From the early days of our planning for this adventure across Southern Africa, we had intended to first travel through Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, and South Africa, before going north to explore Namibia, and then heading east, through Botswana, on our way to Victoria Falls. One of the hurdles in this aspirational routing, however, was the lack of public transportation between Windhoek (where we would be wrapping up our two weeks of travels through Namibia) and Maun (the principal jumping-off point for travels in the Okavango Delta, and one of the only towns of any size in Northern Botswana). After considering a couple of expensive/unappealing options for independent overland travel – renting a car to make the one-way journey or hitchhiking through a sparsely populated stretch of the Kalahari Desert – we decided to go all in with Wild Dog Safaris and tack a nine-day, one way trip from Windhoek, through Botswana and Namibia’s Caprivi Strip, to Victoria Falls onto the end of our Namibian travels.1 Continue reading Traveling from Namibia to Botswana (Or, Walking with the San People)
Monthly Archives: July 2014
10 Things We Will Never Again Take for Granted
As we complete our travels in Southern Africa and cross the border into Tanzania today, here, in no particular order, are 10 things that we have resolved to never again take for granted:
1. Indoor heating in wintertime.
2. Feeling under the weather without a fear of having contracted malaria.1
3. A constant supply of electricity and running water.
4. Reliable high-speed internet access.2
5. Having more than five clothing options in your wardrobe backpack.
6. En suite bathrooms in hotel rooms. See also hot showers.
7. ATMs that unquestionably accept your debit card and are stocked with cash.
8. The assurance of livestock-free public transportation.3
9. Used bookstores that are not dominated by Danielle Steele novels or books in Afrikaans.
10. The ready availability of things like Thai food and non-instant coffee.
1 Spoiler alert: the malaria test I had done on Monday came back negative.
2 No, really. Even this simple, two-picture post took forever to upload.
3 Remind us never to complain about the MTA ever again.
Seals, Skeletons, & Swakopmund
After we decamped from the Worst Campsite in the World, we set off for the Skeleton Coast, a famously treacherous portion of Namibia’s Atlantic coastline. The area is so named for the ships and their crew that met their fates there. The drive to the coast from Damaraland was impressive, as we passed near the largest mountains in Namibia before transiting through a parched, barren stretch of the Namib Desert. As we drove towards the coast, we watched for an hour as a bank of coastal fog grew from a faint, distant line across the horizon to a sea of gray which eventually enveloped our vehicle.
