Etosha

Since Swako, we have been dealing with absolutely abysmal Wi-Fi. The hotel claims they offer it, but its ability to sustain any sort of meaningful connection is severely lacking. I spent about 15 minutes yesterday downloading an 1 mb map of Etosha National Park for our reference. It has been a little frustrating, and hence the long delay between posts. There’s no way I’d ever be able to upload pictures and post a blog with the crappy wi-fi situation we have here. ANYWAY...

 Yesterday was spent mostly on the road —more than five hours to be precise, but fortunately almost all of it was paved. Wowzers! We arrived at Etosha Village around 3:30pm, where we checked into our own personal little chalet. The temperature is a lot warmer in the north of the country than what we have been experiencing up to now. We checked out the newly opened general store down the road a little ways and made a few purchases before heading back to our place and chilling for the rest of the evening.  

 The following day, we got up early to drive into Etosha National Park. We were close to the park entrance, and there were only five cars ahead of us when we arrived. HOWEVER, there might as well have been 50 because the efficiency level of park entrances in this country leaves something to be desired. First, a guy came around to ask where we were headed, which I found to be a very silly question considering everyone was heading into the park, but he did have a stern warning about making sure we paid. Alright, fair enough, I figured that would occur at the booth by the gate entrance, but it wasn’t! While there, I had to fill out a piece of paper with our license plate and how many people were in the car etc, and was handed what looked like a brochure. Payment would occur 17km down the road, where I had to stand in another line for about 20 minutes, and then finally after probably 90 minutes since we started our journey, we were “inside” the park. 

   The primary draw of Etosha is its dryness. It essentially guarantees that you will see at least some kind of wild animals due to the presence of a dozen or so watering holes in an area that is otherwise barren and just a massive salt pan. Shortly after the entrance to the park is the largest watering hole, albeit manmade. We skirted the parking area briefly, but it was absolutely inundated with tour buses, safari trucks, and other tourists. If we parked, we would surely be blocked in, and that wasn’t appealing. I put in my GPS the location of a small watering hole about 45 km up the road.

 Enroute we saw a few elephants, but then again, so did a bunch of other vehicles, and we were blocked in until one of them finally moved. So far, our experience in Etosha wasn’t great. However, the further we drove, the fewer vehicles we encountered. By the time we reached Charitsaub water hole, there was only one car parked at the viewpoint, but probably 50 zebras and springbok taking turns drinking water. We lingered there for a while, as it was our first zebra sighting, and we probably overdid it on pictures of the old black-and white. After a while we continued east to other neighboring water holes, where we saw more zebra herds, bok, oryx, wildebeest, and an occasional ostrich. Eventually we reached a point, where I decided would be as far east as we should go, so we doubled back to the west, hitting some of the water holes that we had skipped over earlier in the day.  

I had pulled over briefly to watch a few ostrich crossing the road, and then witnessed a safari truck go flying by at top speed along the bumpy road. They turned into the next water hole, and we followed shortly thereafter. Nicole and I speculated that there was some sort of sighting at that water hole, but at first glance it looked the same as the others. But then we saw it lumbering slowly in front of us - the rare black rhino. It didn’t quite make it to the water hole because it just kind of fell over, rolled around for a second or two, and then lay there in the mud, just chilling. It stayed that way for a while. After about 15-20 minutes though, a small group of elephants rolled up to the water hole and the rhino took that as its cue to leave. It seems that when the elephants show up, all the other animals kind of scatter. Eventually so did we. We continued west and eventually got all the way back to the large manmade pan, where there was just one car parked now — a far cry from the situation earlier in the day. We thought perhaps the tour groups and other guided tours were now getting lunch, while we, fueled just by granola bars and some crackers, had a panoramic view of numerous species sharing the large water hole.  

 We sat there for a while taking it all in when Nicole thought she saw something on the horizon. She used her binoculars and discovered they were elephants. We thought perhaps they might make their way to the water hole, and some 25 minutes later, they finally arrived, causing all the other animals to briefly scatter while they played in the mud. There were eight elephants in total, and it appeared to be two separate families that seemed to travel together. Eventually they headed off somewhere else, and the other animals closed back in on the water hole. After all this, we made a brief stop at the Okaukuejo camp, which is kind of like the epicenter for everything in the park with a gas station, convenience store, and my destination — the restroom. We got back in the car and did some exploring to the west this time, encountering a total of three vehicles over the course of the next two hours or so. The landscape in this direction was even more barren or dried out. Many of these water holes had dried up. The habitat looked more like where the hyenas hang out in the Lion King. In fact, we saw a few dried carcasses alongside the road. As we continued, we saw a small herd of zebras walking along the road, and we found ourselves basically migrating along with them slowly. Sometimes we’d stop to take a picture, and they would often stop too, sizing us up and wondering what our next move would be. We encountered a small herd of oryx just down the road from them, and much further along even saw a few giraffes. The lighting on them, however, was poor, so we were glad we had seen them in Chobe back in Botswana.  

 All in all it was a good day of adventuring through Etosha. I didn’t know if Etosha would seem like old hat since Chobe had wowed us in so many ways, but each safari offered its own charms. The benefit of Etosha is that it’s self-guided (should one choose to explore it that way), so while we saw various buses or safari jeeps pull up to a water hole, they would be gone in a minute or two. We were able to linger and really observe the animals without feeling rushed. We also were able to see the rhino and numerous zebra in Etosha, and completely different species like hippo, lion, and crocodile while we were in Chobe. There is a lot of talk of “The Big Five,” in Africa — an outdated colonial expression for the five African animals that were most difficult to track and hunt. That terminology has been coopted by tour groups who encourage tourists to “check the boxes” of these five animals. They are elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, and cape buffalo. If Nicole and I were seeking these, we would have checked four of five. But I really don’t care. The leopard is an apex predator who, if successful, won’t really be seen anyway, and I figured it would have to be some kind of miracle to see that or a cheetah in the wild. I’d pretty much written off rhino until I saw the one sauntering over to see us today. And Nicole and I really enjoyed the zebra and giraffes, who aren’t part of the “Big Five.” The point being that we were watching the zebra for probably hours today and it wasn’t getting old, but some of these buses pulled up, didn’t even kill their engines, and just kept on driving as if a herd of 100 zebra was like finding pigeons in New York. It was a bit perplexing, but I’m afraid people get caught up in this “Big Five” nonsense and aren’t able to enjoy the numerous other species of animals that are unique to Africa. Anyway, it has been a long post, but there’s no internet, so I have plenty of time to write. That is the price you must pay. Tomorrow we have no idea where we are even driving to or where we will spend the night because that would require an internet connection. Wish us luck.

Willkommen

Grill night was mostly a success. They gave us more food than we were expecting. We put in for one order of beef steak, and one for oryx, and in total, it probably reached eight pieces of meat. They gave us all the firewood, utensils, plates, and everything else we might need to complete the meal. We started the fire in the grill and started off with some potatoes. We continued with the steaks, which didn’t have a huge amount of flavor in the end, but we didn’t have any Mrs. Dash on hand in the middle of the Namib desert. We also grilled a tomato, and had some pasta salad on the side. It was a hearty meal, and we didn’t use about four pieces of meat. We put these in the mini-fridge so animals wouldn’t come after them in the night.  

 After dinner, and as we were taking some more star photos, I heard a noise coming from the direction of our hut. I shined my flashlight in that direction, but didn’t see anything. I moved around to the side of the hut and locked eyes with what I think was a cape fox, whose eyes were creepily reflecting my light with a red glow. Nicole had just finished taking a picture and I told her to go inside. I figured this animal was far more afraid of us than we were of it, but it’s hard to relax and take pictures while there’s a wild animal patrolling our hut. Once inside, we heard another thump. It appeared that the fox was trying to get something out of our garbage. This continued on for some time. I would periodically look outside in the blackness to see it on the lid of the garbage. At some point during the night, it succeeded in not only opening the lid, but somehow removing the plastic bag inside of it. When we woke up all we found was an empty water bottle and a pad of butter on the ground outside our hut, along with three groupings of turdlets, but the garbage can was still upright in its original position. I had questions.   

 Anyway, we had a long drive ahead of us, but we got started fairly early. After being shaken around for about 3.5 hours on the bumpy gravel roads, we encountered some sort of quasi-paved road as we neared Walvis Bay. It was a strange feeling to not have my limbs feel like they were being vibrated off their joints. Shortly after Walvis Bay, we arrived in the town of Swakopmund (known more familiarly as just Swako). We checked into the Driftwood B&B which is just a couple miles out of town near the beach, and ended up renting some bikes to ride into town and explore. 

 There is a heavy German influence from the area’s history as a major port for German Southwest Africa during its colonial era. Many buildings are named after the Kaiser or other early 20th-century German political or military leaders. It is kind of a surreal place. When we arrived a marine layer had swept over the area, and it had burned off in about an hour. It was just like L.A. The brightly colored buildings and blue ocean water contrasted starkly with the desert and dunes immediately beyond the town. It was a strange sight. The coastal area itself looks very well-to-do and seems more visually at home in Malibu than in Namibia, but every day is a surprise here. We locked up our bikes and walked around the town center for a bit. Lots of people were hawking different things, which wasn’t fun, but some were wearing orange vests labeled, “Hawker,” as if the town somehow regulates people trying to sell things on the street. It was . . .interesting. We eventually circled back to the Swakopmund Brewing Co. for a couple beers and bratwurst (naturally). From there we biked back to the Driftwood before deciding to order a pizza for take away. 

   An intense-looking German woman took our order and marched in-and-out of the establishment looking crazed before we finally got our pizzas 40 minutes later. They were, however, good pizzas. The driftwood gave us a bottle of red wine from South Africa that helped wash it all down. We sat on our balcony looking out at . . .nothing really. We are a block from the beach and a four-lane major boulevard, but we saw maybe three cars the entire time we sat out there. One of them was a security vehicle. It’s a cute town, but it has a certain edge to it, like everyone is afraid to go out at night, and there seems to be a lot of security precautions. Anyway, we leave tomorrow for a long drive up to Etosha National Park. Our main reason for staying in Swako was just to break up the drive with something different. Here’s hoping for some paved roads...

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.