December Travels

Reconnect

Our whole trip started with a week long Peace Corps required event called Reconnect. It was the first week of December and was held in a really nice lodge called Greiters (or something), up in the mountains outside of Windhoek. We had training sessions all day that recapped what we went over during PST and covered what we needed to prepare for when we actually start teaching. Lindsey and I were given the honeymoon suite, and we were the only room that had air conditioning, a california king bed, and a huge bathtub. It was nice.

Before we left Windhoek, we ate at this awesome restaurant called Joe’s Beer Garden. I ordered a sample platter of all these different meats which included ostrich, zebra, kudu, oryx, crocodile, and springbok. Oryx was the best meat I have ever had. I wasn’t a huge fan of the crocodile - it tasted like a “not so good” fish. All of the other meat was quite tasty as well.

Swakopmund

Swakopmund was AWESOME. 23 volunteers from our group went for a week and we all crammed into a 2 bedroom bungalow. Why would we do that? Good question. Needless to say, sleeping there wasn’t the most comfortable, but we really weren’t at the bungalow very much so it wasn’t too bad. Swakopmund is probably the most touristy city in all of Namibia, so there is a lot to do there. There are lots of restaurants and shops, and it is surprisingly clean.... so it was a nice change from the streets of Rundu. 

On the south end of the city, the sand dunes start. The first morning we were there, we went out and hiked around in the dunes. They seemed very impressive, until we saw the dunes of Sossusvlei. There was a group of 11 of us that went skydiving. I know I know, you are probably like - Tim, you went skydiving in Africa? Are you crazy? Well the short answer is - yes, I am. And it was definitely awesome. Lindsey sat this jump out, but after seeing the videos from some of the others that bought them, she says that she will go next time (Also, we both already went when we were 18). The instructor I jumped with had over 9,000 jumps, so I felt pretty safe with him. 

The dunes right outside the city.

The waves at Swakopmund were HUGE, and they crashed directly on the shore. The guys in our group went out to “play” in them everyday, only we came back beaten and out of breathe. 

Just having some fun.

Sossusvlei

Lindsey and I at the top of Bid Daddy - the tallest dune in the world

After Swakopmund, there were 10 of us that split the cost and rented two cars from Windhoek and drove to Sossusvlei. This was the best part of the whole month by far. I was one of the drivers of the two cars because it was a manual (I was one of the few that knew how to drive a stick) and it was certainly an interesting experience to drive on the left side of the road with the stick on my left. It was only tricky driving out of Windhoek because of the street lights, other cars, and an actual need to follow the law - but once we were outside of the city, we were on a dirt road for the next 7 hours with no other cars. We had two Polo Volkswagens, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well they held up on the trip over the tough conditions. We were on terribly rough roads, had to drive across several creeks, and drove up the side of a mountain on the steepest road I have ever seen (no joke, the tires actually started spinning on the asphalt road at one point so I had to roll back down to a flatter spot and try again with more speed). But, we made it through the whole trip without any damage to either car. 

A far off view of Big Daddy.

A lone Oryx that we saw on the walk to Big Daddy. Also, they taste delicious.

Lindsey and I making our way up.

This was the start of a place called Dead Vlei. It was amazing.

Anyway, Sossusvlei was one of the coolest places we have ever seen. It is home to the largest sand dunes in the world, and they have a deep red color. The park is full of ostriches, springbok, and oryx, and we saw a lot of them.  We went into the park twice, once in the afternoon and once in the morning. When we went in the afternoon, the sand was WAY too hot to climb any of the dunes- but of course, we did it anyway. When we went in the morning, four of us tackled the biggest dune in the world, called Big Daddy. It took us about 45 minutes of straight climbing (it felt like an endless amount of stairs) to do it and the view from the top was simply unbelievable. It literally felt like we were on another planet. There were giant red dunes as far as the eye could see on every side, and on the ground were scattered white patches of dried, cracked clay from where the water used to be hundreds of years ago. We ran and jumped down the steep side of the dune as fast as we could, and it took us about 3 minutes to get down.

Cheetahs 

A cheetah just chewin on a zebra leg.

