NAMIBIA...... A DIFFERENT SORT OF AFRICA

NAMIBIA IS SLIGHTLY FLAT

Well, it has happened, I was finally tempted to leave Angola and visit another African country, in this case it was Namibia.

This wont be a chronological account of our visit to our southern neighbour, but rather a ramble through our impressions of the country, or at least as much of it as we saw in our short visit there.

The first, and most overwhelming impression for someone coming there from Angola was the amazing difference between Windhoek (Namibia's capital) and Luanda. As you will have seen from my earlier postings, Luanda, and most of Angola is medieval in almost all respects, whilst Windhoek is almost like a small provincial European city. It is clean...Squeaky clean, quite different to the two African countries I had seen up till our arrival there. I am told that during the South African occupation of Namibia it was as filthy as any other African country, but upon gaining their independence the first thing the Namibians did was to spend two years cleaning up their country.... And it shows! I have NEVER seen such a clean place in all my life.

The next thing to strike me was that all the cars and trucks were in impeccable condition, almost show room condition, all very unnerving to me, after the unbelievable wrecks you see driving around in Angola.

And then, the cream on the cake, everyone spoke English...... Ah bliss, to be able to communicate easily was such a relief to me, after years of struggling with French, and then Portuguese.. To be simply able to talk to anyone about anything...Was such a pleasure.

DEER IN CAPRIVI

We arrived in Windhoek airport to be met by a driver from the hire car company we had arranged to hire a sort of African camper from, who took us to our hotel as we planned to head off into the landscape on the second day of our visit. This was fun too... To be actually met by a bloke with one of those boards with our names on it.. and then to be driven calmly into Windhoek in a brand new van on almost empty roads.. And not a pot hole to be seen.

By the time we had wandered around Windhoek a bit, and been into a supermarket which was full of stuff...all fresh and clean and cheap too, we were in a state of shock, and reeled back to our hotel totally confused by the contrast between Luanda and Windhoek.

The next day our driver turned up at the arranged time (another difference to Angola!) and off we went to pick up our 4x4 camper, which was also immaculate and fully equipped..... And then we set off on our Namibian adventure.

LOTTY DRIVING

Perhaps this will turn out to be a slightly chronological account after all... Seems to be the way it wants to be told!

We left Windhoek early in the afternoon, in company with a couple of fellow teachers from LIS (in their own 4x4) and headed north. We planned to get up to the extreme north east of Namibia, and area called the Caprivi strip, which is a sort of thin strip on the east-west axis with Angola, Botswana and Zambia surrounding it as we had been told it was interesting up there. This entailed a drive of about 1000 km to get there.

On the first night we stopped at a national park near to Grotefontain, which had a very well set up campsite, but not really much else to recommend it. Rather spectacular sandstone plateau/escarpment just behind it, but that was all really. One thing was pleasant there though, and that was the presence of loads of mongooses (mongeese?). Charming creatures, dashing around the place pretending to be Meerkats. I loved them!

OUR TRUSTY CAMPING NISSAN

The further north we drove, the less smart and tidy Namibia became, though it remained (by African standards) impeccable. The second night on the road we stopped on the banks of a river in a truly luxurious campsite, and found ourselves gazing over the river at Angola. It was strange to look over that river (about 50 meters wide) and to see Angola there. Somewhere on the Angolan side there was obviously a party going on in a village, as we could hear drums and women ullulating... made us feel like the early explorers must have felt... We could hear this noise in the warm night air... but we could see no one, or any lights...nothing. Quite wonderful.

All this time we had been driving along very good roads through countryside that made Holland look mountainous. As far as the eye could see ....flat..... nothing except bush. Very, very dull country to drive through. Only made interesting by the occasional sign boards warning of warthogs or elephants and regular police check points. The cops here were civil, efficient, and obviously not looking for bribes (yet another difference to Angola!).

OUR COLLEAGUES AND US ON THE ROAD

In due time we arrived at our destination, a National Park called Mudumu at the eastern end of the Caprivi strip, and we settled into our campsite there. It was extremely basic, no more than a very clean outside lavatory in fact, beside a river (which was full of Hippos).
The couple we were traveling with found it too quiet and dull there, so they left the following day to go off to see a friend in Swakopmund, so there we were, just the two of us, lots of hippos, baboons and peace.

We were the only people camping in the park for the first couple of days, so the peace was amazing, only disturbed by the baboons who spent the nights in two trees on either side of our camping area..and they are noisy folk to share a place with! Enchanting to watch, especially the young ones, who played all the time. People had warned us to be careful of baboons, as they are known to steal and attack campers..and when you see the teeth that the males have..you wonder. But these baboons left us completely alone, and hardly even looked at us most of the time. Nights were noisy though...we have discovered that baby baboons are as fractious and bad at sleeping at night as human babies, so the nights were full of wailing baby baboons and furious roars from the males telling them to shut up for God's sake and go to sleep!. Entertaining stuff.

BABOONS DOING THEIR THING

Less peacefully from my point of view were the Hippos, who were extremely present in the river we were camped next to. So one had them only a matter of meters away, snorting and wuffing in the river. As I have often been told that hippos are seriously dangerous creatures, and as the river bank was obviously a place that they used to get in and out of the river at times, I was not happy to share my possy with them at all. But, they ignored us completely.

