Part 1: Seserim, Soussuvlei and the wild south of Namibia

For those of you who are particularly bored at work today, this should effectively occupy a good amount of your time.

In other words, I have a lot to say here. I have now spent nearly 3 weeks in Africa, and since I haven't posted a single picture with a story yet, there is going to be quite a bit here. As such, I have broken this post up into 3 parts. Part 1 is from my first 5 days in Namibia, specifically the southern part and is up today. Part 2 is of my next 5 or so days in the Northern parts of Namibia and will be up later in the week. Finally, Part 3 covers Northeastern Botswana, and Zambia and I have no idea when that will happen, as much of my next week will be consumed with traveling.

Additional note: The pictures are simply taking too long to upload, as soon as I get to a place where I can either 1. use internet for free or 2. get really cheap, fast internet, the pictures WILL be up.

Here we go.

Windhoek, Namibia

Chameleon Guest house:

When I first arrived in Windhoek, it was hard to know what to make of it. It seemed like a fairly normal small town, and it was...so, cool.

Without dwelling too much on my time in Windhoek, suffice it to say that I spent a good deal of time, on a comfortable bench, in a thatched roof hut next to a swimming pool, sipping a variety of cold beverages, watching it intermitently pour rain and be beautiful. During my two days there, I spent a great deal of time with a bloke named Dan, who was (and I suppose still is) Australian, and worked there. I'm not sure if there is some international code that all people who work in hostels have to have long hair, wear board shorts and be from Australia, but I have yet to find an exception to this rule.

With Dan, I began to learn the intricacies of the game of cricket, as ridiculously bizarre seeming a game, I was assured, as baseball seems to the rest of the world. It is surprising how into a game you can get and can scream things like "get that wicket you stupid ozzie bastard!" about a game that you could barely understand how the scoring worked two hours before. Good times all around.

I had bought some food for myself, but two lovely ladies named hannah and kristy allowed me to join forces with them, and we created quite a culinary masterpiece...okay it was pasta...but it was masterful pasta.



Dan, Kristy and Hannah, enjoying our pasta





The next day, I took leave of my gustatory companions and set out with 7 other hearty souls named, in order of me thinking of them, which has absolutely no relevance to anything: Frank (canadian...but I forgave him for this by the end), Ben (scotsman, hobbies include "hill walking"), Tihana (infectious disease specialist, she knew lots of scary stuff), Paul and Tracey (Australian couple who knew their wines and were never shy about buying me a freezing cold beer...second quickest way to my heart), Sam (our guide...awesomer than a pound of chocolate full of diamonds) and Benedictus (assistant guide, threw better "thumbs ups" than anyone I've ever met.)

We hopped into our sturdy four wheel drive thingy and off we went, down through the south west of Nambia, to a village, but really more like a designated place in the desert, called Seserim.

Now, when you think of dusty, maybe you think of dust being blown up in your face from an air conditioner, or being out in a city and coughing, sneezing etc. Well, I no longer can possibly think of dusty as anything less than our first hour in Seserim. I was wearing a white shirt, and in 20 minutes it was the same reddish-beige color as the sand. The wind was blowing the sand straight out of the desert and into my skin at about 60kph. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but hey, I was in Africa!

Once the wind died down a bit, Sam (guide) drove us out to set of sand dunes about 5km away. We got out, and he asked if anyone wanted to climb them. Of course we did! Okay, and does anyone want to walk back to camp? Of course we do!

"Great" he said "see you there."

No problem right? Right?

1. I was not in as good of shape as I assumed
2. Walking up sand dunes. is really, really hard.
3. Walking 5k in the dark, across an open field, with two flashlights for 6 people and only a small pinpoint of light as a guide, is...ummm...challenging.
4. On our drive over, Sam had pointed out some sprinkbok to us (smaller antelope-ish type things) as they grazed in the field that we would eventually walk back over, and made a brief comment or two about how predators couldn't get them there in the day because they could see them coming, but that if they stayed at night the predators could get them...and then we walked across that field...in the dark...on my 3rd day in Africa.

I'll let that one sink in...


My first dune!










The whole group...in shadow form...spooooky!


After about 2.5 hours climbing those damn dunes, Ben and I made it to what we considered the "top", which was essentially when we both decided to stop climbing. Thats how you define "top" dammit and don't tell me otherwise.

One of the nicest suprises about being no this safari was that the food was, not just superb, not just outstanding, but was more like superbstanding. Sam and Benedictus cooked up lamb, sweet potatoes and all manner of other good stuff on a tiny campfire. Without listing every meals attributes, suffice it to say that I ate extremely well.

Early to bed, and then disgustingly early to rise. We awoke at 4AM in order to hop into the car and drive about an hour to the very reason that we ventured so far out into the wasteland: Sossuvlei. It is a word in a language, that much I am sure, however what language is beyond me. Either way, it is a horrifically ironic name as it translates to "A valley or pan where water gathers," the irony being that it is one of the driest places on earth filled with some of the tallest sand dunes on earth. Soooo, not so much a pan or filled with water...but hey!

The road to get there was one of the roughest that I'd ever ridden on (until later in Botswana). It took two weeks for my kidneys to re-descend back into their proper place. I'm fairly certain that my spleen is still AWOL.

We arrived at the dunes and were informed of our options: we could either climb "big momma" or "big daddy." Big Daddy is, disputably, the largest sand dune on earth at about 250 meters give or take.

I'll spare you, gentle reader, the obvious conclusion that we drew.

Climbing this thing was one of the most physically challenging things that I've ever done. Ever. Harder than getting out of bed on a Sunday afternoon to walk to 7-11 to get ice cream. Harder than trudging the 10 minutes to work in the mornings. Harder than turning down third helpings of pie. Yeah, it was that hard. Basically for every three steps forward that you managed, you ended up about two feet from where you started. It was almost entirely a vertical climb, and largely in the dark.


