Cindy and John’s Adventures

So, originally what made us go with Tanzania Adventures was that the guy that came and pitched to us told John we could climb Lengai at the end of our trip. Little did we know that it would reveal a huge difference between climbing volcanos and climbing non-volcanos…but more to that later…

We got up the next morning – broke camp and went on a ride from hell. It was one of the bumpiest roads – and showed one of those weird things – like these huge mounds of gravel. Just sitting there. And apparently for weeks. At some point the Tanzanian government dumped these piles of gravel and were supposed to come along at some point and smooth it out onto the road. Instead, the gravel just sits and you have to 4-by around the mounds. All over the place. So after a very rocky road through villages that were mostly Masai (Masai, although are not that big of a tribe, still dress traditionally so they stand out – plus the men wear red (they look like sarongs but I can’t remember the name of the garment offhand) and they carry big knives). On our way to camp, we detoured to the lake. It’s this super-alkaline lake that people actually harvest salt out of (these huge hunks of salt that don’t taste like the salt out of a salt-shaker — apparently processing needs to take place). Anyway we get to our next camp which is run by Masai and are taken to this really cool waterfall. Which I’m really glad our guide told us that everything would get wet because to reach the waterfall you actually had to get drenched.
After that we go to the other part of Lake Natron and saw the gazillions of flamingos there. It was quite amazing – and they were various shades of pink and white – not like those Floridian ones that are like pinky pink…
After an early dinner we went to bed to be taken to the start of our climb at 11:30 pm. In the dark. Did I mention it was dark? And the hike was a volcano. And our guide, who apparently is the most experienced guide on this mountain, was awful. I mean he was always 20 steps ahead of us. So if we fell off the mountain he wouldn’t even know. Or probably care. So the 1st half of the climb was fine. Then it got steep. Then it got scary. For me. Because I came to realize that going up a 45 degree climb meant that I would have to go down that climb and I started freaking out. Darn heights problem. So like maybe 500 M from the top I started freaking out. But luckily, there was another guide that was leading another group up that took my hand and quite literally ran me up the tough part. Thomas was an angel.
But I guess it was all worth it. We get to the top and there is quite literally a huge bowl of lava on the top. I mean like a huge bowl of porridge. And lava everywhere. Some still warm. We actually sat on some of it to get warm. And we got there about an hour before a really pretty sunrise.
Unfortunately what goes up must also come down. And down we came. We quite literally fell like 100 times each. All that ash on the top was a nightmare. And of course our experienced guide was 20-30 steps in front of us.  

Unfortunately, our fortunately depending on how you look at it, made us really not to do Mt Meru, which is another volcano, and pretty much I was pretty sick of Arusha and just wanted to go relax so we decided to forego any major hikes in Tanzania.  Onward to Zanzibar!

So we finally got the cash together to go on safari! Our driver and cook came and picked us up at L’Oasis and we were off to Ngorogoro.

Ngorogoro is a crater – volcanic in origin – that has a water source year-round so a lot of the animals just hang out year round unlike the Serengeti where there’s the migration. We saw tons of lions laying about, zebra, hippo (I can honestly say they are just about the funniest – I mean they just kind of lay around in the mud/water and splash water onto themselves – they have tales that kind of have a spoon on the end so it’s just comedy), of course impala, wildebeast (these guys totally crack me up – they make this totally funny noise and have a funny beard – although when I saw them I kept flashing back to this totally lame movie we saw on a bus in S Africa where these zoo lions go out into the wild and get captured by wildebeast and of course they dance – it looked Disney, but I don’t think it was) and the black rhino we saw through binoculars (too far away to see them up close). Anyway, it was like a big zoo.

The funny part was where we camped. There’s this one humongous camp on the edge of the crater (you have to get out of the actual crater by 6 pm or else you get fined) where all the camping safari people camp. And apparently animals feels safe (pretty much feeling safe from lion). We had zebras just wandering around all the tents eating grass, an elephant just hanging and in the morning this buffalo was just looking at us like we were dumb for looking at him.