So we didn’t actually stay in Sossusvlei. The ten of us camped outside in a town called Solitare. The campgrounds were really nice and there was a pool nearby where we went everyday to escape the heat. On the other side of the street from the campgrounds, there was a big cheetah conservation reserve. A few of us went on a two hour cheetah drive where we got up close and personal to several cheetahs. The cheetahs that the guide showed us are ones that can never be released back into the wild. Most of them were rescued by this organization from farmers. Are you ready for some fun facts? Farmers will often shoot cheetahs for killing their livestock (they see them as pests), but if they find cubs after they have killed the mother, sometimes they will call a conservation organization to come rescue the cubs. These cubs grow up without learning how to hunt or fend for themselves in the wild, since they don’t have their mother to show them, so the cheetah conservation fund keeps these cubs permanently to be “show” cats. They still run around wild on a 500 acre plot of land, but they are tame enough to walk right up next to and take a picture with (only after they have been fed).

Sometimes, farmers will call the organization to come pick up a cheetah before they shoot them. Those cheetahs are then caught and relocated back into the wild in a safe area, away from farmers. However, cheetahs are actually big softies and are very prone to stress (like the stress from moving to a new location). So if you simply caught a cheetah and released it somewhere else the next day, it would die in a matter of weeks because it completely stops eating from the stress. Weird right? We were told that with lions and leopards, you can release them anywhere the next day and it doesn’t even phase them - not cheetahs though. So this cheetah conservation organization helps gradually release cheetahs back into the wild over a period of 6 months to save them from the stress. No tourists are allowed to see the cheetahs that will one day be released. Another fun fact - Namibia has more cheetahs than anywhere in the world. This is because farmers essentially wiped out all of the lions in the southern part of country, which has allowed cheetahs to flourish because lions were one of their biggest predators. 

Luderitz

We stayed in Luderitz for 10 days, the longest of all of our stays. Luderitiz is a very small German town on the coast and it took FOREVER to get there because it is so isolated from everything. On one side of Luderitiz is the barren Namib desert that streches for hundreds of miles, and on the other is the chilly South Atlantic coast. Although Luderitz is also a German coastal town like Swakopmund, it felt nothing like it. There are almost no tourists in Luderitz, and the town is relatively run down. It is still cleaner than most of the cities in Namibia, but most of the awesome German style buildings are in need of some serious renovation. It certainly had a unique, but very cool feel to it. There were 18 of us in Luderitz for Christmas and New Years Eve, and we stayed with the two volunteers from our group that are posted there. We had a blast.

Luderitz is the windiest place I have ever been - like the wind is so strong that it literally knocks you over. And you are constantly being pelted by flying sand. We went swimming (only for a few minutes) everyday in the freezing water on an island called Shark Island. You should look up and read the history of Shark Island. In a nut shell, it was the site of the first German concentration camp, which was a prequel to the concentration camps used during WWII. When the Germans where mining the area, they used to put the Namibian workers out on this island (because they didn’t need to watch them out there since the Namibians couldn’t swim), and when the workers would die because of the terrible conditions, their bodies would be thrown out to the sea and eventually eaten by sharks - hence the name, Shark Island. Now the island is connected to the shore by a road and is a campground for travelers. It is a beautiful island with a very sad history.

We went on a boat cruise in the coves surrounding Luderitz where we saw dolphins, seals, penguins and flamingos. I never expected to see penguins in Namibia. 

We also visited an old diamond mine ghost town, which at one point produced 20% of the world’s diamonds. Apparently there used to be so many diamonds in the sands surrounding Luderitz, you could just reach down and pick up a handful of sand and find diamonds. I tried it a few times but never found any..... maybe next time.

An old house that is slowly being overtaken by the dunes.

Oh hey bathtub in sand.

What comes next?

Even though we have been in Namibia for 5 and a half months, we haven’t even started our actual job yet - the whole reason that we are here. School begins on January 15th, so that is when the teaching fun will begin. I just found out that only ONE 10th grader passed this last term (remember passing is only 30%), so hopefully this year they will have more - I guess time will tell right?

Rainy season is definitely upon us. We have only been back for 3 days, but it has been raining on and off the entire time. After being gone for almost 40 days, when we got back to Mayara our yard looked like a jungle of weeds and tall grass. It is crazy how green everything is right now. 

Until next time.

-Tim