With both excitement and reluctance, we left Blair Atholl in late November and caught a quick flight to Windhoek, capital city of Africa’s least populated country. Visiting Namibia has been on my ‘bucket list’ for years and years. And for those with some space on their own “must visit” lists…..ahem. Yes.
Namibia is one of those places that defies description – it’s safe, clean, inexpensive, hot, sandy, desolate, beautiful, surprising, exciting, boring, hot, sparse, friendly, challenging, easy. Did I mention hot? We arrived at the start of Namibia’s summer and the heat was staggering. Dry and relentless and exhausting. But oh, the light…I’ve never seen such beautiful light.
We used an amazing company http://www.namibia-tours-safaris.com to set up a customized 3 week self-drive tour on a fairly tight budget. We spent months tweaking the itinerary (via email) with Ulrike to make sure that we got to see as much as we could, with an emphasis on visiting Etosha National Park. While there’s no charge for their service (at least at the front end), their guidance and input was invaluable. The entire trip was seamless and Ulrike’s choices of campsites, guesthouses and lodges was spot on for our gaggle and well within the budget we’d provided them. Their lovely representative, Estelle, met us on Day 1, provided us with our detailed (45 page) itinerary, maps, emergency numbers, souvenirs and many, many great tips and recommendations. A huge shout out to a wonderful, service-oriented company.
Fun fact: Namibia is a former German colony and we were amazed by the strong German influence at every turn – from churches to street names to the ubiquitous (warthog/kudu/weiner) schnitzel on nearly every menu. Of the tourists we met, probably 80% were German.
We spent only 3 days in Windhoek and that time was mostly spent running errands, picking up provisions for camping, trying to find ice (hard) and getting acclimatized to the heat (harder). We picked up “Greg”, our Toyota 4×4 and got a not-entirely-thorough tutorial on how to change both spares, replace fuses, set up the roof-top tents, work the fridge and SatNav. There aren’t a lot of tarred roads in Namibia and almost no traffic, so you need to know what to do when those tires puncture. Oh, and they will. Again and again.
Of course, no visit to Windhoek is complete without a meal at the iconic (ok, kitschy) Joe’s Beerhouse. While the rest of us ordered fairly benign burgers and salads, Tom opted for the skewer of ostrich, crocodile, kudu, oryx and springbok. We sat around, listening to the live drumming, chatting with our fellow diners (from Montana and Germany) and marvelling at what cool parents we are. Drinking Windhoeks in Windhoek…like a dream come true. With beer.
After three days, we were all ready to head south towards the dunes of Sossusvlei, where the adventures in parenting, bush medicine, driving, climbing, camping and cooking would really begin.