And we lucked out with our cook, Solomon. Especially looking at some of the stuff some of the other people were eating. Especially the soup. I mean, when you think carrot soup, you think…that sounds just nasty. But it was soooo good. As was the zucchini soup and the leek soup…and we’re talking about a guy cooking with charcoal and having to cook stuff that would wouldn’t go bad over the 5 days. And he was totally cool – we bought a bunch of wine with us and we’d give him a glass each time we opened one.
The 2nd day we drove to the Serengeti. And we saw the coolest thing. Our guide, Tebie (I am so butchering his name but I have no clue) spotted a “fresh kill” in a tree. And where there’s a fresh kill in a tree, there’s a leopard nearby. So like in a little while here comes this leopard going up this tree and starts gnawing on a gazelle. I was seriously awed at this whole thing. I mean, really, how many times are you going to see a friggin’ leopard eating an animal. Oh, and we saw tree-climbing lions. Which I had no idea existed. Apparently, according to our guide, the lions had migrated from Lake Mynara (that is such a name butcher again – I apologize), following food (like Wildebeast and Zebra) and that the native Serengeti lions couldn’t climb because they are too heavy.
That night we camped at Seronera – a smaller camp with facilities that were a bit less than the last camp. And they had these places where you could take a “shower” (sponge-bath). Everyone at the camp was taking these and John and I were like, oh geez, what’s the point – it’s so dusty and you’re going to get all nasty in the morning anyway. We were cracking up when this girl went into the squat toilet (pit), walked out, called to her boyfriend who apparently needed to help her – the look on her face was precious – I’m not sure what people think when they book a “camping safari”, but apparently that wasn’t it!
The next day we went on an early morning game drive and ended up seeing a full-sized male lion and all these cute little cubs that John insisted were going to grow up and be big scary lions but, well, they were cute as cubs. You just wanted to pick them up and hold them (although they were kind of big so they were probably at least 50 lbs!) It’s kind of sad because as soon as you see something cool it gets radioed out and then you’re surrounded by 15 other safari vehicles, but well, I guess that’s how it goes!
After lunch back at the camp, we packed up and headed to Lobo – the camp to the north. On the way we went to the Rhino Pools and saw the funny Rhinos again. It was soooooo different going from the south Serengeti to the north. Lots more trees, lots greener – it was really dry in the south. We were the only ones at the camp on the 3rd night. And a good thing too because there were “very public toilets”. Meaning, the public toilets had nothing around them. Not even a bit of tin. So the bushes were our friends. We went to the lodge for sunset where the safaris that were a bit out of our range housed their peeps – I mean, it doesn’t really get much better than a sunset over the Serengeti.

Okay, I had no idea about this whole concept until we got to Arusha.  This is the place where most safaris start from.  We took a 9 hour bus ride (should have taken quite a bit less time but we stopped EVERYWHERE).

So we land at the bus station.  We were followed, at one point, by 10 “Flycatchers” – guys that are trying to get you to go to their safari company/hotel/whatever the heck else they’re trying to sell.  And we were really stupid.  We should have just grabbed a cab, but everywhere else we just walked from the bus stations.  So we walked to this one hostel – but they were full – so we were walking to this one hotel and these 2 guys in mini-vans from Victoria Expeditions (it was so funny because the guide from the safari company we actually went with when we were telling him about these two guys goes “I bet it was Victoria Expeditions” – apparently they camp out on top of this hill near Arusha looking for Mzungu’s (white people – oh by the way, did I mention that I’m white here! – so funny!) on the bus.  And then they try to “catch them”.  They were trying to convince us that no hotels were going in the direction we were headed – this well-to-do older woman asked us where we were going – and we told her L’Oasis – and she totally got rid of the minivans and told them in Swahili – something that made them go away – and had a man from in front of the President’s compound (which apparently we were passing at the time) walk us there!  Kindness of strangers!

L’Oasis Lodge – kind of out of the way but it has literally become our oasis – we’re staying in the backpackers annex – smaller rooms with shared bathroom – but they have a bar and pool we can have access to – and the coolest people working there – considering we had to stay here long enough to arrange the safari and take the maximum allowed out of the ATM machine here – everyone wants cash and with us being on the road – not like we carry around that kind of money so we just stayed a few days and took money out every day!  Anyway, the next entry will be about our safari!

Oh by the way, the previous post happened on my b-day – I’m the big 35 now! Boy, the difference is amazing…

Anyway, we arranged with the Visitor Center, as per our bible, the Lonely Planet, a 4 day trek through the mountains.

Day 1: 6 hoursish from Lushoto to Lacozie (sp). We went through the rainforest, saw a few monkeys. Lunches ended up being fried bread called chipati (kind of resembled naan), avocado, cucumber, tomato. Dinners were like this really good spinach dish, cabbage, rice, and some type of meat (which I didn’t eat – which I’m REALLY GLAD I didn’t). Starting that day, John was not feeling good at all and ended up having traveller’s diarrhea. Isn’t that great? Just like the day we started the Inca trail in Peru. We stayed at a basic guesthouse that had squat toilets that had a bucket next to them full with water that you put in a cup and threw down to wash the toilet paper down and if you wanted a “hot shower”, they would boil the water on a fire for you and you could take a sponge-bath. There were a few places with electricity, but most of the houses did not.
Day 2: 4-5 hours to Rongwi. The first day was definitely the longest. Since it’s village trekking you go up and down and up and down on these hills. And in Africa they don’t mess around with those cute little switchbacks we have on hiking trails in the states. You go straight up and straight down. Usually with a bucket of water on your head. I think it’s amazing how these women can balance huge bushels of wood, water…I saw one woman with 7 watermelons on her head. After the end of this day we stayed at this mission. It was so cool. A bunch of super great nuns and priests. I didn’t realize how educated you had to be to become a priest. The funny thing is they LOVE BUSH! Probably because they’re being overrun by the Muslims, and they’re of course, Catholic. They had a generator that gave electricity from around 7 pm to 9 pm. We had really good food for dinner including something that resembled pot roast. The nuns boiled us some water for a much needed sponge-bath.

Day 3: 4 hours from Rongwi to Mtae. It’s kind of amazing because as we go through the forest, there are women in the trees cutting down the branches so all the trees have branches only on the top parts of them. Since they don’t have electricity for the most part in the area they need the branches for firewood. What happens when the trees run out of branches? I have no clue…John was having the most fun with the kids. They would say Mzungu (white person) like a chant – but since there aren’t that many white people that come through here they’re a bit scared of us and he tried to get some of them to give high-fives and they’d run away.

Day 4: Bus ride to a bit outside of Lushoto and then a small hike up to Irente Viewpoint. Oh my gosh, the bus ride from *^%#(). It was so rocky because the road was so bad – thank goodness we didn’t eat anything (did I mention we had to catch the bus at 4 am). After a couple of hours we got off outside of Lushoto and went up to Irente Viewpoint which had the most amazing view. We then had a “picnic breakfast” at Irente Farm and then headed back down to Lushoto.

It was an amazing trek and we loved it. The people were soooo nice. The one thing we learned that I just find amazing is that you are taught in Swahili in primary school. If you want to go to Secondary school (which they are working on to make it free, but right now it costs a bit to go to Secondary school) then it’s taught in English. In primary school it’s only 1 subject out of the day and then you have to turn around and go straight to English. It’s so crazy. And the enforcement of kids going to primary school (supposedly it’s mandatory) is not very good. We passed tons and tons of kids but enforcement is at the village level and, really, are you going to turn in your uncle that decided he doesn’t want his kids to go to school? And have your uncle sent to jail. Hmmmmmmm…..

Anyway, we’re now sitting in Arusha awaiting our Safari in 2 days. Yippeee!!

So after a few days in Dar es Salaam, which is the capital of Tanzania, we headed to Lushoto, a town 5 hours by bus away. The bus station in Dar was CRAZY! Luckily we had a good cab driver that worked primarily for the YWCA (where we were staying) that found our bus, told us how much to pay, and had us get on. But as soon as he leaves and we get to our seats, the bus company guy hits us up a “baggage fee” since we put luggage in the boot. So we had to pay 5,000 shillings for that otherwise he would have kicked us off – 20/20 hindsight, we should have just gotten our money back and gotten off but, well, we were only a few days into a new country and hadn’t quite gotten the hang of things yet.

Anyway, when they say Express bus, they mean Express bus. I mean like I have never seen trees and bushes fly by so fast. I think they were going like 150 km/hr. And that’s in a huge bus. It was okay until we started going up into the mountains on those windy mountain roads – they weren’t going as fast, but wow, had to just breathe a lot for a while. The Express bus went as far as Soni, a small town about 16 km from Lushoto. From there we took a Dalidala (mini-bus) with about 25 of our closest friends to Lushoto. We heard from a guy that he heard that in Kenya that they shove 50 people in those minibuses but I’m not sure how – I mean, we’re already talking almost clown-car with people hanging out – 50 would be out of control.

TOTALLY OFF THE SUBJECT – John is tall here! I mean, the beds are short on him. Can you say hormones in the food in America? Because in Lushoto they eat way better than we do – like lots of veggies, a bit of grain and a small amount of meat. And the average height is like 5’6″.

Anyway, we stayed at the Karibuni Lodge and it was really nice – the man who owns it worked as an auditor for the government but now he is trying to help people get loans from banks, since most people around here don’t know how to show why they need loans, etc.

From Lushoto, we organized our 4-day trek through the mountains which I’ll talk about in our next entry since I’ve babbled way too long on this one…

Cheers

Hello again! It’s been a while, but, well, wow is the internet funky here in Tanzania.

Anyway, we took a bus from Livingstone to Lusaka (Zambia)…about an hour in the driver stopped to take a pee. Like a road trip pee. Like, pulling off to the side and just peeing. I thought, oh geez, here we go, now we’re in “real Africa”, where the buses don’t stop, they just pull over – but luckily for me, in “real Africa”, people have to pee too. Like in a toilet.

Once in Lusaka, we headed to the Chachacha Backpackers. As usual, it was farther than we thought. Perhaps a taxi would have been in order, but, well, we’re not that smart! When we were checking in, we asked the woman working there if anyone else was going on the Tazara on Tuesday (this is the Sunday before). She said yes and then proceeded to introduce us to this Aussie who we ended up sharing a first-class cabin with. They are 4-berth cabins, but since cabins are only single-sex we had to reserve a whole cabin if we wanted to be together. So we saved a bit of cash by finding a 3rd person – plus he ended up being really cool and well-traveled so we exchanged travel stories. Oh, did I mention it was a 2 day train ride?

John loved the train. Mmmm, me, not so much. He was like a doggie with his head out of the window. The food was very iffy and we were glad we brought some snacks and stuff. It was cool on the last day because we went through a game reserve and saw giraffe and elephant from the train. I’m not sure how great it was that the train actually went through a bunch of animals, but they must be used to it since it’s been there a long time.

Anyway, we made it safe and sound from Kapiri Moshi, Zambia to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A bit stinky, but, well, what can you expect?

