Blogs from Namibia, Africa - page 115

A welcome relative lie in with breakfast at 8am. After a surprisingly breezy and chilly trip despite the sun, in an open truck from the campsite, we spent a leisurely morning canoeing down the Orange river, with the current, back to our campsite. There was some interesting birdlife including the African darter with its snake like neck. In the afternoon we headed to the Namibian border crossing and encountered lots of form filling and slow queues as we sheltered from the hot sun. We travelled dry dusty roads to the Fish River Canyon which claims to be second only to the Grand Canyon in size. It was certainly impressive as the sun set over it. We were amused by an old boy who explained his extensive scratches to a shocked oriental girl as being caused ... read more

Sitting here at a keyboard on a muggy spring night in Outjo, unable to sleep thanks to the efforts of a particularly noisy mozzie in my room and a probable OD of caffeine earlier in the day, I feel as if I am back at school with an essay crisis (except for the fact that I wrote essays by hand in those days). Admittedly, this is an essay crisis of my own making: I want to get the blog for the most recent part of my trip written up before I go bush on Sunday and forget all about the last month’s experiences. I think that it is safe to say that, when I was describing my trip to friends in advance, this second conservation project in which I was going to get involved as an ... read more

Well, I finally left Chameleon Backpakers' today and Windhoek itself. I see that as of my last blog I intended to stay for one night until I could get a rental car together - that was a week ago. I woke up the day after the 27 hour bus ride feeling refreshed and little more comfortable in my surroundings, however it was still my goal to rent a car that afternoon and head out to the sand dunes in Sossusvlei. This was a slight problem because I didn't have any cash on me and I also needed to transfer some money onto my credit card to rent the car. This was going to be a feat in itself. As luck would have it, the internet seemed to be down in all of Namibia. First I tried ... read more

Ok, the day started at 5am and we headed straight for sand dune 24 or 48- the number eludes me right now but it was scary looking! It was far steeper than yesterday’s sunset one and the ridge that I, and about 50- 100 other tourists, had got up to walk across was narrow to say the least. My pictures from this bit of the tour are pretty spectacular. It was also bloody freezing and windy but still we began this awesome climb. It was tricky, when you stopped to rest for a moment as you had to stand as far left or right of the ridge as possible to you could let other people pass but on several occasions I either helped some poor person who began to slip dangerously quickly down the dune or ... read more

An abundance of animals gather around these holes in the dry seasonThe first 3 days here were spent game driving in the truck around Etosha National Park - this was absolutely fantastic and we saw as much wildlife here as we have done in all the other places put together. We saw massive herds of elephants, prides of lions, including one consisting of about 13 lions all around a watering hole, as well as lots and lots of zebra and giraffe. Unusually we were also lucky enough to see two black rhinos and two leopards - at last! Now we have seen all the big animals that there are and can leave contented. After there we went to a cheetah park, where they "rescue" cheetahs that would otherwise be shot by farmers. They have a huge ... read more