A lovely tree in Namibia

Missoula is cold. Missoula doesn’t have much snow. I am at work all day cranking out year end reports, and in coffee shops all evening working on graduate school essays. Lately, I have found myself missing my time in Namibia, during which I traveled around sleeping in tents for weeks on end. Ahhh, the simple life. The warm life.

So there were a lot of weird things in Southern Africa – things that didn’t quite fit in or were just plain funny. Didn’t have the time or bandwidth to upload all of my pictures and all of these funny things while I was over there, but now that I’m home, I’ve got all the time and bandwidth in the world. So here are a few of the more interesting, or at least humorous, parts of Southern Africa that I have caught on camera.

So this was in London, not Africa. But it still counts as funny randomness. Don’t know what fly pitching exactly is, but pretty sure it isn’t fly fishing. Shucks. Not that I would want to fly fish in the River Thames anyways…

Outside the African Wild Dog pen at the De Wildt cheetah center. African Wild Dogs have a hunting efficiency of 95% (highest in Africa) and cane devourer an antelope in less than a minute.

Snake Park Sign #1: The place was on a big reservoir, and yes, pretty much all the water was green.

Snake Park Sign #2: Indeed the buttocks were swollen and the female was “in season”.

Snake Park Sign #3: True words indeed.

Snake Park Sign #4: This was in the bathroom.

Having fun in Swaziland (the first time). Gotta love big rocks and an even bigger sun.

Also in Swaziland. This was one place where our food was prepared, and subsequently scavenged by the goats.

At the Tembe Elephant Reserve. And yes, we did encounter dung beetles and gave them the right of way.

Playing with food in Swaziland. AFSP = African Foreign Study Program. ’06 = 2006 (duh). Was made in this ucky Maize porridge. The left is a bowl of sugar, and the right the porridge.

At the Apartheid Museum in Joburg.

So more often than not when we didn’t know what to get for lunch or dinner, we went to Roman’s Pizza, a chain pizza place in South Africa like Pizza Hut, just a lot cheaper. And this is what we always got the bill in. Thought it was pretty funny.

Apparently the best way to feed cheetahs is with a metal spoon duck taped to the end of a old broom handle. Makes sense.

Me playing with Carlos, the baby pet Meerkat, at the White Elephant Lodge in Namibia.

So our bus got stuck in Swaziland (part deux). And we pushed it out. Fun times.

A sign telling you what you can and can’t do at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens outside of Cape Town. Love the cleaning up after your dog and chopping down trees squares.

Sunset at a watering hole in Etosha NP – northern Namibia

Hiking in the Brandberg Mountains – the tallest in Namibia. But we didn’t go up, unfortunately. Would’ve taken at least three days. Instead we went up one drainage to look at old pictures drawn by indigenous people here. Would’ve rather climbed the mountain, alas.

Gary and a Cape Fur Seal. These guys smelled pretty damned horrible. Lots of dead baby seals around, too – killed by the black backed jackals. But on the plus side, the place was actually cool – temperature wise – nice to have 60 degree weather for once.

Here we are hiking in a drainage of the Kuiseb river where silt deposits created pretty sweet formations. You can see the (dry) main channel of the Kuiseb to the top left, and the sand dunes of the Namib behind it.

Ruth, posing, at the Windhoek airport before our flight back to Pretoria, South Africa. It rained right before we left, which made me mad. Wish that rain came when we were in the 45C weather in the desert. Oh well.

So yep, that’s it for now. Have plenty more pictures, but alas, don’t want to get kicked out of the internet cafe by uploading too many. So corner me back in the states and I’ll show you the pictures.

So here are some pictures from it:

Okay. This is a picture of the Gobabab desert research station. A sweet place, where we spent about four days. But those four days were the four hottest days of my life – the temperature reached 45 degrees celcius – don’t know what it is farenheit, but pretty damned hot. Most of our desert hiking we did from this place. Camped in two man tents in an ephemeral river bed which was quite dry and without water.

This was the station’s off-road vehicle. Made by South Africa for the Namibian Army, this guy goes over pretty much anything. But it doesn’t go up hill swell with a full load, so we had to get out and walk up the hill so the thing could get enough umph to get up.

From the back of the vehicle looking towards the upcoming dunes.

Fun times. It’s about 10am in this picture, and the sand is already getting incredibly hot. I didn’t even think about it before I came to Namibia, but after a barage of the sun’s rays for hours on end, the sand can become extremely hot. Barefoot in the middle of the day would give you burns. Bad burns. But here we’re fine in sandles and shoes.

Nalgene. Camera. Good shirt. Good hat. What more could I want?

(how about mountains, trees, streams, and trout?)

Anyway, I have a few more shots that I forgot to upload, including a beautiful sunset one. You’ll have to take my word for it.

**Update**  I have the sunset pictures finally: ***

After we left Swaziland, we headed back into South Africa. Before we got there, though, we stopped at this amazing market in Manzini. Clothes, skirts, herbs, roots, ropes, trinkets, carvings – quite a plethora of stuff there. Was intimidating to say the least, but an interesting place to visit and buy some stuff.

Then we headed over to Tembe Elephant Park, where we spent three nights. Nothing to much in terms of pictures from the park itself. Well, here’s one from a morning game drive. Sure am posting a lot of sunset/sunrise pics. Sorry ’bout that.

Some traditional Zulu dancers came and put on a performance for us, which was pretty cool.

Also went and saw a sanguma (“witch doctor” or, politically correct, “traditional healer”). While no doubt she does help quite a few people out, the forecast she gave one of our grad students grossly off.

Then two days ago now we went to Kosi Bay, an amazing undeveloped (and thankfully protected) beach home to an incredible wealth of plant and animal life. Travis, Chris, and I took a barefoot beach jog up to the Mozambique border, which was marked only by a solemn concrete post. A great day at the beach to say the least.

Our meals were made over the fire, where we also gathered around in the evenings to chat and hang out, and things were pretty much as basic as they could get.

But I had a great time and learned an incredible amount about Swaziland and small rural impoverished farming communities in general. We spent one morning with farmers, helping them fertilize and plow their fields. We all got a hand at driving a 6-ox plowing team, which was pretty fun, but difficult.

The land itself is incredibly beautiful. Terraced hillsides envelope the landscape. We were positioned on a ridge, and could pretty much see everything all around us – down into the electrified valley to the east, and westward at more simple rural farms. Quite the place to learn about smallholder African farms.

And especially the impact of HIV/AIDS on them. Kaphunga has an estimated HIV+ rate of 60%, according to the local nurse we talked to. While testing is on the rise, and the government provides anti-retroviral drugs for free, many cultural and social stigmas prevent the full proactive awareness of HIV/AIDS, and the subordination of women within the traditional social structure is a major impediment as well. Many of the school children were AIDS orphans, and a number of kids were HIV+ themselves, primarily by getting the disease from their mothers’ breast milk. A chilling situation – was quite the thing to experience it first hand. Throughout the whole time I was amazed by the friendliness of the local peoples, especially the children, and their willingness to talk to us. Had an amazing sunset soccer game with a bunch of school kids as well.

And amazing sunrises and sunsets. The first pic below is the sunset on the first night we got there, and the second pic is the sunrise on the morning we left.

I have some more pics on my main gallery page as well. Just click “Gallery” above, then go to the “Africa” album.

The days were long, hot, and hard. We got up at 5am each day, about half an hour before sunrise. We had coffee, tea, and rusks (Afrikaner scone type things) while we woke up, and broke out into groups around 6am to go out and conquor the day. There were three main activities, which each separate group did a different day.

The first thing was elephant observations. Two elephant researchers came up to the camp. They gave a few talks on elephants, herd dynamics, and management policies. Then we got to go out into the field with them, tracking down an elephant herd, and then identifying and monitoring the individuals of the herd. Each elephant is identified by th epatterns and markings on its ears, and each elephant is unique in this way. So we took photos and notes on each elephant, and when we got back to camp we identified the elephants so we could better understand migrations patterns and herd dynamics. It really was quite the thing to be driving in the midst of these giant creatures, and having them walk around you and go on with life as if you weren’t even there.

The second activity we did was a walk in the bush (or veld, as the Afrikaners call it). But a walk in the South African bush is by no means equivilant to a walk in the Montana plains. Predators and dangerous animals abound, with danger coming from lions, leopards, elephants, cape buffalo, and hipos, all of whom can charge you and kill you relatively quickly if you startle them. For this reason we didn’t often go walking in the bush, but this day we did. Luckily, we had a fully certified, competant, and (most importantly) armed ranger with us. We went out with Brendan, a great guy, who was armed with a synthetic stock 458 (elephant gun). He has the ability to hit a tennis-ball sized target (the brain) of a charging animal within seconds from 50 feet away. Huge training programs to be a certified ranger in ZA, takes quite a bit of gusto to pass, and Brendan had more than enough. But guns and ammo aside (one last digression – got to fire a 458 at the previous camp – quite the gun – big kick – successfully hit the Coke can from 50 feet away), the walk went quite well. Talked a lot about Impala (South African equivilant of deer), their environmental impact, as well as the biological and geological history of the region.

