Day 13 - Etosha to Ngepi Camp in Caprivi Strip on Kavango River

We are sitting in Whistling Willie.  It still makes the 90 decibel whistling noise despite the best efforts of Will, the driver.  He installed a new “blower” for the diesel in Swakopmund, but that was not the problem.  The next chance to fix the truck is Victoria Falls, 10 days from now.  For the moment, we are rolling down a Namibian superhighway.  That’s old asphalt, 20 ft wide, with centerline stripes and even outside stripes for the edges.

There are two underlying themes to this adventure of ours.  The focus on photography is what Africa In Focus is all about.  The secondary theme is alluded to by the name of our tour, Desert Wanderer.  That nomadic element is a  part of every African Overland Safari.  In our campgrounds, we encounter travelers from all over the world.  Primarily from Europe and North America, they may also be from Asia and the Middle East.  But it does seem to be a core part of the European view of “how to see Africa”.  They travel in various ways: singly; in bus/trucks (like us); and in caravans of 4x4 trucks and suv’s.  There are companies catering to every one of these methods. The rental trucks and land cruisers that we see often have folding tents mounted on the roof.  These stand about as high as your standard roof trunk, but then unfold to show about a 2 or 3 person tent.  Sometimes, there are two of these tents mounted on the roof of the same truck.  The preferred vehicles seem to be Toyota trucks or Land Cruisers.  We see outfitted Land Rovers also, but not very many.  Their design seems otherwise perfect, but we are told that the reliability is not enough for travelers who must make their destination each and every day before nightfall.

Here in Africa, when you see a 4x4 SUV with an external air intake as high as the roof, it is not for show.  People here think driving on awful roads is normal.  For those roads, all they like to have is a vehicle with high wheel clearance.  But lots of hunters, farmers, wildlife researchers, and game keepers are going truly off road.  Second, there are real reasons not to want to spend the night except in desirable places.  The animal wildlife can be dangerous, and the human element can be more so. 

Many of the “campgrounds” are better than Good Sam RV parks.  Yes, there are regular camp sites, but they also have bungalows, or hotels.  They may have bars and restaurants.  The bars are a lot more prevalent than cafes.  About half of the sites are almost primitive providing only a safe place to spend the night, with the possibility of a shower, but will not have electricity.  Only once has the campsite had internet.  The way that Africans deal with that lack is through local data (3G?) networks.  The rates with local companies are reasonable and coverage is unexpectedly good.  Since not even the towns have reliable internet, Barb and I will pursue that method of staying connected the next time we travel.

Poverty is everywhere.  At least what looks like poverty to people from the USA.  Once you leave a town, seeing a normal USA house is unusual.  Most people live in what we would consider grass huts.  They live on a much reduced scale.  Less land is used for habitation.  People seem to congregate in extended family sized groups.  Whenever we stop alongside a lonely road, young children come out of nowhere asking for money.  In the towns, there are markets and street merchants everywhere.  There is seldom air conditioning in any building.  But normal stores seem to have some selection of good products, and particularly grocery stores have abundant choices.  Prices everywhere seem reasonable.  Once we were outside of the Cape Town area, this has become a very inexpensive vacation.  We pay less for water, or a cup of coffee, or a sweet from the bakery, than we would in the states.  Gas is expensive.  Car rental is not. 

Typical village

Our flight tracker

Getting here is really hard.  It is more than 11,000 air miles to fly from Seattle to Cape Town.  And Africa is incredibly big!  Dakar (Senegal) in central Africa is closer to Washington DC than it is to Johannesburg.  The round trip frequent flyer miles are almost enough to get us both free tickets for travel in the states!

We are traveling inland to where there is more water and vegetation.  We will be exploring the Okavango delta lands and will hope to see a hippopotamus.  Everything is becoming more green, and there is more evidence of agriculture.  Tonight Barb and I will sleep in a treehouse.  That upgrade from our nomadic home, Kudu the tent, will cost about 90 USD.  I don’t think Barb will miss Kudu for one night, but both of us might miss our air mattresses and comforter.  Technically, they are a sleeping bag and two pads, but they are so comfortable we forget.

This is a great trip.  Just what we have seen already makes it worthwhile.  And there are 10 more days of the safari left to go!  But it may be Victoria Falls before we can post this message.  And that is also the African story.