Day 12: Rocks from Space...ace...ace...ace!

The resort that we were staying at was incredibly fancy, at least compared to our tents on the side of the road.  There was a regulation-sized swimming pool where we swam and did some laps before showering and getting back on the road.  Although we had done a fair amount of activities, we had still done a ton of driving and it felt nice to get a little exercise in.  After repacking our car we headed off towards the Hoba meteorite.

The Hoba meteorite is located in northern Namibia, kind of near the middle of the country.  It fell around 80,000 years ago, weighs about 60 tons and is the largest known single piece that has fallen.  It is made up mostly of iron. The chunk has been turned into a tourist destination and visitors can climb around on the meteorite, test out the different metallic sounds made when it is struck, and experience the strange echo that can be heard when standing at a specific point on top of the meteor.  A kind of amphitheater has been built up around it which, I'm pretty sure, made this possible.

It was neat to be able to be so close to space rocks!  And it also provided a lovely setting for our picnic lunch.  We befriended some local dogs, climbed around, and made fools of ourselves testing out the echo.  As we continued on our way towards Waterberg, our trusty bird-spotter, Thomas, spotted a secretary bird and a scarlet breasted roller, both of which are beautiful birds, and are pretty difficult to see.

Although our gas tank was uncomfortably low, we were able to make it to outside of Waterberg Plateau National Park which is situated between Etosha and Windhoek.  We found a spot on the side of the road to pitch our tents and hung out for a little while before getting ready to make dinner.  Thomas swore that he heard rustling noises near his tent and we had some very noisy neighbors not too far up the road.  We made dinner rather quickly and kept our headlamps dimmed.  I have to admit, that out of all the things that we had done on this trip and I had done over the course of the semester, this night was probably the only time I felt a little bit uncomfortable.  But I was a little comforted after I figured that if a lion (or other large animal) came they probably would want to eat Neil or Thomas first because they were so much bigger than me!!!!

**We weren't allowed to bring our cameras into the meteor sight.  But I found a picture on Google images to give you an idea of what it looked like.

The meteor.  (Thanks Google!)

I can't remember the name of the town that this is.  But most of the towns we drove through had this kind of feeling.  All the buildings were low and there was really on one main street.

Day 11: Babar, the Elephant King

We got a pretty early start the next day to continue our search for the elusive feline species.  We spent a few hours driving around without spotting any cats, but still seeing species we had seen the day before like giraffe, zebra, oryx, hornbills, and red hartebeests.  We saw SO many elephants!!  Bunches were spotted while we were just driving, some we saw in watering holes, but we also get caught in the middle of a large herd.  Elephants of all sizes were crossing the road in front of us and behind us and the bull stared us down for a while before deciding that we weren't worth charging and crossed several yards in front of our car that he could have easily stepped on.  It was exciting, but also a little nerve-racking.  Neil was ready to make a run for it, but we convinced him to stay put and maintain our ground.

After our last (fruitless) attempts to see a lion, we threw in the towel and headed back towards Windhoek, where we had to drop Thomas off in a few days.  On our way South, we tried to find some interesting looking lakes Lake Otjikoto and Lake Guinas.  They looked like large sinkholes that had been filled in, but we got lost and never found them.  We drove for a while along a dirt road, with an amazing view of the stars, but it was a little scary to be unsure of whereWe couldn't find our way out of the town of Otavi for a while, but eventually, we made it to Tsumeb and found a resort-type place where we could pitch our tents.

This was how close we were.

Wildebeests.

Jackel

My comrades and some of the terrain we were on.  Part of the park is a salt pan, and I believe that this was on the way to the salt pan.

Ever wonder how giraffes drank?  Now you know!!

Dik Dik.  The cutest deer ever!  You could pick this little guy up and carry him with you.  We thought about it for a second, but we figured that we wouldn't be able to get him across the border.

Day 10: Hello Kitty!

We spent the next two days driving around Etosha National Park looking for animals.  Although we searched and searched we didn't see any cats (big or small), but we saw tons of other species.  Thomas is an avid bird-watcher and with his keen eyes we saw tons of birds.

