Advertisement
Published: September 22nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
We only had a short sleep which loudly interrupted by jackals screaming a scream like nothing I have ever heard before..... one of the guys in our group also had the unfortunate experience of having a jackal actually wee up against his tent so the screaming didn't seem so bad really. We began the day with a short game drive and then got on the road heading back to Windhoek.
On the way back we stopped for lunch at a crocodile farm. Well this place had to seen to be believed, for one it smelt to high heaven and I don't know how any one kept their lunch down and two, well it was a truly inhumane place. The little crocks who were kept for meat were piled on top of each other, maybe 500 or more of them in a tiny pen, it was cruel. I will definitely not be eating crocodile while I'm hear, rumour has it that it tastes like chicken anyway so I'm not that interested.
After lunch me and Sarah got speaking to the English couple who had been on our tour from the beginning and as coincidence would have it the guy came
from Huntingdon- where me and Sarah went to School and his brother was in the same year as us and he was reeling off names of people we knew. He also worked in St Neots, where I was born and bred. The funniest thing was they both went to Sheffield hallam and he did exactly the same degree as I did there. I love coincidences.
After we got back to Windhoek we said goodbye to half of the guys from the tour, the other half were coming on the next bit to south to Namibia (I can't spell the place but it is near Solitaire and they have sand dunes.)
Me and Sarah headed off to eat in central Windhoek, we came across a beautiful place that had an amazing menu, it took us most of the evening to work out what to have as the selection was huge and all mouth watering. As we enjoyed our food - mine the hugest plate of chicken I have ever been served- we entered into an uncharacteristically serious discussion on apatite and the black and white divide. However half way through we were suddenly interrupted by a drama group that
consisted of men springing up and down around our table pretending to be monkeys. This immediately put an end to any serious discussion as we fell about laughing.
The next morning after picking up a motley crew of new people for the next bit of the tour we headed towards South Namibia. I suddenly realised that after a really nice shower and comfy night's sleep I really wasn't looking forward to camping again for the next three nights!
We stopped for lunch at a beautiful and peaceful spot on a damn. As we settled down to eat I thought that one of the guys who joined our trip today looked pretty familiar. Then I saw him drinking milk from a carton he had bought with him and instantly I remembered where I had seen him before, he was in the Zambian hippy hostel- I remember noticing him because I thought his eating habits were strange after watching him open a pint of milk and some kind of huge sandwich on the short 10 minute bus ride to Vic falls....and here he was again with his famous pint of milk- I mean we'd been travelling for 4 hours in
the heat so god knows how it tasted!
We had a few more stops after lunch ( this place did seem much further than Etosha) and one of these stops was somewhere we got to look for fossils that were created millions of years ago when the sea level was so high it was flowing through these mountains. It was an amazing place, the colour of the slate and stones was purple. Here you could pick up stones from the floor that they charge you a quid or more for in hippy shops---I also managed to ask the guy from Zambian hostel- who I found out was called something like Larger and indeed it was him- still loving those coincidences.
As we got into solitaire we stopped for a break at a place famous for it's apple crumble. Of course I had to try a piece and I have to say it was nearly as good as my mums, but nothing was actually going to rival her crumble. After this the tour guides dropped us off at a huge sand dune (little did I realise this was going to be the theme of the next few days- I
should really have read the literature). They said they would pick us up after sunset and every one immediately got to climbing this thing.
It was pretty cool to see the sand beetles. I stood and watched one about a quarter of the way up while I was catching my breath; they are so funny- this one was just digging and then moving to a fresh piece of sand and digging again.
As the sun went down, the wind was seriously getting up, whipping against my skin and getting in my hair and eyes. The dune was also deceptive, after you got to what looked like the highest point there was another huge mound behind it, then another one after that; it was like a mirage, the end was just an illusion- I was beginning to feel a bit panicky- where was Laurence of Arabia when i need him! However then I came across two of my group. They were sitting on the sand refusing to be taken in any longer by the illusion of an end to the climbing- so I joined them and we watched the sun disappear behind the dunes which was beautiful. After we
climbed back down to the bottom we were soon joined by the others.
After we were picked up from the dune we were taken to our camp site which we happily discovered we were staying for the next two nights- so no wacky races in the morning to take the thing down- we listened intently through the scorpions under your tent talk and the reason not to leave anything out at night if you don't was a jackal to make off with it.
After that we all set about sorting out tents and stuff and before we knew it it was completely dark- I thought Etosha was dark but this was absolute pitch black and we still had to find our to the toilets and showers-
NOTE TO SELF: when trying to find the loos in pitch black darkness- to avoid serious leg injuries- always take a torch
We enjoyed a great dinner and every one was happy to got to bed pretty early ready for that 5am wake up and a day of desert and dunes like nothing I had ever experienced before.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0268s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb