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Published: January 13th 2010
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Gobabis Windhoek reminds me a little of Alice Springs, a small, generally flat town surrounded by a ring of hills. Its wide streets are orderly and a few examples of European architecture point to its Germanic colonial history. It's also very dead on the Sunday I arrive. I'm pleased to see a street named after Frankie Fredericks as he's the only Namibian I'd heard of before starting this trip.
The first hostel I try has a door that requires a key combination to get either in or out. They're full, and as I tramp to my next potential hostel I notice the same fortress-like houses, electric fences, and razor wire that I'd seen in Joburg. I'll be told later by several people not to walk around with anything, even a bag, because of the mugging risk. I loathe places like this.
The next hostel has changed location but I finally find a room at option number three. It's crawling with young blondes, who I later find are Dutch student nurses. I don't think there's another traveller present but I have no alternative accommodation options for my stay in Windhoek as everywhere is full for the next few days. My small
ensuite room is $40 - the price is ridiculous, even more so as there's a water outage for the first 18 hours. The staff are never at the reception and never respond to the bell that I ting in vain at the reception desk.
Visiting Namibia's sights requires either your own car or a tour, as public transport to them is non-existent. Costwise, the two are comparable so, with Africa fatigue already well-established, I try to find a tour. Unfortunately the tours are geared towards people who want to see a bit of everything, but one thing I'm definitely not interested in seeing is more animals (well, I'd stump up for a kitten reserve but all the itineraries prefer to include Etosha). So the only tour I can find that doesn't have a significant proportion of animal-based activities is to the famous sand dunes at Sossusvlei. I choose an accommodated, fully catered one at laughable expense, hoping to pay my way out of my ennui. However it only runs once a week so I have to kill several days in Windhoek.
Apart from getting the chance to sample more of King Pie's wares, my time in Windhoek means
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Backpacker Unite I can learn a little more about Namibia. It's a young country, gaining its independence only in 1990. The previous century had been one of hardship and suffering, first at the hands of the Germans (their attempts to wipe out a couple of the resisting Namibian tribes earning a place in one of the exhibits in the Genocide Museum in Rwanda) and then the South Africans. SWAPO, created in the late '50s, was the main resistance group and has been in power since independence. Elections are due to take place a couple of weeks after my stay, and tales of intimidation of opposition parties trying to campaign around the country echo wearyingly similar stories in the other African countries I've travelled through.
Windhoek has a surprisingly diverse population, despite numbering only about a quarter of a million people. I see skin colours and facial features that I've not seen before in Africa - I can't recall such a variety in any other capital city on the continent. I'm repeatedly mistaken for a German, and one of the guys that greets me with "Guten Tag" turns out to be a "struggle child". This is a term given to people born
to Namibian parents who lived overseas in the pre-independence era, in his case in Germany. There's been a big kerfuffle in the papers recently about struggle children demanding jobs, and he is one of the organisers of the demonstrations that I've read about. I meet him in a takeaway queue and, after exchanging pleasantries, he asks if I'd mind paying for chicken and chips for him and his friends.
From Windhoek, I do a trip to Sossusvlei (blogged separately) before heading south.
Dull but possibly useful info i. I didn't go to Swakopmund but, apart from Intercape, there's supposedly a daily shuttle service called Town Hoppers departing Windhoek at 2PM and Swakopmund at 7AM. I think it costs about N$300.
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Maisondubonheur
Pierre-Alexandre
Hi
Been following your blog. Planing a little side trip to Namibia in september. Seems I'll have to go with the "animal viewing" part too....my top priority on my list is Sossusvlei and Skeletons...but doesn't seems easy or cheap to go to Squeletons, so seems I found a nice company, Taga...ever heard of them? Thanks to share you advise. My next African encounter is in March...Uganda!