Its 10 o’clock and you are 25 km inside a small and forgotten game reserve driving along bumpy back roads spotting springboks, kudus, ostriches and “Phumbas” through the lion coloured dry grass scattered with small trees. You have 2 liters of water with you in the car because you camped wild in the evening outside the gate to the game reserve and did not get a chance to fill up the water containers before entering. That same evening you have discovered that you had a flat tyre. You replaced it with your spare tyre but decided not to change the morning’s plans of visiting the game reserve by sunrise. The temperature is rising above the 30 degrees. The last person you saw (besides the sleepy guard at the entrance gate) was some local guy who allowed you to camp on “his” premises in return for a meal and a chat. This guy was of the opinion that the game reserve had lions even if the guide book didn’t mention it. Now imagine your reaction when you hear your second tyre bursting…
Suddenly Africa becomes real. Having no network to phone for help, we were forced to walk 25 km towards the entrance…not quite the same as the guide book’s “scenic hike”. The idea of a left-behind lion lingering in the grass is suddenly not that exciting anymore. Being “off the beaten track” becomes a bit less appealing and the true meaning of the expression of “being in the middle of nowhere” finally dawns upon you. We ended up walking for 4-5 kilometres (carrying the wheel), with me looking over my back and looking for potential “climb-up-and-escape-trees”. Then we suddenly had network –what a relief!- and were able to call the park’s reception to send someone to bring us out of the wilderness, fix our tyre and bring us back in.
This little adventure happened on our trip to Namibia last week. I will try to refrain from travel guide superlatives such as daunting, breath-taking and amazing, but Namibia is truly like that - extremely beautiful with seemingly endless landscapes of mountains, valleys, plains, desert and ocean. But don’t go if you don’t like driving and need people around you. Namibia is first and foremost big (we drove 3.500 km and only covered the south…), beautiful, empty…and very dusty. It took us seven days in the country before we saw the first traffic lights. Some days we would drive for hours without seeing other cars and even the few towns we came by seemed like half deserted villages. I put a few photos with this post when I get beind a proper internet connection, but not sure they actually bring justice to the feeling of absolute solitude.
On our second day however we drove past a huge grape plantation with some factory buildings next to the green wineries. There were a few people around, but still a feeling of desertedness. We wanted to buy or taste some of the grapes, so went inside one building and were greeted by the manager who said we should come with him through a small door to the back. This was like entering another world. In the “back” there were two assembly lines each with around 250 grape packing workers. At the end, boxes were piled high ready for shipment to Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, Føtex in Denmark and many other countries. The grapes will arrive in a shop near you just before Christmas! Later we picked up a fired worker who had worked there for 2 months. He had received 800 Namibian dollars (around €95 or dkr 700) a month for somewhere between 50-60 hours of work pr. week. In other words: less than €0,50 or dkr 3,5 per hour. Now think about how much he would have to work to actually buy the grapes in Føtex or Albert Heijn!
Later that day we arrived in Luderitz, a town founded by the German colonizers on the southern coast of Namibia. It’s rather weird to drive 300 km on African gravel roads only to be greeted by an old white haired guy with a Schaeffer dog with “Guten Tag! Suchen sie etwas bestimmtes”. The area around Luderitz is all owned by the diamond corporation which is now in Namibian hands, but for 90 years one of the world’s richest diamond mines were making the Germans and white South Africans extremely wealthy. Finding the diamonds was actually easy, because most of them were more or less lying on the ground, but securing that workers didn’t take the diamonds themselves proved (and still does) the most costly. Namibia’s first x-ray camera was installed in Luderitz. Not for medical purposes, but to take photos of the workers’ stomachs when they returned at the end of their working day.
To many of you it might come as a surprise that Namibia only gained independence from South Africa after 1990. The apartheid laws were also imposed on Namibia which is still very obvious. All managers and owners seem to be white. At the tank station it is a black person filling up you car, but a white who you pay to. Almost everywhere you hear Afrikaans spoken (so no-one could really gossip about us without us hearing it J). Nevertheless the black population are quite positive about the transformation. And I must admit that extreme poverty and extreme wealth is definitely a lot less obvious than in South Africa.