So I was so excited about Vic Falls I forgot about the fantastic walking tour we went on a couple of days prior…

Near Livingstone, where we’re staying, there is a small national park that has animals.  But instead of being stuck in a truck looking at wildlife from a bus, we were able to walk amongst them a bit.  We saw giraffe (I’m not sure why, but I thought they’d be taller!), white rhino (which really aren’t white – they are in fact the same color as black rhino but they have lower mouths then the black ones – and apparently a lot nicer), wildebeest (according to our guide – zebras and wildebeest hang out together because they are a bit vulnerable to big animals – and the “wildebeest migration” that we’ve seen pictures of in national geographic may actually be a zebra migration and the wildebeest follow because apparently the zebras have a better memory?), baboons (the ones we saw in S Africa were black and supposed to be really mean – the ones in Zambia are more tan and just kind of looked at you but didn’t attack), impala (like everywhere), buffalo, zebra (which were smaller than the one that we raced in Namibia) and some other animals that I can’t recall.  It was really neat to be within spitting distance of these animals although the majority of them had been “reintroduced” after they had died out/been hunted out.  It was kind of sad because there were 5 rhinos and there were only 2 left.  2 of them had died of natural causes and one of them had died of heartbreak.  His honey had died and he was sad so he stopped eating.  The rhinos have guards during the day because they still poachers and of course we also had one in case something charged.

Anyway, it was a lovely few hours and gave us a “taste” of the wildlife that is in Africa.  More in the next country!

Hello, what’s shaking?

We hopped an Intercape bus from Windhoek, Namibia to Livingstone, Zambia.  It stopped in a gazillion places (well, considering it was quite the long bus ride, it kind of makes sense) and pretty much dumped off everyone but us tourists by the time it go to the border.

The visa to get into Zambia for us darn Americans is 100 USD.  Yeah, but they have this lovely thing that they semi-publicize that if you book with one of the backpacker places at least 3 days in advance they’ll stick you on the list for the border and the visa is waived!  Score one for us!  We were just sweating bullets because sometimes it doesn’t get to the border and, well, we don’t have 200 USD just laying around so of course we would rather not have paid it.  Luckily, they had our names down.  It was so funny – as soon as they stamped our passports we snatched them up and booked out of there like they were going to have to come track us down if they had made a mistake!  Unluckily for some of our fellow travellers – it didn’t happen.  Some other Americans were to stay in Zimbabwe (Zim and Zam share Victoria Falls) and were given some bad information that they didn’t have to be put on the list and so they ended up having to pay the 100/pp.  There were some others that had to pay 25/pp because they were not one of the “unfriendly relations” countries.

Anyway, we stayed at a joint called Fawlty Towers (yes, named after that English comedy show) while it seemed the rest of the backpackers in the universe were staying at Jolly Boys.  Oh well, you win some you lose some and we did meet a couple of interesting people including a Japanese guy that had travelled the length of Central and South America in 2 months and was planning on finishing up Africa and then heading east until he hit Japan (overlanding it) – and he was planning on finishing up in 5 months total.  I mean, we’re talking holy smokes – that is WAYYYYYY fast!   And all on public transport (although he is flying from Kenya to Egypt because, well, that country called Sudan that separates them – he didn’t seem too keen on visiting).

The whole reason for visiting Zambia was essentially because, well, Zimbabwe has a crazy person running their government right now so we weren’t particularly keen on visiting there, and of course, we wanted to see Victoria Falls.  I have to say, without seeing Iguazu or Niagara yet, it was AMAZING!  I mean HUGE!  Like there is no way you can see the whole falls without being in a helicopter or plane.  On the Zambia side, you are so close to the falls that you literally get drenched.  It was soooo cool.  It was one of the coolest things we’ve ever seen.

I thought this was kind of funny – so we ask the hostel how much it’s going to cost to get to the falls (11 km away).  They say 30,000 Kwacha (7-8 US$); we go to the visitor’s center and they say you can get a shared taxi for 5,000 Kwacha each.  There are 4 people per shared taxi.  So in theory, shouldn’t the taxi be 20,000?  So we head down to this area where you can get a shared taxi and end up getting a private taxi for 15,000.  And got a shared taxi back for 10,000.  I guess it pays to shop around!

This town in Zambia is seriously lacking in groceries.  We thought it was funny that the Intercape bus, before leaving Namibia, stopped for 20 minutes at the grocery.  Now we know why!  Oh well, we’re only here a couple of more days before we head to Lusaka, the capital of Namibia, and hopefully they have better stores because we’re going to be on a train for 2 1/2 days and are hoping to not have to buy too much food on the train since you can’t buy Tanzanian Shillings in Zambia (it’s funny that you can’t change Namibian Dollars or Tanzanian Shillings in Zambia even though they border it) and we’ll be on the train in Tanzania for the majority of the journey…

Anyway, I’m just rambling on… isn’t that unusual?

Cheers

So we’re in Swakopmund.  It’s on the coast.  It’s apparently where Namibians vacation.  And I’m feeling icky.  Head cold.  It probably doesn’t help that I was wearing my heavy winter coat in Windhoek and now it’s totally sunny – John’s been having fun with his allergies – as soon as he hit the desert it was like, poof, time for the nose to run – the weather has literally been all over the friggin’ planet.

Anyway, we’re just chillin’ in this cool coastal town.  The internet cafes are actually open until 9 or 10 instead of closing like at 5.  Which seems kind of strange – smaller town, longer hours.  No clue. 

We went to see this shipwreck off the coast – some kind of commercial boat that wrecked there last April.  And John went to the Aquarium yesterday to see the shark feeding (I was sleeping).   And the sand here is pretty cool – in places it’s purple from the shells mixing in with the sand.  They also had this really cool lighthouse here. 

Anyway, not a ton to do here – it’s the adventure place but we’re saving ourselves for Vic Falls – very popular to skydive here but I’ve lost my taste for actually wanting to do that.  Maybe it’s the age thing.  Maybe it’s because I’m almost 35! 

We head back to Windhoek tomorrow the 26th and then the next day we head to Zambia to see Victoria Falls!

Hello again!  So our 2 heros (yeah, I know, very debatable) took the “luxurious” bus from Cape Town to Namibia.  We left at 10 am from Cape Town and got to Windhoek, Namibia at 6 am the following day (although we lost an hour – Namibia is the only S African country that does any of the bothersome time change thing or daylight savings time).  It’s kind of cool, instead of just a normal bus seat it has this deal that pops up under your knees so you’re kind of on a dentist chair type configuration.  Pretty comfy and didn’t stop anywhere near as many times as the Greyhound did. 

So they drop us at 6 am in the middle of this parking lot behind the visitor’s center and of course there are all these taxi drivers trying to get us to come with them and so forth.  We decide to just walk.  It’s not supposed to be that far to our guest, the Rivendell.  Of course we don’t know where the heck we’re going and we’ve picked up another traveller from Bangladesh that lives in Uruguay that decided to follow us to our guest house.  So after going the wrong direction a bunch of times we finally made it there and then sat in front of their gate for like a half hour until someone showed up to let us in. 

We really liked the Rivendell.  Which was a good thing because we were to return there 2 more times.  The people there were super nice, John was able to rap with the dude from Bangladesh about everything from religion to homeless problems in Bangladesh to being American.  The guests there were pretty much just hanging out because, there is really not a whole lot to do in Windhoek (pronounced Vindhook – we were corrected SOOO many times – we just felt like we should pronounce the o!!) .  And let me tell you, we suck at German pronunciation – this would happen so many times in Namibia – especially to our next destination – Soussuvlei.  Go ahead, try it out.

We rented a car for 5 days.  To see Soussuvlei and the Namib-Naukluft Mountains.  It was both a nightmare and turning point.  First off, we had to go to the rental place a day early.  Because the day we wanted it was a holiday.  Ascension Day.  The day Christ ascended to the heavens?  John was confused too.  The driver then dropped it off the next afternoon and we headed out the next morning.  John (who took on the task of both driving manual and on the left side of the road) took a couple of times to turn the car over but it started.  We figured it was just old and a bit cold. 

We get onto the highway.  As soon as you get out of Windhoek it’s gravel roads.  Okay.  But it ended up being the most beautiful drive.  We saw a gazillion kinds of “deer” (okay, they weren’t deer, but they were deer-like – different horns, different tails, different body shapes), baboons, birds that were amazing – I mean we’re talking national geographic.  Namibia is a very sparsely populated country.  We come upon these “towns” on the map – and they’re like 1 house.  Maybe 2. 

Anyway, we go like 4 1/2 hours to Solitaire and had cake.  It is so funny because first of all it was supposed to take 5 hours to get to our campsite, Sesrium, but just like the rest of Africa so far the people who live there seem to under-exaggerate.  Oh, the Pick-n-Pay (grocery store) is 5 minutes walk away.  Yeah, if you’re superman.  More like 20 minutes.  And if someone says it’s like 5 K away it’s more like 20 K.  Pretty funny.  We have just learned to double everything to be on the safe side.  Solitaire was like another 1 1/2 hours away from Sesrium.  But they had gas there and gas stations are also kind of a rarity so we filled up.  And every time we mentioned Solitaire everyone we met was like, you have to eat their cake (strudel).  It was quite good but maybe I’m just not a strudel-fan because it was just okay to me.  It tasted like dutch apple pie. 

Sesrium.  A very expensive campsite – for both of us it was about the same to camp as it was to stay in a nice double room in Windhoek.  Plus, since you were technically in the national park you had to pay the national park fee.  Which was about the same as the camp fee.  Plus we had to pay for firewood since the cooking facilities we were told would be there didn’t exist.  Nice travel agent guy that we booked the campsite through.  Oh, and the “free” tent we got from the rental company was missing parts.  So John had to jerry-rig it.  But the advantage is you get in early enough to see the sunrise.  Yeah, that would be if you weren’t John and Cindy. 

Because our car wouldn’t start.  We had to watch as all these cars drove by our campsite (until one did stop and help us for a few minutes but even a jump didn’t help).  Oh and did I mention the phones were all broken? This dude from the gas station helped us out for like 2 hours and ended up putting our battery in a battery charger for the night.  And lent us his cell phone to call the car-hire place.  But we missed the sunrise.  We went in finally around 9:30 am after being up since 4 am ish.  The dunes were SPECTACULAR!  Red dunes!  Amazing!  We ran into this guy John had run into in Cape Town and we climbed the highest dune – it was AMAZING!  (Oh, and John pissed off the top of it – bladder issues) and then we ran down the side.  It took like 5 minutes to run down the 3-3 1/2 hours to get up.  

So we get back to our car and it still is having problems starting.  Super.  When we get back to camp the dude from the gas station takes the battery and puts it into the charger.  He also said he’d get us into the park for free the next day since we missed the sunrise.  But of course, it was cloudy the next day so it was not to be.  So we just went onto our next destination, the Nukluft mountains.  

We stayed at the Ababis guest farm.  This would have been amazing place to stay (not camp) if you had a load of cash.  But, well, we don’t have a load of cash so camping it is!  After we made camp we decided to go for this hike around the farm (1 hour or so).  We were like, okay, let’s just start up the car to make sure it will, you know, start.  It barely starts and it’s been like an hour and a half.  Terrific.  Luckily the guest farm also has a battery charger so we were able put it in that.  And of course the phone was out here too.  So we had to use their satellite phone.  Which kept cutting out.  We just decided to cut our losses and head back to Windhoek a day early.  

There was one really cool moment!  We raced a zebra!  We were going along this gravel road heading back to Windhoek and all of a sudden this zebra comes alongside and was racing our little Toyota Tazz!  I mean we’re talking about 65 km/hr!  Finally it went back into the bush but it was like the coolest thing ever! 

Our car-hire place reimbursed us for 4 of the 5 days so it ended up being financially okay – but still we wouldn’t have traded the experience for the world.  We were kind of ho-hum about the whole Africa thing because we’d been on the tourist track the whole time but now we’re raring to go to at least continue on with the African story!