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Published: December 21st 2006
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Deathvlei
How about a shade under a tree dead 900 years ago? Because is so inhospitable, not even wood rotten in this area of the Namib Desert. At November 8 of 2003, our illiterate and now sadly re-elected president, made the following comment:
"I'm surprised because if you arrive in Windhoek, it doesn't seem like you're in an African country. It's so clean and beautiful." I know he was extremely stupid making this comment, because to begin with, it offends all the African countries at once. But, in a way, we couldn't stop ourselves of doing the same comment when we arrived in Namibia. So Clean, so developed.
The Caprivi strip, up north, beside its stunning beauty, wasn't much different from the other places we have been before
(We still had to be careful with one crazy wild hippo that was running around our camping side at night). But, once we crossed the red-line (A fence though the north of the country that divides the commercial farming from the wild animals) a drastic change took place.
Instead of been in a road in the middle of an open wild land, within every few kilometers small towns composed of mud houses by the side of the road and all the time road signs telling to be careful with the wild animals crossing, we faced this well sign
Attention Elephants - 80km/h
This sign is for us or for the elephants? highway, with fence in both sides and big farms after the fences. All the land from there on was cultivated, no wilder areas, only crop fields and cattle farming.
(We loved the sign: Slow down, wild elephants crossing! - Imaging been run over by a wild elephant? How cool is that.) More to the difference, Namibia wasn't as populated as the other countries; they have a country 50%!l(MISSING)arger in area than France with a population of 1.8 Million people. Their is nobody nowhere. We spend many ours driving without spotting a single living soul. Sometimes this made live hard, when we first entered the country we knew that gas station where rare, but we did not expect to have only one gas station every 200km and sometimes to have gas station without gas. The first filling we planned to do was in a town in the east side of the Caprivi Game Park. To our surprise they didn't have any diesel and the next gas station was 200Km away. All we had was about a quarter of a tank and a bottle of 4 litters full of diesel. To make things more complicated, the road was almost no
Emptiness
Yes!! This is what you find when you drive around Namibia. Nothing... This picture was taken in the Skeleton coast National park just on the coast. traffic, so if we ended without fuel, would take many hours for the next car to pass. With a lot of praying... hehehe... this time we remember Him... and driving at 70km/h we reached the next gas station with no harm, the car had to run a few kilometers using our bottle of Querosene for the stove, but we didn’t have to push.
Namibia is a big country, their are lots to be seen from the most different subjects, from ship wreaks, diamond forbidden areas, meteors to dinosaurs footprints. The road system is based mostly in gravel roads, just a few main highways are paved, but the grave roads are in excellent conditions and well sign, even tracks in the middle of nowhere have signs with their own numbers, some of the gravel roads you can drive at 110km/h with no problems. Our 2x4 took us everywhere we wanted. Thanks Crazymobile!! Ok, let be honest, we had problems with our start motor, but we make sure to warn everybody that wanted to travel with us that push starting the car was part of the trip. Phillip laughfed at the first moment... hehehe... until he had to push start the
Brasil is just a swim away
If you swim from Sao Paulo straight ahead, that is the beach you will end up in! car going out of the fruit&veg store.... hehehe... laugh better who laugh latter (or something like that)!
One major disappointment that we had was the coast, not that the Skeleton coast and the Namib desert wasn't beautiful (oposite to thatm the scenary was astonishing), is that we always had this idea when we where back home that if we swam straight in front from Guarujá (Nearest beach from our home town), we would arrive in a place with beautiful white sand beaches, full of palm trees, bars and beautiful women. We did not now how mistaken we where (besides the women that beautiful indeed), we would find cold water, penguins, desert and wild animals (even lions sometimes) either we would dye of thirst or eaten by an animal.
(the cool tough is that if they have lions over there and penguins, you could have a lion eating a penguin in the desert, all this natural, how coooool!).
Namibia is astonishing by its landscape, you have every few kilometers a total change in landscape, from dark rocky mountains to red sand dunes, to flat savannas, to rock empty desert in 200Km. Walking in a city in Namibia is like
Crazy for photography
We didn't even have finished our breakfast and Juan is already laying on the ground find the best angle to shoot a squirrel. Sometimes he was so close, that the squirrel had to step backwards to not hit the lens. In the front Claudio having breakfast and in the back Juan and his camera. walking in Germany. Every city looks more German than the previous one; some even have the street sign in German. German tourists come also in big loads, they are everywhere in Namibia. Local people are very friendly, although they where under South Africa government during Apartheid, people doesn't seen to keep alive the racist tough.
Can you believe it? Your idea of getting people to travel with us in the crazy mobile worked. We met Philip (Germany) that joined us in Swackopmund and Marino (Italy) that joined us in the hostel in Windhoek. They traveled with us from Windhoek all the way to the border of South Africa. Juan, that had joined us in Lusaka, had gone back to Zimbabwe during our second week in Namibia after we had visited Etosha National Park together.
During our stay in Windhoek we met many people that surprising or not we met again in South Africa. Juli and Dana (Germans... of course... hehehe), that invited us to stay in the farm they where working in South Africa (great time) and Chris and Antonela (Australia and Chile) that joined the crasymobile later on.
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Patricia
non-member comment
Oi
Por pouco vcs nao encontraram uma Brasileira, residente nos EUA, que tb estava na Namibia, depois em South Africa, que andou em 3 continentes ultimamente (soh que sozinha) e que tb tem um travel blog. Meu blog name eh Pipoca-PMC. Espero que continuem seguindo boa viagem e feliz natal. Patricia (de Maceio, residente em US)