After two days in Luderitz we drove into the real desert: The Namib. They call it a cold desert. Can only say that if this is a cold desert I certainly never want to set my foot in a warm one! We luckily ventured into the dunes with sunrise which gave us 3-4 hours to climb around on the 300 meter high dunes before the heat became unbearable.
We are now back in Cape Town again, trying to get back into work mode for another month or so. Sorry for the lack of photos. Take care.
Suddenly Africa becomes real. Having no network to phone for help, we were forced to walk 25 km towards the entrance…not quite the same as the guide book’s “scenic hike”. The idea of a left-behind lion lingering in the grass is suddenly not that exciting anymore. Being “off the beaten track” becomes a bit less appealing and the true meaning of the expression of “being in the middle of nowhere” finally dawns upon you. We ended up walking for 4-5 kilometres (carrying the wheel), with me looking over my back and looking for potential “climb-up-and-escape-trees”. Then we suddenly had network –what a relief!- and were able to call the park’s reception to send someone to bring us out of the wilderness, fix our tyre and bring us back in.
This little adventure happened on our trip to Namibia last week. I will try to refrain from travel guide superlatives such as daunting, breath-taking and amazing, but Namibia is truly like that - extremely beautiful with seemingly endless landscapes of mountains, valleys, plains, desert and ocean. But don’t go if you don’t like driving and need people around you. Namibia is first and foremost big (we drove 3.500 km and only covered the south…), beautiful, empty…and very dusty. It took us seven days in the country before we saw the first traffic lights. Some days we would drive for hours without seeing other cars and even the few towns we came by seemed like half deserted villages. I put a few photos with this post when I get beind a proper internet connection, but not sure they actually bring justice to the feeling of absolute solitude.
On our second day however we drove past a huge grape plantation with some factory buildings next to the green wineries. There were a few people around, but still a feeling of desertedness. We wanted to buy or taste some of the grapes, so went inside one building and were greeted by the manager who said we should come with him through a small door to the back. This was like entering another world. In the “back” there were two assembly lines each with around 250 grape packing workers. At the end, boxes were piled high ready for shipment to Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, Føtex in Denmark and many other countries. The grapes will arrive in a shop near you just before Christmas! Later we picked up a fired worker who had worked there for 2 months. He had received 800 Namibian dollars (around €95 or dkr 700) a month for somewhere between 50-60 hours of work pr. week. In other words: less than €0,50 or dkr 3,5 per hour. Now think about how much he would have to work to actually buy the grapes in Føtex or Albert Heijn!
Later that day we arrived in Luderitz, a town founded by the German colonizers on the southern coast of Namibia. It’s rather weird to drive 300 km on African gravel roads only to be greeted by an old white haired guy with a Schaeffer dog with “Guten Tag! Suchen sie etwas bestimmtes”. The area around Luderitz is all owned by the diamond corporation which is now in Namibian hands, but for 90 years one of the world’s richest diamond mines were making the Germans and white South Africans extremely wealthy. Finding the diamonds was actually easy, because most of them were more or less lying on the ground, but securing that workers didn’t take the diamonds themselves proved (and still does) the most costly. Namibia’s first x-ray camera was installed in Luderitz. Not for medical purposes, but to take photos of the workers’ stomachs when they returned at the end of their working day.
To many of you it might come as a surprise that Namibia only gained independence from South Africa after 1990. The apartheid laws were also imposed on Namibia which is still very obvious. All managers and owners seem to be white. At the tank station it is a black person filling up you car, but a white who you pay to. Almost everywhere you hear Afrikaans spoken (so no-one could really gossip about us without us hearing it J). Nevertheless the black population are quite positive about the transformation. And I must admit that extreme poverty and extreme wealth is definitely a lot less obvious than in South Africa.
After two days in Luderitz we drove into the real desert: The Namib. They call it a cold desert. Can only say that if this is a cold desert I certainly never want to set my foot in a warm one! We luckily ventured into the dunes with sunrise which gave us 3-4 hours to climb around on the 300 meter high dunes before the heat became unbearable.
We are now back in Cape Town again, trying to get back into work mode for another month or so. Sorry for the lack of photos. Take care.
