Well, we meant to update this every week or so, but that would involve…actually having internet access. Namibia has a lot of cell towers and some internet, but getting access to people who are wired is tough, especially as there are really only three towns of significant size in the entire country, which is twice the size of California. Plus the internet cafes don’t like you to use jump drives or memory sticks due to viruses and fraud. SO, long story short…we finally can tell you about our time in Namibia…after arriving back in the States!

This huge, stark desert country has less than two million people, with one of the lowest population densities on earth. In some places, you can drive across a flat desert road for five hours without seeing another car or person, and not a single drop of water. When we arrived, the rains were a month late, and the north and west of the country hadn’t seen a raindrop in over a year. 2007 was a year of drought, and people here have desperate hopes for this rainy season, for if it doesn’t go well, they will have to start bringing water by tanker truck into the capital. Never mind oil - Namibia has a water pipeline, a foreboding image of future days to come elsewhere in the world.

We got off the plane and met our friends David and Jillian, who were also on holiday in Southern Africa, and by harmonic convergence, we could meet up with them, and then later fly to Ghana to visit before going home (more on that later!). We jumped straight into the car and drove the 400 plus kilometers up to Etosha National Park, a paltry driving distance in Namibia. Etosha is one of the region’s most amazing parks, typically very arid, but home to large populations of zebra, giraffe, elephant, lion, black and white rhino, leopard, cheetah, and hordes of various antelope, not to mention other smaller creatures from martial eagles to banded mongoose. Due to the late rains, the park was bone dry – little clouds of dust rose with every animal footstep – which meant we could see quite a lot around the waterholes, except for those pesky leopards and cheetahs. We went on a night drive where the guide took a red light to light up animal eyes, and almost immediately saw a black rhino and baby standing quite close. Really amazing. This was our first time being, er, “on safari”, and it was a strange experience. In Etosha, due to the large populations of animals possessing big claws, teeth, horns, or tusks, you have to stay in your vehicle at all times when driving through the park. The advantage? Unlike many of the parks in East Africa where you need an armed guide or tour group, you can drive your own car to wherever you want to go on the large network of gravel and dirt roads through most of the park. Most days we were out from dawn till dusk. The disadvantage? Being in the car all day can be a bit of a drag, though when that big male lion yawned, stretched himself, and proceeded to amble over to within 5 meters of us and eyeball Dave’s big camera lens before settling down for his afternoon nap, we were pretty glad of our tinny Toyota’s protective layers of glass and steel. The other strange thing about an Etosha safari is that the Namibian government is trying to take advantage of the country’s premiere tourist attraction and turn its gated utilitarian rest camps into something more like a luxury resort. This has resulted in very high prices (60 dollar campsites! 150 dollar huts!) and a weird Palm Springs-like oasis where you are fenced in and surrounded by wild animals. We didn’t expect to end up in Namibia with our tent and stove, and instead have drinks by the pool and then wander over to the waterhole observation area to check out the elephants. That said, the design has been done well, the huts are thatched and look pretty organic, and why shouldn’t the government try to capture the almighty tourist dollar. It just didn’t feel very…wild. But none of that matters when you go out to look at the floodlit waterhole at midnight and see no fewer than FIVE black rhinos and one white rhino hanging out there, and then having a scuffle right in front of you. Or when you pull into Halali, the camp in the middle of the park, for lunch (we don’t recommend the buffet), and end up spending two hours watching a herd of 30+ elephant eat, spray water and play right in front of you before disappearing into the surrounding bush.

Etosha is set on a gigantic dry pan, which during the dry seaso

n, is snowy white, crackled, and blazing hot. In one place, you can drive the car onto the pan and watch the mirages move around in the distance and look for panting animals trudging across its broad expanse in search of water. At night, many of the prey animals huddle on the pan since there’s nowhere for predators to hide. We human prey got out of the car (shh, don’t tell!) and just reveled in the nothingness. No sound. No cover. Just distant dust devils and animal specks in the distance. THAT would be the place to camp at night, as long as an elephant didn’t come along and squish your tent.

The four of us wanted our next stop to be animal oriented, but cheaper than Etosha. So we called up a game lodge in the central part of the country which is a bit greener and has good grazing. When we showed up, we were in for a surprise. It was a hunting lodge. Trophy hunting is big business in Namibia, and you may be able to guess where the hunters are flying in from. Yep, that would be Texas. Apparently Houston airport has quite a few import issues with CITES-listed game when the hunters bring in their heads and skins. It’s not only Americans of course. We talked with quite a few hunting guides during our time in Namibia, and apparently trophy hunting has become quite popular amongst Russians and Hungarians. It was a bit creepy to walk into the lodge’s bar area and see an entire wall of dead animal and triumphant guy with gun photos. Many of them were big antelope, and considering we had been eating various kudu, oryx, and springbok meals all over the country…well, no meat goes to waste in Africa. But as Dave said, staring at the wall, “who the hell would want to kill a giraffe?”

Hunting does play a role in conservation here – game farms have repopulated large areas of land with native animals rather than cattle, and of course local people still hunt for food. But the trophy aspect of it was grim. Hunting guides have told us crazy stories about rich guys blowing animals away from the back of a Land Rover, which doesn’t seem very sporting. Sooooo…not our thing. But we were stuck there, and the people running the lodge were really interesting to talk to. They were also the polar opposite of Etosha. Want to walk? Sure, just keep your eyes open. They gave Dave the keys to the Land Rover, threw some beers in a cooler and told us to have at it. He was in heaven. Plus that place had possibly the most beautiful rainbow we’ve ever seen.