Namibia : "Jesus saves" at the Wimpy - November 27, 2014

Hi Everyone

I am happy to report that the Bates Hotel at Seeheim (I wrote about it in my last email) did not deserve the reputation that I gave it and I passed and uneventful evening and slept well.

The next morning we packed up and were on the bus at 0800 for a drive north to the Namib desert to our campsite for the next two nights. It was a long day of driving but with plenty of stops for photo opportunities, snacks and WC breaks.

For lunch we stopped at a petrol station which also had a Wimpy attached to it. So a Wimpy is a cross between a MacDonalds and an American style diner.
You are on a continual search for WiFi and all cafes, petrol stations, restaurants in some of the most out of the way places have free WiFi.
After ordering I enquired "What is the password for the WiFi? - jesus saves. Now I though that the waiter was giving me some sort of Namibian blessing or welcome being a Sunday and everything.
So I asked again "What is the password for the WiFi? Sure enough it is "jesus saves", all one word, all lower case. I had already figured out that Namibia was a very conservative, protestant country and now I have my suspicions confirmed.

So on and on we travelled and finally reached our campsite at around 1530. By this time it is seriously hot and guess what we have to strike camp! After unloading the bus we get a tutorial about how to pitch the tents. Surprisingly it is super easy and in no time we have camp all arranged.

The campsites operated by the Namibian National Reserves are amazing.
At each campsite there are individual pavilions. The pavilions are open on three sides. At one end is a bathroom facility with a flushing toilet and a solar powered hot water shower.
At the other end is a camp kitchen with kitchen sink, bench space and lots of power points for cooking and of course charging the various electrical contraptions that one tends to travel with theses days. We were not camping for 2 days we were "camping" for 2 days.

The next day was our day in the desert, which seemed a bit odd given that we had been travelling through Namibia for 3 days already and have only really seen desert. Our day in the desert was our opportunity to get active and active we did.

Namibia : Dune 45
When I was trekking in the Andes last year there was a particularly nasty section which the locals referred to as the Gringo killer. I was under the assumption that these types of tracks only existed in South America.
I would like to make an announcement that indeed they exist in Namibia and they are referred to as the Sossusvlei sand dunes. There is a particularly challenging one called Dune 45 - can you guess who trekked up Dune 45..........

Some of you may know Dune 45, it is the quintessential picture of Namibia that you may be familiar with. The attached photo is of me coming down Dune 45.

After trekking up and then down Dune 45, we had breakfast and then were off to Death Valley. Many countries have their equivalent to Death Valley and it does not take much of the imagination to figure out what it looks like - basically barren, hot, dry and hooooot.

And the day in the desert continued with a hike up a canyon (by this time I am seriously questioning my sanity and wondering why I am not holidaying some where on a cruise ship with a cold cocktail glass in my hand!) All this as the day got progressively hotter, by now it is a balmy 44 degrees and we finally got back to camp at 1500.

Most of the group headed straight to the pool and I just pulled out the mattress and pillow from my tent and laid in the pavilion in a restorative yoga position trying to compose myself.

Dinners while camping were fairly simple affairs. Stews cooked in the camp oven and salads washed down with a selection of wine and icy cold Namibian beers.

Our guide announced that we needed to be all packed up and on the bus by 0700 the next morning which meant out of bed by 0530, so we did not stay up and drink all that good South African wine or Namibian beer.

The "night of the Jackal"
When we packed up however on the next morning it did look like there had been a drunken party. But no, it seemed that a jackals for maybe some jackals had come to the site overnight and raided the rubbish bins. Even through the bin has a locked down lid some how they had managed to push the bin over and there was rubbish strewn from one end to the other.
Not a pretty site, and not nice to have to go around and pick up rubbish when one should have been there admiring the sunrise.
The night before to finish off our meal we had, you guessed it, toasted marshmallows that are then dipped in Nutella. I am sure that type of dessert does not form part of the health eating plan - but you know they were pretty good.

So what I am trying to get to here is in the morning when we were picking up the rubbish after the "night of the Jackal" some marshmallows that we must have dropped were still on the ground and not eaten by the jackals. Maybe the jackals are smarter than us and have figured out that artificial colourings, artificial flavours, gum extract and red food colouring is not good for you.

Swakopmund
After another big day in the bus we arrived in Swakopmund (which with a population of 50,000 is the second biggest city in Namibia) at around 1400.
The country has a population of 2.1 million and the main groups are German Namibians, English Namibians, Afrikaners and Indigenous Namibians.

Swakopmund has an economy that is based on fishing, mining (uranium and copper) and tourism. For the tourist it is a bit like Queenstown in New Zealand.
Think of an adventure activity and you can do it here. The choices include hot air ballooning, skydiving, sand boarding, quad biking, whale and dolphin cruises, surfing and scenic flights. I have my adventure activities planned and will write about them next time.

The other claim to fame for Swakopmund is that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt choose this town to have their first baby in. Privacy they were after and they certainly would get it here.

Cheers and best wishes, Christine