Big daddy, pre-sunrise







The start of the walk. The big one at the back is the top







A not-terribly-attractive picture of me...but THE TOP!










The path up



However, the top, as you can see, was worth it. (sossuvlei pix)

We spent about 2 hours on the top, watching the sun change the landscape from deep blue, to orange, to brilliant, glimmering red. To be able to see everything below you in a 360 degree panorama, light reflecting off of the undulations in the sand and making everything seem to nearly move but hold still was one of the most incredible sights I've ever seen.

And then there was the getting down. Sam pointed to a nearly vertical wall of sand and said "lets go." Confused for a moment, I watched as he started running, at about...oh...maybe 3 million miles an hour straight down a vertical wall of f@()!@)(# sand!!! So we followed. I'm still not certain how I didn't tumble to my doom, but the faster you ran, the less your feet dug into the soft sand below you, and you just kept accelerating...straight down...the tallest sand dune on earth. It took about 5 minutes running top speed to get to the bottom. When I got to the bottom and turned around to look back up...and nearly broke my neck trying to crane it far enough back to see the top, I decided that what had really happened was that I had passed out from dehydration at the top and had been gently carried down, because that seemed much more likely than having come down something that steep.

So freakin' steep! This was taken with the camera on the ground

I simply could not get a picture to convey how tall/steep this was






We spent the rest of the day back at our campsite, trying to keep the sand out of the cracks and crevices that human bodies seem to be rife with. The only benefit of all of the wind and sun was that when I washed my shirt, shorts, and towel, they were dry, if not coated in sand, in about 2 minutes. Of course, being sandy again negated the washing, so I believe that I owe the government of Namibia about 10 gallons of water. as I stubbornly repeated the process several times. I'll get right on that.


Relaxing at camp. This is only slightly more comfortable than it looks.




The next day, we drove out to the canyon that Seserim got it's name from. "Seserim" (again, a language that I can't identify) means "six leather thongs," which though sexy sounding, actually refers to thongs as belts, and that was the number of standard calf-skin belts that were needed to be tied together to get the water out of the gorge. Very cool...and practically named! It's sort of like going to a grocery store that knows how much food you always need, named "3 bags." It's kind of like that, but not really.

Did I mention that deserts are hot? Or that I sweat a lot? Or that we had African air-conditioning, that is, opening the windows and driving? Well if I haven't, read the following without the question parts and you'll get an idea of the situation. And mind you, this is from someone who spent months in Israel during a heat wave.

It was hot. 'Nuff said.

We packed up the camp, and headed up to a town called Swakopmund, which is Norm-speak means "town where one can do many fun things that can kill you with little-to-no-supervision."

IMPORTANT CULINARY NOTE: Before we got into Swakop (what all the cool kids in the know call it) we stopped on the side of the road to make lunch.

Norm: Sam, whats for lunch?
Sam: Soup!
Norm: Oh great, like gazpacho?
Sam: (confused look)
Norm: Like cold soup? With vegetables?
Sam: (big grin) No! Hot minestrone!

Remember what I said about how hot it was? Yeah, still that, and then Sam made piping hot minestrone. Which was, admittedly, delicious. Nice change of pace but holy hell it made one sweat.

Once in Swakop, my illustroius Qubecquois (i don't care that I spelled that wrong) partner and I signed up for the 3 hour sandboarding and quadbiking trip.

All systems go! In my speed racer helmet! I am a huge nerd!











How bad-ass do I look here? ( Please submit chocolate cake in lieu of answers)


In a nutshell, sandboarding involves going out into the middle of the desert for about an hour on a quadbike, strapping on a helmet, elbow pads and thick gloves, then being handed your "super advanced speed machine", which was pretty much a piece of thick cardboard with a shiny side. Once positioned on this, head first, you are launched down sand dunes of increasingly greater height, reaching speeds of just about 80kph.

As it is the low season in Namibia right now, there are not many tourists around. This allowed our quadbiking guide a certain amount of...shall we say latitude in his usage of speed, the size of the sand dunes that we rode, and the angles that we took coming in and out of them. I was convinced that I would need to make quick use of my travel insurance at least 5 separate times, not the least of which was when, after stalling out briefly, I decided to try and get up to the top of a hill that the guide had gone up a different way, and promptly accelerated off of a 10 foot drop, landing almost completely off the bike, but managing to stay on by hooking my foot through the gear shift lever and only slightly bruising the rest of me.


See that tiiiiiiiiny little speck coming down the dune? Thats me. 200m dune. 110kph.




Good times.

After we cleaned up from that little adventure, I got the opporunity to see one of those beautiful, graceful, intelligent springbok up close that we had been seeing all trip...

...on my dinner plate. Springbok is delicious.

Also, should you ever be traveling in Swakopmund, and happen to eat at the "Cape to Cairo" restaurant, I can highly recommend the crocodile appetizer. Springbok and crocodile, not my usual fare back home, but, I suppose, sufficient...

We then spent a pleasant bazillion hours driving back up to Windhoek, where I spent the night again hanging out with Dan (again) and another interesting group of people, drinking various cold beverages (again) and eating enormous paper bags full of "chips" (french fries for you Western Hemisphere type folks) which were so greasy that when I tried to pick up the bag it fell apart in a greasy, staining mess in my lap. I also (as I was very hungry) ate a burger, which earned me a round of mocking from a French guy who was staying at the hostel. I gave him a menacing look and he promptly surrendered Paris to me, which I accepted with grace and aplomb.

Next post...Part 2: Etosha national park, and the lush, unbelievably vast yet well paved roads of Northwestern Namibia.