Namibia #1

We returned a week ago from Namibia. Ratonda, a friend of Nuca, invited us to visit her there and somehow I managed to get two weeks off from work, so off we went. This trip also happened to coincide with our 5th wedding anniversary.

I bought a proper camera so this time I was able to take much better photos, and good thing -- there's a lot of things to take photos of there. We stayed in the capital, Windhoek, for a couple days and prepared for 6 days driving, which eventually was more than 3000km. Windhoek reminded both of us of a small town in NSW Australia called Tamworth. They seem earily similar. It was surprising in fact how familar Namibia seemed to us, in general. It was not noticably dangerous, it was clean, good food everywhere, weather was never too hot and in fact sometimes too cold, super frendly people, and everyone speaks English.

First destination on the road trip was Victoria Falls, which is actually along the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. As it was dry season, the falls were not nearly as massive as they could be, but this had the advantage of allowing us to wade across parts of it on the top, where we spotted wildlife, and the obscuring mist was not so great so you could appreciate the vastness of the falls from top to bottom. Best view by far is from the Zimbabwe side, although Nuca had to pay US$100 for a day visa (I had to pay $30). Entrance fee was another $20 each. Despite the high cost of getting there, we both felt it was worth it.

We then headed to Etosha National Park in Namibia, where we saw an amazing number of wild animals. We didn't get to spend enough time there, so we'll have to go back again someday.

Finally, we spent the second week mainly in Swakopmund, a very pleasant small town on the coast. The city has numerous German colonial buildings which are well maintained and a large number of people, mainly descendants of the white German settlers, speak German there. From there we made day trips to see more wildlife, such as an unbelievably stinky seal colony on the coast at Cape Cross, the massive sand dunes just south of the city, and Walvis Bay, a larger, but extremely dull, port city.

Two weeks was definitely not enough time there, and we are certainly going to head back to the region to explore more once we have time. Ratonda and all her family were so kind to us and looked after us well, perhaps a little too well -- we're seasoned backpackers and can look after ourselves -- but it was appriciated nevertheless.

Also, special thanks to British Airways for bumping us off our connecting flight in Johannesburg, and to Thai Airways for bumping us off our flight home, then losing our luggage, then returning it damaged the following week.

Take a look at our photo album here, and also check out this nifty link to Google Earth, showing our photos superimposed on the globe.

Here's a slideshow of some of our photos.


And here's a video Nuca took of a lion eating an antelope leg: