Our next destination is Etosha National Park in the north of Namibia. Everybody on the truck is extremely excited about seeing some animals, because after all this is Africa! We get there in time for a game drive before sunset. The park, in particular this time of year, is an enormous dry plane, with little vegetation and little water. The main attractions of the park are its water holes. The first one we see is still quiet, only an old elephant there trying to cool down by spraying mud and water over himself.
After a hot coffee it’s time to leave. We get in the truck with all the warm clothes we have and still feel kind of cold as it’s just sun rise.After not many kilometers, the truck is having some more troubles and we have to stop to let the engine cool down once again! We give it one more try, but it looks like something cannot be fixed, and we need to get a new truck which will be sent from Cape Town. It will take the whole day to come here, so as scary as it is we need to get back to the coldest camping site on Earth! As the sun gets higher it’s getting warmer though, so we can enjoy some wine and cheese just sitting outside. The mood of the group is really good, and before it’s getting dark, Mike, a nice guy from Taupo traveling with his wife, collects plenty of wood for the fire. The new truck arrives at 3 in the night, and at 6.30 we get up and start transferring all the stock and luggage to the new truck. Again, the night was very cold, and some (smart) people decided to sleep in camp site’s bathrooms instead of their tents! The process is taking about 2 hours, but after that we are ready to leave for the Naukluft Park and its huge red dunes. More »
Early in the morning it is time to leave the hostel for our first experience with the new group: a tour of one of Cape Town’s many Townships. These are parts of town where only black people live and were previously dangerous, but now things are slowly starting to change, and some visitors are now allowed in. First walking between the run-down buildings. and then through the sheds, there is a feeling that something is out of balance. These people don’t have bathrooms (rows of festival-tanks along the street serve this purpose), many don’t have their on bed, but they have 3G cellphones, dress nicely, and drive rather nice cars. Our guide tells us they don’t want to show that they are poor when they go to town or to work. One of the township’s streets has nice big houses with gardens and fences around, where the few townshippers who have prospered economically live, who still wish to stay with their neighbors.