Sossuvlei, Namibia

Friday, November 18, 2011 Swakopmund, Namibia Hello Everyone! We have been without internet access since we rented our camper truck in Windhoek on Monday, November 7th. We have a lot to report. Max is dictating and I am typing. We rented a truck with a tent built into the back cover so that when we lift up the cover of the back part of the truck, we have an instant tent. If we figure out how to add photos to the blog, we’ll include a photo. It was hot and rush hour and we left Windhoek and headed south to the Kalahari Desert Lodge. We arrived in the dark seeing our first springbok (a type of deer) grazing on the grass. We stayed at the campsite there which had a building which contained our personal toilet, sink, shower, sort of covered verhanda and braai (BBQ pit). They had a swimming pool that was nice and cool. There was tons and tons of butterflies always swarming around; so much so that you would think it was snowing. They had a pet zebra whose name was “Namib” (named after the desert) who jumped in front of the waitress who was getting me a pop, stared at her, then ran off chasing the dogs. The next day (Tuesday the 8th) we drove further south to Quiver Tree Forest. A quiver tree is a giant aloe vera plant with which they used to make quivers for bows and arrows. They had a rectangular trampoline that they had dug a pit for and put in the pit so you could run, jump on it and then land on the other side and keep going. At 5pm they fed the cheetahs and we went in the cheetah pen while they were feeding them. They also let us pet the one cheetah. It was kind of felt like petting a big cat, which it was, I guess. They had lots of border collies, enough to be a whole pack and the alpha dog or “Pipe” as he was called, went in the swimming pool to go swimming. There were lots of big rocks everywhere and our campsite had a table that was just a big flat rock on top of some others. On Wednesday the 9th we went to Giants’ Playground. It’s a giant jumble of rocks precariously stacked on top of each other. Now we know depth to the meaning “the illusion of being alone”. There were these little animals that looked like guinea pigs except a bit bigger and they were completely brown without any spots of colour. It felt like they were watching us since they would just pop up behind rocks and stare at us with their pitch black eyes (no pupils). There was one of these animals did parkour. There were two rocks very high with flat sides and “Par – pig” as we decided to call him, took his feet and ran up the sides stopping on the very top ledge. Afterwards we drove to Keetmanshoop. On the way there we picked up a hitchhiker, John was his name, and he said he had been in Windhoek and that he had found out that his house had been broken into. I guess that was a foretelling of what we would see in Keetmanshoop. Keetmanshoop is not a nice place. Nobody smiles and there was a lot of begging and poor people trying to make money by selling stuff at the roadsides. Then we drove on a gravel road that was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland except real. The Indiana Jones ride is where you are in a jeep and it’s a very bumpy, fast ride and you go through the adventures that Indiana Jones has had in the movies. At one point we saw a sign that said to watch out for lions. We arrived in the evening at the Canyon Roadhouse in the south of Namibia, just outside of Fish River Canyon. It’s a cool place because they have old, wrecked cars sitting around everywhere with trees growing through the hoods of some of them. At the restaurant we had a meal of oryx and springbok kebabs and ostrich steak. It was very good and I prefer it over ham and beef. On Thursday the 10th we drove into the national park of Fish River Canyon. It’s the second largest canyon in Africa. It was very, very big. We went to several different lookouts and I think it is as big as the Grand Canyon which is to say that it is huge. The roads were terrible and at one point my mom had to drive carefully as to not to roll the truck. We drove south through the park. The road was absolutely terrible. It was also winding and twisting every which way so that I didn’t have any idea where we had come from. We arrived at the Ai Ais Resort and Spa in the late afternoon. It has a mountain range on either side of it and a river just beside it that had barely any water in it since the rainy season is just starting. We camped under some trees and had to use the nice indoor hot springs pool since they were painting the big outdoor pool. The indoor pool is super, super nice. It’s the hot spring water so they didn’t put any chlorine in it and I could open my eyes under water very easily without them getting itchy. There was a baboon that in the morning came and took one of our water bottles that had had tea in it and tried to open it. My mom had to actually get out of the tent while yelling before it meandered away to terrorize some other campers. Before we left Ai Ais, we made sure that we ate an “eis” which is German for “Popsicle”. We spent two nights there. Saturday we drove further south and along the winding river which marks the border between South Africa and Namibia. It’s all very beautiful and there’s no people except for some of the quartz and diamond mines. At one point there was a checkpoint where police stopped us and asked us if we had diamonds. They were being serious. Then we turned north and went to a place called Rosh Pinah where we met a boy a bit younger than me whose name was Johann. I went to his house while my mom did some shopping and he showed me a lego racing computer game. It’s very silly. He was very proud of his lego game. After the stop there we drove on to the Klein Aus Vista Resort near Aus, heading towards the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a nice campsite except it’s way too windy and cold at night, despite being in the desert. I recharged my e-reader there for the first time. On Sunday we drove to Kolmanskop Ghost Town. There was a backhoe shoveling sand off the highway that was being blown on, whereas in Canada it’s snow. Kolmanskop is a very interesting town. It used to be a diamond mining town, but they shut it down in 1956 and now it’s a ghost town. In the houses the doors are open and sand is blown in so much that you have to duck down to go through the doors. Floor boards are all rotting, but you go anywhere. There was so much wind that sand kept getting in your face and eyes. I would never want to live there. It’s not my kind of a place. To answer to Pat’s comment, it is the best place for parkour that I’ve ever seen. My mom took a video of me doing parkour in the one area. Then we spent the rest of the day visiting Luedewitz and area. We went to Shark Island that is a point and which was probably an island at one point. There was so much wind that I could lean forwards at a 45 degree angle and be supported by the wind. There were big boats off shore that were used to mine the diamonds on the ocean floor. They have big vacuum cleaner things that suck up all the dirt and they sift through it to check for diamonds. We also drove around Diaz Point and visited an old whaling station that had been shut down. I found a whole bunch of whale bones. It was really windy and there were guys using big parachutes to go surfboarding very fast. We saw wild horses on the way back to Klein Aus Vista. Time for some of my new jokes I made up: With what animal do you never want to play a game?? (a cheetah) What do you call a girl lying beneath a pile of rocks?? (Karen / cairn) On Monday we left the wind and sand and drove north through Namib Rand Wildlife Reserve. This is a private reserve. We saw a lot of zebras. There was a sign for giraffes, but unfortunately we didn’t see any. We saw a herd of ostrich. We stopped at Duwisib Castle in the middle of nowhere built by a European couple with too much money and not enough taste. We arrived hot and tired at Sesriem in the afternoon. It is at the park entrance to the great sand dunes. At 4:40 am the next morning, we drove 60km in the dark to get to dune 45 which we climbed to watch the sunrise. I was really tired. It was tiring and cold climbing up the dune since the sun hadn’t come up yet. I rolled down the dune slope after the sunrise. I am tired now and will finish this tomorrow. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web LIVE – Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE