Money

Aloe

Baobab

 28.04.12 Serowe, Botswana

It’s hard to label this week. It’s been a fair bit of driving, one major disappointment and one major positive surprise. At the moment of writing (which is not the moment of posting) I’m sitting in Khama Rhino-Sanctuary. When we looked at the map this afternoon to plan approximately where to spend the night we saw it marked on the map, and decided to give it a chance. We did a small game-drive in the afternoon, seeing rhinos close up, in addition to the more common zebras, giraffes, wildebeests and antelopes. Now I’m seated at the dying camp-fire, the moon is just about to go down (it goes down early when it getting bigger).

The week started with a drive to the north of Namibia and the Caprivi-Strip. We wanted to enter Botswana from north, and pass the Okavango-Delta on our way to Maun.  The drive was rather eventless, but nice and trouble –free as well. We wanted to hit the famous delta from Maun. This proved to be a mistake. The Okavango is famous for many things, including being the biggest inland-delta in the world, having a big variety of wildlife and being uncommonly expensive. The problem with the Okavango-Delta is that if you take the “cheap” option (which is still more expensive than anything else you would do in Botswana) you won’t get far into the delta and you’ll miss the wildlife. You do get to ride in a mokoro, a dough-out canoe fueled by a long stick, rather than paddles. You get a decent lunch and you do a walking-safari where you see some zebras. It is not bad. In fact it is quite nice, but it just does not match the price by any means.

After Maun we needed a bit of a boost, and we got it in the salt-pans of central Botswana. In general Botswana is an empty country, and this area consists mainly of savanna and bush-forest, salt-pans and some gigantic baobab-trees. We spend two days in the pans, navigating around on gps. (Le)Kubu-Island was immensely beautiful, so we spend a night there.

As this trip is closing in, I start thinking of what I am going to take with me. The trip has certainly changed my life in several ways. I have grown a beard, and I think I have learned plenty about myself. I guess I’ll elaborate more on this when I’m back in Norway, but for now I’ll lend some of Roger Waters’ words

Money

Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away

A huge baobab. Note the size of my father
compared to the tree

Mokoro-"driver"

Daddy in a mokoro

Rhinos

Sunset over the savanna

Trails

A nice comping-spot

The Dark Side of the Moon

On the Blutkuppe

Landscape

 Windhoek 19.04.12

Finally comes the last post from Namibia. I have been here for one and a half months now, and start to feel quite at home. Still it is time to move on. This week has been further repeat from the 2010 trip, and after all, Africa still holds so many things that I have not seen before, so I better get out there.

On our way from Swakopmund to Windhoek, Mparany and I passed the moon-landscape, a gigantic Welwitschia and climbed a huge rock/small mountain named Blutkuppe in the Namib-Naukluft National-Park (NNNP). We picked up Daddy one hour late at the airport on the 15^th, and went straight west again to visit the most famous part of the NNNP, Sossusvlei. Sossusvlei is famous for its red sand-dunes. Entering early morning we got some beautiful pictures of some of them, did the obligatory climb to the first top of dune 45 (one of the highest sand-dunes in the world) and visited dead-vlei.

For me presumably the nicest things this week were the drives and the camping. Namibia has so many beautiful small gravel-roads, and the landscape is at times absolutely stunning. We were lucky with our pick of roads especially to and back from Sussusvlei. We also had some decent camping-spots. Even if you have to camp near to the road in Namibia because everything is fenced it does not have to be busy if you pick the right roads. With Mparany I had a camp in a riverbed where not a single car (or anything else) passed from the time we came there in the evening until we left the following morning.

Today Daddy and I drove Mparany to the airport. He is heading back to Norway, while Daddy stays with me for the remaining two weeks and some days. The two of us will head for Botswana having the Okivango-Delta as our first destination. After that we’ll see where the road leads us. Maybe to Chobe, maybe straight towards Gabarone and on to South-Africa (ZA). I’m not really looking forward to the last days in Durban doing the shipping, but this is not the time to worry about that.

On Saturday the only side of the moon you’ll see is the dark side. 

Dunes

Sossusvlei

Christuskirche

Emptiness

A 1500 years old Welwitschia

Yet Another Movie

Chameleon

Squirrel

 14.04.12 Swakopmund, Namibia

Time is flying. Not just has jet another week passed, I have also thought a lot back to those weeks in 2010 when I traveled the same Namibian roads as this week together with Ole, Roger and Trygve. It is all so fresh in my memory. The focus this week has been on seeing the African animals, which in Namibia is synonym with Etosha NP.

I picked up Mparany at the airport at five in the morning on Sunday, and we went straight north to Etosha. Monday and Tuesday were spent cruising around looking for Zebras, Lions, Rhinos, Wildebeests, Giraffes and other fellas. We were fairly lucky getting lions close up, seeing rhinos several times, and in general having a good time. Small surprises like a chameleon, a tortoise and very little shy squirrels colored the days.

Regarding the complete lack of elephants in Etosha in the rainy-season, we decided to head up to Sesfontein and down the Hoanib-River to find the desert-elephants, but then we surprisingly met elephants at the Grootberg-Pass, so we went south instead. There are few countries left I the world where one can camp for free having elephants 200 meters from the tent. In the evening a car came driving down the Pass, and he had to stop and back up and wait for quite some time because the elephants had blocked the road. Besides he had to be careful, he told me, because the back of his car was full of goats and the front of the car (I could see) was full of his wife. Together they made the vehicle rather heavy.

So having earned a day from not heading north we went down the skeleton-coast, and not surprisingly it was cold and grey. The seals at Cape-Cross were noisy and smelly as always but the sight of 250 000 (or more) seals at the same time is impressive.

As it has to be, many of my thoughts go back to 2010. I told Mparany about when Roger saw the moon rise three times in one evening, how Trygve misjudged the fuel left in the car, how Roger and Ole fooled me to try to light a cigarette on hot rocks and how Ole failed to make a headstand. If you have three friends, take them to Namibia, rent a car and cruise around for ten days, and I can guaranty you a lot of fun!

For those of you who don’t know Mparany. Mparany is my brother in law, but he was a good friend of mine before he gained that lucrative title. We’ve had many adventures on our Honda xr400s’ (motorbikes) in Madagascar, and visited Zanzibar, Tanzania and Kenya in early 2009 together. It’s great to travel with Mparany. It’s tea in the morning real proper food in the evening and other great stuff. He is father of the two sweetest boys you find around, Markus and Jakob.

Tomorrow our team will grow to three, when father arrives, so we’re heading towards Windhoek to pick him up. Mparany leaves on the 19^th but before that we’ll see the red dunes of the Namib-Desert.

Elephant

Good team

Hardap-Dam

Loving lion-father

Rhino

Ostrich

Bird

Wildebeest

Wombosi

Reflections

Empty Spaces

Landscape

Garub railway-station

 Keetmanshoop, Namibia 06.04.12

First off all happy Easter too you all. I know I’m a bit early, but I’m writing today and not on Sunday, and as it happens I have peeked into the bible and figured what is going to happen on Sunday, so it’s going to end well also this year.

I’m still going strong in Namibia. Things are almost starting to get boring. It’s so easy to travel here in Namibia. There are good roads everywhere, lovely people, no one who comes to you heavily armed to check your passport, no angry Sudanese police who accuses you to drive in the desert when the whole thing is a desert. This week there haven’t been any angry elephants or scary snakes either, so I’m pretty safe here in Africa. It will be good to get some action with my brother in law, Mparanay coming to visit on Sunday. We’ll head straight to Etosha to find some crazy Elephants and rhinos and lions and all!

Most of the week has been spend in Lüderitz, an absolutely lovely little town on the south-west coast off Namibia. I came there on Saturday, and stayed there until Tuesday evening.  It was time for jet another service of Wombosi. He has soon done 40 000 kilometers now since Germany. That’s quite an achievement for a fifteen year old Land-Rover.

Sunday was obviously not going to be service-day, so I went out into the Sperrgebiet (restricted-diamond-area) to the ghost-village Kolmanskop. Kolmanskop was settled around 1906 when diamonds were found in the area. Fifty years later the town was abandoned, and since then the sand and the wind has taken its toll on the village. The visit was ok. You need a permit to go there (it’s the only place in the Sperrgebiet you get to rather easily), but you get 45 minute guiding with two other tourists (in my case), and can walk and climb around the houses on your own as much as you please.

Monday was supposed to be service-day, but there was no place for us in the garages, so the service was done swiftly Tuesday in the morning. Monday I met a young man from Windhoek named Charles, who needed his broken minibus toed to Windhoek (over 800 kilometers). We sat talking all Monday and he was a nice guy, so I decided to help him, and offered to toe him. An absolutely crazy mission, but I had said it, so there was not really any way back. So after my service Tuesday I went to meet Charles and to get things settled, but after waiting a whole day I left Lüderitz alone. Things had not worked out for him, and I felt both a bit sad and relief. I would have loved to help him, but it would have been dangerous, and would have made numerous things far more difficult.

Wednesday I visited a group of wild horses, smoked a pipe and wrote two songs. Yesterday I came to Keetmanshoop early, but decided to stay in the area, because I need to call my two nephews who have their birthday today, and for that I need internet. So Yesterday I went out to the Quiver-tree forest and a place called the giants playground, a place with funny rock-formation a sunset, nice South-African tourists and these small rat-like animals that jump from stone to stone and look at you. I counted 15 at a time, but I recon there were plenty of them hiding too.

I have also done a fair bit of reading in the bible, regarding that I’m lagging far behind my initial plan. Besides, Easter is after all not mainly about skiing and eating chocolate, but about Christ dying for our sins. It’s pretty amazing that we, who would deserve death on a cross don’t have to face judgment, because God let his only son hang on that cross for us 2000 years ago. 

The bay of Lüderitz

Some animal (not the rat-like thing)

Giants playground in the late evening-light
and the almost full moon rising

One of many nice old colonial houses in Lüderitz

A house in Kolmanskop

Quiver-trees

Wild horses