The last unit was a unit on riflecraft. Specifically, it was on poaching and AK-47s. We had a lecture in the morning on the history of poaching and AK-47s, as well as a talk on firearm safety. In the afternoon, we went out to a dry riverbed, got out two AK-47s that the camp owns (for education purposes, of course), and got to shoot the AK-47s. Was quite the thing – especially knowing the huge history behind the gun being fired. I had a great time to say the least (although I didn’t shoot all that well).

We did quite a few other things at Timbavati. One day the guides shot an Impala. Then we had a unit on gutting an animal, while we got to dissect it and learn about its anatomy. Then we ate it in a wonderful stew later that night. We also, each night, went on evening game drives. The camp owns a couple Land Rover Defenders, not top and no doors. So we would go out into the defenders, drive around, and spot game of various sorts (to this point I’ve seen crocodile, elephant, cape buffalo, hippo, wildabeast, lion, numerous small cats, hiyena, and countless antelopes a ong others). The camp itself is also a beautiful place – incredibly environmentally sound and a model for eco-tourism everywhere.

I could go on and on about the great time in Timbavati, but this should suffice for now. I’ll add some more when I upload the pictures. We also went into Kruger Park and went to another camp on the Oliphants River north of Timbavati as well, but I figured I’ll just write on Timbavati, in order to keep the blog not overloaded.

We’re meeting our host families tomorrow. Don’t know that much about mine yet, other than that I’m living in one of the old townships, and my family has two boys and one girl. I was told their ages but I have forgotten.

The opening night here, after we all got together (Tuesday night), we had a great feast at Cafe 41 – one of the local restaurants. It was quite festive, and Dartmouth paid the bill, so needless to say us students took no humility in what we ordered. My entree was an incredibly tasty ostrich. Well, not a whole ostrich of course, but ostrich nonetheless. It tasted quite good.

Today we went to a Cheetah conservation center called deWeldt. About an hour outside of town. The place itself is only 160 hectares (about 350 acres), but their primary purpose is cheetah breeding and rehabilitation – it’s not a game reserve. They also have some pretty cool vultures and griffins, as well as hyenas and wild dogs. So we got to tour around and look at everything, which was amazing. Saw most of the animals fed, and they sure do go all out. Actually, the cheetahs don’t. They are rather like my dog Patton back home – slow and meticulous when eating. The dogs, however, are quite different. A pack of them can eat an entire Africa-deer equivilant in just a few minutes. So we got the tour of the cheetah place this morning. Now on our lunch break, and then more lectures and orientation stuff this afternoon.

Think I managed to get some of my photos uploaded – they are below (also posted one in my old London post).

The flight over here was fine. Sat next to a really nice woman on the flight from Minneapolis to London who is a phd student at King’s College in London. She gave me some good tips on what to do in London. So when I arrived, I checked out of the airport (which took a good hour and a half, stupid passport control), took the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, went Underground and took the Tube to Waterloo, and then hopped on to the walking trail on the south side of the Themes. Spent the next five hours going up and down the Themes, going up to the Tower Bridge and then back down. Stopped by St. Paul’s Cathedral on the way back as well, which was pretty amazing. Then at 4pm, boarded the subway, back to Victoria Station, then the Gatwick Express back to – you guessed it – Gatwick Airport. Caught my flight on Nationwide Airlines down to South Africa and arrived in JoBurg this morning at 10am. Even managed to get 6 hours of sleep.

Just ate lunch at this nice Lebanese restauraunt, and stumbled into this internet cafe, which has pretty good rates a little over $1 an hour (9 rand an hour to be precise). I will be able to upload pictures here in the future, but I’m cameraless right now, so alas, only a picture post for now.

And that’s about all. We’ll be in this area of Pretoria quite a bit throughout the trip, so looks like I’ll be able to get some photos up be able to update this blog as well.

Yitood,

Josh

update! pictures of England: