Namibia, Africa

---

The South Africa/Namibia border is formed by the Orange River (named after the Dutch House of Orange). We stopped at the "Felix Unite" campsite on the Namibian side of the river and our group managed to sink two "unsinkable" canoes.

Namibia is the second least populated country on the planet (Mongolia is the only country with less people per sq .km). A lot of the country is desert - either the Kalahari or the Namib.

Fish River Canyon sits in a typically barren Namibian landscape. By quite a few different measurements it's the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon. The canyon is 160km long and 500m deep

Next stop was the Namib Desert where we watched the sun rise across the sand dunes. The dune we climbed was called Dune 45 and was about 300m high. Even in the cool of pre-dawn it was still an exhausting climb.

Whilst here we also went on a guided walk with a local guy called Franz. He was able to explain to us how to survive in the desert and was incredibly good at finding animals in a landscape that seemed devoid of life. I asked Franz what, in theory, he would do if he was dropped in the middle of the desert. He nonchalantly explained to us that he had walked from where we were standing to the ocean and back - a 110km round trip. He took with him a blanket, 5 litres of water and a packet of biscuits, although it brought most of the water back!

Our next destination was Swakopmund which is on the Atlantic coast and is Namibia's largest holiday town. There are loads of activities to do here, but in a flash of both economic and physical stupidity we put our names down for skydiving.

The ump was from 10,000ft over the Namib Desert with a 30 second freefall before the parachute opens for a 5 minute sedate descent to the ground. There's no way of really describing freefall except that it feels nothing like falling. It's also not scary as you don't really have any perspective of how far you are from the ground.

The guy I was strapped to was called Mias and he had done over 3,000 jumps so I felt pretty safe. The only thing I didn't like about skydiving was that whilst Mias was the epitome of cool on the video, I look like an idiot. They assured me that you have to do 100 jumps before you stop looking stupid. I have never seen two people in the same picture who were at such opposite ends of the "cool" scale.

Two other people jumping that day were a cancer doctor and an intensive care nurse from South Africa. After watching us all look stupid on our respective videos, they invited us to join then and their huge group for sunset drinks on the sand dunes about 10km out of town.

It turns out that the doctor and the nurse were here on invitation from a Namibian family whose father had been saved from the brink of death by their doctor and nurse. The father, Steve, was there with us and had to be carried up the sand dune. The family were so happy that they really didn't care how much of their beer we drank - so we drank a lot and had a great time talking about our travels and their holiday lodge in northern Namibia. They own a stunning lodge and a cheetah rescue centre. Their most expensive room is over $1,000 per night. I have one of their brochures in case I ever win the lottery!

Also whilst in Swakopmund we did a township tour. The townships were created during apartheid to separate the black communities from the whites (Namibia was part of South Africa until 1989). They managed to do this by setting the various black communities against each other. Depending on your tribe, you got a certain size house. This created resentment within the townships, thus making the job of controlling the black population as a whole much easier. Some of the houses are only one or two rooms, but still contain large extended families. Some of the houses are just corrugated iron shacks. We visited some local houses and a school. Our final stop was dinner. Traditional foods consisted of beans, nuts, a type of porridge that tasted like sand, various fruits and caterpillars. We had a pizza when we got back to town!

From Swakopmund we headed north to the Otjitotongwe Cheetah Park. Here they take in abandoned cheetah cubs. Most are kept in a 2,000 acre enclosure, but a few were kept in the owner's house as house cats. These ones can be stroked which is very cool, but a slightly unnerving experience. They also have a baby giraffe that used to be bottle fed and so now consequently it will suck your thumb.

From Otjitotongwe we drove to Etosha National Park to see our first big game. We saw plenty of springbok, kudu, oryx, giraffe and zebras. We also saw one elephant. Our highlight was seeing a pride of seven lions sitting under a tree just a few metres from our truck. Game driving is really tiring as you have to keep looking out for animals for hours at a time.

Our last stop in Namibia was Ngepi Camp on the Okavango River. Here we stayed in a beautiful tree house. The houses were nestled in the reeds of the riverbank which gave some privacy, but the shower was just open and looked out onto the river. It's quite liberating having a shower out in the open! The river was also full of hippos which we could hear under our treehouse at night - quite intimidating when you consider that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal.

Whilst we had our own bathroom, Ngepi Camp is famous for its wacky communal toilets and showers. There was the "King's Toilet" which was a throne that looks out across the river. Some of the showers were buckets suspended from trees with lots of holes in the bottom.

From Ngepi we headed across into Botswana which seems to have the friendliest border staff in the world.

---