We got to the gate as soon as it was open just as the sun was coming up.  We drove in on a long flat road to get beyond the borders of the part.  Within the first 5 minutes of entering, we saw our first animal.  A large rhino.  It was a little hard to tell whether or not it was a white or black rhino (distinguished by the horn) because it was a little far away, but it was still super cool.

We spent the day driving around the park in their several different environments - vegetated, more desert - hoping that our little car would make over the roads, some of which were in pretty rough shape. It's a little less exciting to listen to me talk about everything we saw, so below are a bunch of pictures!!

I took these pictures with my phone, so the quality isn't that great, but it gives you the general idea. We saw around 20 different species, but I didn't get pictures of all of them.

Our first spot of the day!!

This is one of the watering holes in the park.  We counted 8 or so different species all hanging out around the water.

The condition of the roads!  But our little car managed just fine.

Giraffe!

Herd of Zebra!

We interrupted this elephant in the middle of taking care of an itch on its tuchas.

So many Springbok!

Gembok

"Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba

Sithi uhm ingonyama"  (For those of you don't speak Zulu, this is the beginning phrases of The Circle of Life from the Lion King.  That's all I could think about when we were passing this part of the park.)

Sociable weaver next.

Day 9: The Road to Eldorado!

When we were planning our trip, we decided that the farthest north that we were going to go was Etosha National Park.  Because we needed to get Thomas back to Windhoek in a few days and he really wanted to go to to the park, we started making our way north.  We drove through a town called Outju and had a picnic on a bench before driving some more.  We finally made it to the outskirts of the park where we pitched our tents in Eldorado Place and watched the cheetahs the kept at the park get fed.  We went to bed early so we could be up, alert and ready for our safari in the morning.

Part of the drive.

Our friends at the campground!

Day 8: How do you feel Mr. Bones?

We continued our drive up the coast for a little while, but ended up not going up very far because we had been advised by various people that the sandy roads along the coast were quite soft.  We decided that we didn’t want to push our luck with our baby car.  On our way up the Skeleton Coast, which is named the Skeleton Coast because of all the shipwrecks that have been caused by the currents as well as rocks and fog the coast is famous for, we drive through Hentis Bay and followed the straightest road I have ever been on.  It was straight for miles and miles.  To break up the monotony and to keep Neil from going crazy, we stopped for a while along the side of the road to stretch our legs and chuck rocks at some bottles that Neil and Thomas found.

We got slightly lost in a town called Uis and then headed towards some of the most famous cave paintings in Namibia.  Known as the White Lady, the San Bushman painting dates back 2000 years.  Although it is commonly called the "White Lady," the painting may not actually be depicting a white person or even a lady.  We got to the park in the late afternoon, and in addition to having to pay a lot, it would have been dark by the time we had walked to the painting, saw it and then walked back to our car.  We decided to not see the White Lady, but talked to one of the park rangers for a while and gave her an apple for her daughter.

We drove through the Brandberg Mountains, saw a beautiful sunset and found a place to stay on the side of the road.  After cooking dinner, we stuck our heads out of our tents and watched the stars come out.

The road.

The side of the road.  This is all I had to look at out of my window.  It didn't make for a very exciting drive, scenery-wise, but it was interesting just how much nothingness there was.

Our drive through the mountains.  Slightly more entertaining than our drive earlier in the day.

Home.

Here’s a little more information:

Food:  We had a small camping stove and a pot from my kitchen that we repaired slightly by super glueing a rock to a small hole in the side.  We had essentially the same thing every dinner.  We cooked some starch, either rice, cous cous or pasta and then added vegetables.  We almost always added canned corn and some kind of beans but then also added some fresh tomatoes and red pepper and occasionally some cabbage, avocado and cheese.  For breakfast we had oatmeal, granola, hardboiled eggs (we even hardboiled them in a can over a fire!), and fruit.  For lunch we ate peanut butter and made sandwiches out of various other food we had.

Home Sweet Home:  I already had a tent from when we went camping in Jonkershoek and I was under the impression that we would all be sharing my tent.  As it turns out, Thomas had his own baby tent so Sam, Neil and I shared my tent and Thomas had his own tent.  For the entire trip, we stayed in tents.  Even at the hostels when we could have payed only a little more rand for a bed, we decided to use our tents.  This trip was the longest time I had ever gone without sleeping in a bed.  Although the temperature during the day time was great, it got really cold at night - to the point where I was sleeping in long underwear, sweatpants, liner socks and Smart Wool socks, a t-shirt, one or two long sleeve t-shirt and a flannel shirt.  Once or twice a hat and mittens and my fleece were necessary.