IF YOU LOOK CAREFULLY..... A HIPPO!

Other than these creatures, there were crocodiles in the river...but we never saw any of them, and lions were wandering around...so the ranger told us...but we never heard or saw any, happily. The same applied to elephants... They were there.. saw plenty of evidence of that (droppings), but never saw even a hair of one. Sundry deer and warthogs... plenty of them..and birds of all sorts and plumage were flapping about the place all day and most of the night too.

The sunsets over the river and the sun rising in the mornings were unbelievable..... So beautiful. It was a rapid process, and watching the swathes of reds, yellows, blues and oranges moving across the sky, and the still waters of the river reflecting the trees on the opposite bank was something neither of us shall forget ...

WHAT WE ENJOYED EVERY EVENING

To sit on the bank of the river with a cold beer in the hand (we had an extremely efficient fridge in our van) and watch the sun go down... So good for the soul. This was followed each night by an amazing musical interlude from the frogs. There must have been dozens of different sorts as the noises were so varied. My favourite was a sort of glokenspiel one. This started out with one or two frogs playing slowly on their glokenspiels, and then gradually more and more joined in, so after about an hour there was this fantastic orchestral work being played for us. A real symphony for percussion instruments.
Whilst it was noisy, it was also very restful too, curiously enough. With the occasional solo from one or another hippo to add a different layer to the sound. Our friendly baboons added their contribution, but it didn't really work very well somehow, on a musical level, that is. Their voices were not really in sympathy with the aquatic orchestra.

IT EVEN RAINED....... A LOT!

We passed our days there, gently reading, talking and occasionally driving around the park (we had been told not to walk around owing to the danger of becoming a snack for a lion). Driving there was fun, mostly through grass that was higher than the van, which sort of restricted the view, but had a pleasantly hypnotic feel to it, as the grass folded under the bonnet of the car as we drove gently along.

DRIVING IN THE LONG GRASS... ARE THERE ANY LIONS OUT THERE?

LOCAL FRIENDLY WARTHOGS

On one occasion as we were doing this, we managed to blow a front tire, which meant that we had to get out of our nice safe van and change the wheel...... To be honest, I was not happy doing this, thinking of lions sneaking up on me as I sweated over the jack... But nothing untoward occurred, and we changed the wheel OK and carried on.

Basically, nothing happened, which is exactly what Lotty and I were looking for, and thus we were two happy campers....literally.

Soon enough it was time to start heading back to Windhoek, but rather than simply drive down the incredibly straight and boring roads, we took off into the bush, and took the smallest tracks we could find on our map.

NAMIBIAN DIRT ROAD

This was a completely different view of Namibia. Driving through fords, over mountains and along tracks that were almost impossible to see, they were so unused. We drove for hours along some of these tracks without seeing a soul, just lots of warthogs, deer, enormous millipedes and equally enormous crickets.

IN REALITY THEY WERE BIGGER THAN HERE ON THE SCREEN! NAMIBIAN CRICKET

Occasionally we passed cattle who were grazing near the road. These were impressive creatures, enormous spread of horns and all very healthy and contented looking. Mostly they were Brahmins, I think, beautiful beasts. We also passed farm settlements, but these were curious, as mostly they seemed to be completely bereft of people, though obviously they were functioning farms, others had people, who mostly simply stared at us as we drove by in our cloud of dust. We found that Namibians are nothing like as friendly as Angolans, and the beggars really pissed us off. Everywhere we stopped outside Windhoek we were immediately set upon by hordes of kids and young men demanding dollars from us, which was a drag!

SPEAKS FOR ITSELF I THINK.... GOOD FUN TOO!

In due time, after this very pleasing journey, we arrived back in Windhoek, and returned our trusty Nissan 4x4 to the hire company, who then drove us to our hotel.... ah, the luxury of organised travel!

Various of our colleagues were already at the hotel, so we passed an evening together, exchanging traveler's tales.

The next day we all went our separate ways, and wandered around Windhoek. Mostly people did this to go shopping, as the shops in Windhoek are like shops in Paris or London...Lots of them, and all full of reasonably priced goods... quite unlike Angola. In my case I spent the better part of the day simply sitting in various bars and cafes, reading and people gazing.. My favourite activity. I observed that the Bushman physical characteristic's are very pronounced in Windhoek... Enormous buttocks on the women, and a curious yellowish colour to their skins, and a decidedly Mongolian cast to the features. They are not as good looking, by and large as the Angolans, and nothing like as ready to grin... Much like people in European cities really... going around with pre-occupied frowns on their faces. But it was pleasant none the less...and all so easy too.

ANOTHER MOUNTIAN TRACK

As a friend said of Namibia.. "It is Africa for beginners".

The following day we were picked up and taken off to the airport..and into the plane and back to Luanda, an uneventful two hour flight... From the 21st century to the 14th. Luanda was a horrible shock after this short visit to a well organised, clean and "normal" country.

And now, we are back in our weird compound life, looking forward to leaving here in about 8 weeks to go to England and France before heading off to our next adventure...China!