. Since Prince Harry married Meghan Markle (now the Duchess of Sussex), they seem to be on the same travel itineraries as us. When Nicole (sometimes, but not often known as the Duchess of Essex County) and I were on our honeymoon, Harry also visited Sydney followed by Fiji. And on this trip, he had aims to go to Cape Town, followed by Chobe National Park in Botswana, and initially had planned to continue on to Namibia. He must have determined that Bricole was already going to Namibia, so he didn’t want to be playing second fiddle to America’s royal couple and elected to go to Malawi and Angola instead. On this day, however, Nicole had figured out a loose itinerary for the Ginger Prince’s day out. Press began showing up in the Bo-Kaap neighborhood, and we figured out that he was planning to visit the Auwal Mosque, the oldest in Cape Town. We had a bit of a wait before he actually arrived, but the wind died down a little bit and the sun felt nice and warm on our backs, so it wasn’t too bad. A security detail had lined up barricades to keep the general public away from the royal couple. Nicole and I were the last to be kicked out since we intentionally had put our largest lenses on our cameras to look like we fit in. A Cape Town police officer asked if we were press, to which I answered, “We can be,” and Nicole said, “We’re press in the U.S.” (What is wrong with us?) Evidently we weren’t convincing and went outside the barricades. It was a bit of a crowd clamoring for space just outside the barricades, but Nicole and I elected to back away a bit and up the hill behind a parked car so nobody could stand directly in front of us, but we could also see over everyone in front of us. Our long lenses would have no difficulty out reaching everyone’s iPhone zoom in the front row. It was a brief dropoff, where Harry and Meghan got out of a LandRover, walked about 15 feet, greeted the mosque’s Imam, and entered. Nevertheless, Nicole and I were able to capture the moment like a couple of low-paid paparazzos. 

 We walked back out of Bo-Kaap to our hotel to regroup for a minute before heading out on the free hotel shuttle to the Waterfront. It seems to be the go-to area in Cape Town for all kind of shops, restaurants, and other activities. Basically, it’s the Santa Monica Pier of Cape Town — crowded, sometimes classy, sometimes tacky, and very thriving. We walked around a little bit, catching glimpses of Table Mountain before sitting down to grab a beer and a pretzel at a local brew haus. We each had a local Cape Town ale which was refreshing, but also made us a bit buzzed after about three sips since we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. After our fill up, we walked around a bit more to look for some tchotchkes such as pins, magnets, etc. What is the point of going to South Africa if you can’t get a refrigerator magnet to prove that you went? Exactly.

 After the waterfront, we went back to the hotel for dinner. Everything we read (including the hotel’s own info book) says to not walk around at night anywhere, and use extra caution during the day. It all sounded very ominous, so we did return to the hotel before sunset, but I think there might be a bit of overzealous fear mongering at play. The waterfront would have been perfectly fine at night. And while Cape Town is a dangerous city, it isn’t dangerous in every corner of the city, nor is it dangerous to every type of person. The crime record and subsequent fears of crime say more about the socio-economic disparities that exist in South Africa than anything else. If anyone wanted to pinch my camera gear today, they had a pretty good opportunity if they’d been in Bo-Kaap in a crowd jostling around. But that didn’t happen because Bo-Kaap is a tourist area, so there were cops in the area (long before the royals were expected to show). The death of a tourist (especially a white one) is far more damaging because it generates headlines. A culture of systemic rape does not. And on that depressing nugget, we’re going to see penguins tomorrow! Yay!

Adventure to a New Continent . . . Starting in Chicago

After a busy August and September where I saw myself flying 5-6 days in a row routinely, I anxiously awaited the payoff of a long stretch of vacation days beginning toward the end of the month and extending into October. Nicole had also gotten into a film festival in Chicago, so that too became part of our itinerary. Who would have guessed that going from LA to Chicago would prove to be one of the biggest challenges of the trip (at least so far). We tried American and United, which had oversold their main cabins and we finally managed to get on a Spirit flight a few hours later. We arrived in O’Hare a little after 3:00pm, took the EL downtown, and walked the rest of the way to our hotel. We didn’t really have time to do any exploring because we had a red carpet event that evening for the film festival.

   We dressed up a little bit (not too much) and found ourselves characteristically overwhelmed by our surroundings. There was a good turnout, and press was there doing interviews. Where these broadcasts actually go is kind of a mystery — it wasn’t exactly the BBC or ABC News, but press nonetheless. Nicole did a few interviews for various sources before we called it and went to get dinner. The following day, Nicole’s movie screened at the theater and seemed to be received well. She did a Q&A afterward and finally was part of a panel where she had some good (and light) one-liners amidst a rather dark discussion about pain and sacrifice. We had little time afterward to gather our bags, ship our “formal” attire back to our apartment, hop on the train to Midway (O’Hare didn’t look promising), and within about two hours from getting out of the theatre, were on a plane going to Detroit. We had enough time to eat at Potbelly’s in Detroit when I saw someone on my StaffTraveler App had responded to my request for load information on KLM from Amsterdam to Cape Town. It said oversold by 2. This wasn’t great news considering we had essentially depended on Amsterdam as our best way of getting to Cape Town. To make things worse, the Delta flight we were going to take from Detroit to Amsterdam had its own case of disappearing seats.

 We ended up getting seats on the Delta flight, but they weren’t . . .great. We were both in the back and apart from each other. While we at least weren’t middle seats, it was not the most enjoyable setup. Fortunately, starting in Detroit, the trip across the Atlantic is at least a bit shorter than having gone all the way from Los Angeles. We arrived in Amsterdam around 1030am and were at our hotel just after noon. We took a couple hour nap, slept through three alarms before Nicole woke up and realized neither of us heard the alarm. We forced ourselves up and went for a walk. Our hotel is near the Rijksmuseum, and we walked through the park that lies behind it. It was nice to get out and move the legs a little bit, even though we had to have our wits about us so we didn’t get run over by a bicycle or two or three hundred. We had dinner at a small cafe just across the street from our hotel before calling it a night. It began to rain heavily for the rest of the night.

   It was a fitful night of sleep as we suffered from jetlag and the feeling that we had to sleep because we were getting up early again. We had a 10am flight out of Schipol (if we could get seats). The KLM gate agent didn’t seem terribly optimistic about our chances, stating that there were far more standbys than there were seats. Nevertheless, against all odds, we got seats together near the front of the economy section. AND our names were called before more than half of the other standbys. This is unprecedented. We arrogantly marched to get our tickets in front of our fellow nonrev travelers. Twelve hours and a few in-flight meals later, we finally touched down in Cape Town just after 9pm in the same time zone we left from. It was relatively painless to get through customs and we took an Uber the rest of the way to our hotel, about 20 minutes away. We arrived at dark, so we couldn’t see a whole lot, but it was quite windy. We had kept nodding off on the flight, but hopefully we can get a decent night’s rest here in Cape Town.