Highlander’s Birdfield Wine

More crazy weather at Highlander’s Camp.  The rain is coming down in buckets, and the wind is howling.  We stay inside all day reading and playing games: table tennis, Scrabble, darts with one dart, massage, etc.  All our tents are inside the garage on the cement.  Only Rowan and Lee-Anne have bravely set up theirs [...]

Cederberg

We spent two nights in the Cederberg Mountain area at Highlanders Camp.  On the drive there we stopped in the town of Springbok.  The town was bustling on a Saturday morning.  The people looked faded, tough and weathered.  Springbok rose up from the copper mining industry of Namaqualand. The first copper mine was established in [...]

Orange River

We crossed the border back into South Africa at Vioolsdrift.  Our camp is near the border, and you can pretty much swim the Orange River between Namibia and South Africa from our camp.  I can get air time for my South African SIM card now.  We’re back in contact.  That being said, it’s been wonderful [...]

Fish River Canyon

Fish River Canyon is the destination of a long drive day (640km).  The canyon is the 2nd largest in the world (the Grand Canyon is first).  It measures 160 km in length and 27 km wide at the widest spot.  It’s 550 km deep.  The scenery of the area reminded us of Arizona, with high, [...]

No sushi in the desert

We drove through Namib Naukluft Park on the way to our desert walk in Sesriem (gateway to Sossusvlei).  The dunes are numbered from the sea inland, and are some of the highest in the world.  There are many types of dunes as well.  The Namib dunes shift with the winds giving them the desgnation “dynamic [...]

Sandboard Namibia

Clearly Swakopmund is a tourist town. Hotel managers, activities instructors and shop-keepers all wait for the next crop of tourists to roll in be it on overland trucks or in group tours from Germany (most likely). Tourists are ripe for the picking, too, looking for adventure and ready to embrace a new experience.  At the [...]

Swakkie Parasail

Swakopmund is truly an adrenaline capital, and our trip optional activities included sand boarding, quad biking, fishing, sky-diving, sea kayak, etc.  We chose para-sailing for our first activity.  It was a great experience, though hiking up the dunes in a harness laden down with glider wasn’t easy.  After a brief instruction from the pro, we started [...]

Cape Cross Seals and on to Swapokmund

The Cape Cross Seal Colony is a breeding reserve for the Cape fur seals who lay and play along the shore.  Seals are truly smelly, but it was fun to watch their antics: fighting, nursing, barking, swimming. 
We continued down the Skeleton Coast (named for all the shipwrecks dotting the shores).  The seas are trecherous, and [...]

Spitzkoppe Bushman Paradise

We spent the night bush camping near Spitzkoppe, a huge collection of boulders and rock formed by the collpse of a huge volcano and subsequent erosion.  Spitzkoppe is now called the Matterhorn of Namibia.  The landscape was striking, and reminded us a great deal of Arizona or southern Utah.  There were some bushman rock paintings under one of [...]

Okuhepa Is Thank You

The Himba are a semi-nomadic people who lived mostly in northern Namibia’s Kaokoland.  They herd cattle and goats, moving from place to place with the sesons.  The houses they build are left behind when they move, and sometimes reused when they return.   The Himba have fairly successfully resisted outside influence, and still live in a [...]