** The last two pictures are Neil's.

Day 7: Swakhopmund (just say it out loud and it makes for a rather funny title)

The beach!!!  I love the beach and I was under the impression that the coast of Namibia would be nice because the weather on the interior was beautiful.  But when we got to Swakopmund (a town with lovely German architecture) we found it to be cold, gray and quite foggy.  But it was the beach none the less.  We played some frisbee and I thought about swimming, but the water was quite cold.  We went to a small natural history museum with some really cool exhibits on the rocks and minerals of the area, insects and other animals, and some beautiful old furniture that reflected the tastes of the German colonists.  After looking at a campground that despite its waterfront view, literally looked like a graveyard, we decided to splurge a little bit and camp in a hostel.  We ended up meeting up with our Austrian friends from the first day totally by chance and hanging out with two girls that were studying abroad at the University of Botswana that we had met a few days before in the Cardboard Box.  We also talked to an elderly gentlemen (probably about 60 or 65ish) that was biking from Cairo to Cape Town.  Although the hostel’s cat peed on my tent, it was nice to sleep on grass instead of the hard dirt that we had found everywhere else.  It was also really nice to cook on a real stove and eat something a little more fancy than some starch variety mixed with canned and some fresh vegetables - which is what we had been eating every other night.

The view from the road we took to enter the town.  We had beautiful weather, and then we drove into the town and it was suddenly cold and miserable.

Day 6: “Grotto” go to Spitzkoppe

We drove to Spitzkoppe in our morning second morning at the Cardboard box and moved away from civilization (and nice showers) and arrived at the park in the late morning.  We ended up driving around looking for prime real estate (aka a place to sleep) and found cave that would do the job marvelously.  After marking our territory, we climbed up a rather large rock (it was huge actually).  We also saw some rock art and climbed to a giant rock arch.  We also tried to do some rock climbing on one of the rocks.  Thomas and Neil climbed up a short face, so obviously I was going to try.  I ended up sliding down the face a little ways and bloodying my elbows and the back of my leg, but other than that, I was totally fine.  I patched myself up and then we watched the sunset through two stone mountains.  We cooked dinner over a fire and slept without our fly on our tent.  It turned out to be the warmest night of the whole trip.  I was able to sleep with only sweatpants and one long sleeve shirt instead of the three I usually slept in.  We watched the stars and the moon move across the sky through a whole in the cave ceiling and waited for the giant lizard who shared our cave to come and eat us.

Pumba!!!  There is a group of warthogs in the middle of the picture.  We saw so many warthogs on the side of the road.

Spitzkoppe from a distance.

We decided that we needed to take pictures of our baby car in all of the hard-core places that we drove it to.  We thought it would be great if we sent Nissan all of the photos to help them market the car.

Home sweet home!!!

There are some paintings on this rock, though they are pretty faint and kind of hard to see.

One of the many strange trees in Namibia.  I'm not sure what kind of tree this is, but it was weird looking and felt kind of rubbery.

The cliff we climbed - looking down.  It's kind of hard to see, but there is a white dot kind of near the center of the picture.  That's our car - just to give you a scale of how high up we were.

The cliff we climbed - looking up.

My partners in crime!

Sunset.

**Neil took these pictures!!!

School's Out for the Summer!! (but it's actually winter)

Hello from Namibia!!!!

Sorry it's been a while since I posted and I'm still pretty behind but I thought that I would give an update. Vacation started Monday and I'm currently in Windhoek, Namibia. We've driven over 2,300 kilometers since then. We're dropping one girl off today because she's heading off to Victoria Falls. Then I'm off with Neil and Thomas to tour around northern Namibia for a few days until we drop Thomas off in Windhoek again and then Neil and I have a few days in southern Namibia before we head back to Stellenbosch.

We've been doing a lot of driving but yesterday we walked around the dunes in western Namibia and saw the tallest sand dune the world!

