Swakopmund, Namibia

The last few weeks of our African adventure has become a true adventure. The insulation of the overland truck is already a distant and not too fond memory. We have been on our own for three weeks now and it has become a whole different trip. The first week we spent busing and, when necessary, hitchhiking our way across Botswana and Namibia. The buses were fine and not too overcrowded and the hitchhiking some of the best and easiest of my life. Not since we hitched with Katie and Ian over the alps in Italy have I attempted to hitchhike with such a large amount of baggage….four large packs and suitcases, two day bags, a jug of water and a bag of food. We were picked up rapidly and had incredible rides; one of over 300 miles that took us from Ghanzi, Botswana all the way to Windhoek, Namibia. We had to pay a little for that one but it was still less than the cost of a bus…had there been one.

We have found the Africa that everyone imagines. It has been hot; too hot. It has been dry and dusty. Our little Kia Picanto looks like someone stuck it in a big bag of dirt with the doors and windows open and shook it like it was a piece of chicken in a paper bag full of flour. (My southern roots are showing). Some days Deb and I looked like we had been in that same bag. We have traveled nearly 1000 miles on dirt and gravel roads, driven our car like it was a 4x4 complete with an unsuccessful river crossing.

(We made it across the river but got stuck in the sand on the other side.)

We have been up close and personal with more wild animals than I ever imagined. The most memorable were:

Being charged by a bull elephant while paddling by in a dugout canoe; nearly being gored by three terrified warthogs while walking past their hole. ( Our guide said they thought we were elephants.);

getting a dust bath from a bathing elephant;

seeing 19 giraffes drinking from a water hole no more than 100’ from us; seeing 8 rhinos drinking from the same water hole;


getting close enough to a lion and her cubs to count the whiskers on her nose;



seeing hundreds of zebra and gazelle milling in a watering hole very close to us.

The people of Botswana and Namibia have generally been very friendly and helpful. However, there have been a few instances where our smile and friendly greeting have not been reciprocated. We hope this was because they may have thought we were South Africans because of our rental car’s registration. Almost universally, once people learned we are Americans they were friendly…unlike other parts of the world we have visited.

While most of the scenery in Botswana and the north of Namibia has been scrub desert and Mopane trees,as we have started to move south in Namibia things have improved. Over the past few days we drove through landscapes that would not be out of place in the American southwest with flat topped buttes surrounded by grasslands and shrubs.

Not sure what this sign means but Deb and I had several exclamatory remarks over the next 12km

Yesterday we visited the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, so called because of the countless shipwrecks. Like the west coast of Chile, the west coast of Namibia’s climate is affected by a cold current coming out of Antarctica that condenses all of the moisture in the atmosphere into fog before it has a chance to form into rain. Invariably, the Namibian coast is foggy and windy and one of the driest deserts found on the planet. The relentless winds drive the sand into huge dunes rising 600 feet above the adjacent sea.

Tomorrow, we are off to explore these dunes and further test the 4x4 capability of our two wheel drive Kia.