Not sure if I can post again anytime soon. This is the first wifi since Monday (also the first shower!).

Hope you're all getting ready for summer!

Katie

Day 5: The Windy City

Windhoek was not windy, but I thought it was a clever title.  We spent the day in Windhoek walking around, poking around in all the touristy shops and checking out some meteorites..  We dropped Sam off at the bus station so she could start her trip to Victoria Falls.  It was sad to see her go, mostly because it meant that I was left alone with Thomas and Neil and their grossness without an ally.  After dropping Sam off we spent some time with our map on the hood of the car to plan a little bit more of our trip and decided to spend one more night in the Cardboard Box.  We spent the rest of the day swimming, reading, and talking to the other cool people that called the CBB home.

***I got sand in my camera lens when we were playing on the dunes, so most of the pictures are either from Neil or my iPhone.  I just want to give a disclaimer and give Neil credit for his photography skills.

The freezing cold swimming pool at the Cardboard Box.

Day 4: Oh, Sandy....Baby!!

Another early morning.  We woke up at 4:30 so we would have enough time to drive to the gate of Sossusvlei and get there when the gates opened at 6:30.  After getting to the gate around 6:00, we waited half an hour for the gates to open.  At least, that’s what we thought was going to happen.  After waiting until 6:30, and then 6:45 and then 7:00, we finally realized that Namibia does daylight savings (while South Africa doesn’t) and we were actually an hour ahead of the rest of the country.  We had a nice laugh about this as we boiled water for coffee and oatmeal in front of the closed gate while we waited for the real 6:30 to roll around.  When the gate finally opened, we drove for a while in some of the craziest landscape I’ve ever been in - sand.  When I think of sand dunes, (although the first thing that pops into my mind is John Travolta singing about Sandy in Grease), I usually picture the Prince of Egypt or Aladdin or some other movie that takes place in the desert.  Although I’ve seen lots of sand in my day, it’s usually attached to an ocean.  I have never seen anything like the dunes we were driving through.  After a while, we got out of the car at the base of a really big dune and started the rather difficult climb up.  Dune 45 is the most famous dune in Sossusvlei, and we were under the impression that we were climbing #45, but it turns out that it was only #40.  Oh well.  It was still tons of fun.  It took us a little while to get to the top and then we just played around in all the sand running up and down the sides of the dune, burying ourselves, etc.  After racing down the side of the dune, we got back in the car and drove to some salt/clay pans.  The pan that we went to has been carved out by the Tsauchab River.  As the river bed dries, it turns a kind of whitish - which you can see in the photos below.  Although the river occasionally has water in it, water seldom reaches the pan we were on.

We started the 5k walk to the pans (because we didn’t want to pay for the ride) and ended up getting a free ride after some nice driver took pity on our tired, red and rather sweaty faces.  The salt pan was really cool.  It was just this huge flat white area in the middle of all these reddish dunes and then there were some dead trees standing randomly around the pan.  The color contrasts between the sand, the trees, the pan and then the sky was so lovely.  We walked across the pan, with only minor mirages due to the blazing sun and thought about climbing the one of the tallest sand dunes in the world called Big Daddy, but decided against it.  We got another ride back to our car for R100 and an apple and then started the long drive to Windhoek so we could get Sam to her bus on time.

We made one stop along the way in Sesriem Canyon and got to walk around and climb on the rocks.  It was a fun stop and it felt good to stretch our legs before the drive to Windhoek.  The road we decided to take was a mountain pass and was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on.  There were a couple rather scary moments where it looked like we were going to drive off the earth as we went up a hill and had a minor lake crossing (which was probably only a puddle, but with our tiny car, it seemed huge).  We made it to Windhoek in the evening and found our hostel called the Cardboard Box.  There, we were able to shower, cook on a real stove and meet some super awesome British guys who were driving from England to Cape Town in the coolest car ever.  Both Thomas and Neil fell in love immediately and I must say my love for the Brits came shortly after.

Our first view of the dunes.

The dune we climbed.

Oh no!!  I'm stuck!

Thomas and Neil being...well...Thomas and Neil.

The salt/clay pans.

Sesrien Canyon.

Mountain pass!