We came to Kenya after a few days of rest in Pretoria, where we were hosted by an awesome couple called Walter and Hendrika who became new friends. They had one of the cutest/friendliest dogs I've ever met, Drumpel. We did NOT get a visa to go to Ethiopia, despite our many valiant efforts. I do not feel like recounting the insane process of trying to get an overland visa from that country while in South Africa - by this point the story is a past annoyance that completely took away the desire to travel to Ethiopia anyway!
We got robbed while on safari in Lake Nakuru... by a big baboon! We had barely stopped to check out a cliffside lookout when a huge male olive baboon rushed our Land Cruiser and jumped inside through the safari roof! A loud furry chaos ensued as he grabbed and tossled and bared his fangs out at us before jumping out a few crazy seconds later from the other side of the vehicle. He came for one thing only, and got it - he ran off with our lunch! Our driver told us "this never happens". The safari was great, we saw many animals including several rhinos, one of them only about 40 feet away.
We came to Kenya after a few days of rest in Pretoria, where we were hosted by an awesome couple called Walter and Hendrika who became new friends. They had one of the cutest/friendliest dogs I've ever met, Drumpel. We did NOT get a visa to go to Ethiopia, despite our many valiant efforts. I do not feel like recounting the insane process of trying to get an overland visa from that country while in South Africa - by this point the story is a past annoyance that completely took away the desire to travel to Ethiopia anyway!
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We continued east into Chobe National Park in Botswana, where we found an abundance of beautiful animals. Many hippos, many elephants as well as buffalo, giraffes, lions, a plethora of birds and many more. We came across a herd of elephants within feet of our 4x4 - they seemed aware of but indifferent to our presence. They have such a calm, wise energy about them and I find it makes me happy to be around them, observing. Chobe is an exquisitely beautiful place.
From Chobe we made the crossing into Zimbabwe, and arrived at Mosikalamosikala or Mosi-oa-tunya ("the smoke that thunders"), aka Victoria Falls. These are some of the largest waterfalls in the world, and although we are currently in the dry season they were still majestic. A gargantuan quantity of water cascades down a deep, long fissure in the earth, resulting in a rumbling feast for the eyes.
In Vic Falls we bought a couple of $12 first class tickets on a sleeper train even more ancient than the one we rode to Cape Town. To book passage we had to walk through a troupe of nasty looking urbanized baboons which had more or less surrounded the train station! We arrived in Bulawayo and bought bus tickets to Pretoria. It is interesting to note the difference a border can make in terms of culture. Almost everyone we met in Zimbabwe was noticeably friendly if not outright warm and welcoming, whereas people in Botswana tended to be more closed off or aloof. We headed to Pretoria to try and resolve a snag that came up for the next portion of our trip. Too annoying and boring to explain here, but we've been playing a complicated game of dominoes trying to line up the next few legs of our journey. The biggest problem is obtaining an Ethiopian visa in time. We spent a couple of days eye-hunting for hippos and more elephants on the swelteringly hot Okavango Delta in Botswana. Unfortunately, though there was abundant evidence of pachyderms all around us (their enormous droppings were everywhere and two nights in a row I was woken up by their alarmingly loud bellowing in the forest) we saw no elephants here like in Etosha. No hippos either. We did see several impressive crocodiles, some monkeys and many beautiful delta birds. There are huge floating islands of papyrus, which thrive in the delta waters and through which hippos carve out canals - it was through these channels that we took our boat and canoes in a fruitless search for their creators. I took a video (click HERE) of one of the more narrow canals.
From the delta we headed north, to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia. There as the sun set on the limpid waters of the Okavango River we found hippos - many many hippos! You can barely see them in my pictures... mostly their heads and their cute little ears which they shake the water off from when they emerge from underwater, blowing mist like whales. I shot this video (click HERE) from the riverbank... a bunch of local kids dancing and throwing rocks or dung at a group of indifferent hippos, two of who yawn with their menacing maws. Hippos are the most dangerous mammal in Africa, and every year kill more people than lions or other big cats. Yesterday we spent part of the evening with some of the San (bushmen) people of the Kalahari desert. They spoke to us via an interpreter (in their fantastic click-clicking language) of their traditional ways, and how they survived in this harsh environment for millennia. The San have always been my favourite culture/people based on readings and documentaries, and it was awe-inspiring to spend a bit of time with them. These ancestral people survived for thousands of years as hunter-gatherers (actually living in a balanced and harmonious way with nature), until the white/European colonialists came and forcibly displaced them. Since then the San have had a very difficult time - today we drove by a more modernized settlement where, their culture eroded and their traditional lands stolen, they have developed significant social problems (eg rampant alcohol abuse). This story is all too familiar - the same thing has happened for example with Native American peoples and Australian Aboriginals. The San we met last night are able to maintain many of their traditional ways by showing foreigners how they live or used to live. They felt happy and natural and seemed to be having fun proudly showing us healing herbs, how to hunt and gather, make fire and soften leather, etc. It was very cool to see and learn and be around them. They seemed to me a far gentler people, connected to the earth without being sappy about it. The oldest man in the group (I can't pronounce his name) is an accomplished hunter who did not know how old he was, except to say he remembers a time when white people just used ox-wagons.
The more I learn about African history the more I feel that the arrogance and greed of the colonial (and unfettered capitalist) attitude, in all its varied past and ongoing forms, is one of the most destructive and uglifying evils there is. It's the attitude that the earth, its creatures and plants and (especially native) peoples are all there for the taking. The belief that the earth is ours rather than that we are of the earth. The belief that militaristic might is right. Africa had some problems before the white man came (eg the pre-existing African slave trade facilitated the colonial slave trade). However, a lion's share of the reason so much of Africa is in a heartbreaking shambles has to do with what Europeans started doing here centuries ago. This exploitation is still going on now - much of Africa is still an economic colony and garbage dump for the developed world - and even where it isn't what's been left behind is a gaping wound that is still bleeding out. This has happened and is happening, in one way or another, all over the world. That the planet's on fire (or flooding, or whatever other calamity) is no surprise. Yesterday we saw almost as many animals as the day before. About 50 elephants and countless giraffes, zebras and so on. What's more, we came across a lion feasting on a dead zebra, and witnessed the playfulness of two baby rhinos and their mothers by a watering hole last night. A bunch of elephants enjoyed the water hole while others kept watch and protected the young.
Things I learned from spending hours watching the watering hole: Far from being dumb brutes, elephants and rhinos are highly sociable, playful and intelligent creatures. I already had this impression, but spending hours observing them made this absolutely clear. What's been and is being done to them and their habitat is sickening; Elephants fart a lot. So do rhinos, though not as often nor with such hilarious resonance; Life for these creatures, and many others in the wild, seems for the most part very slow, chill and relaxed while simultaneously alert, mindful and cautious. There is no big rush to get anywhere. Life is now, and here. All you really need to do is eat and not be eaten, drink water, make love, play and sleep. Don't let your big brain tell you otherwise. ;) Giraffes are graceful and cautious. Zebras, while pretty, are skittish and damn vicious/violent with each other. Springbok are happy to gaze into the void a good part of the day. Jackals are cool, sneaky dudes. At Etosha I took some videos of some pretty magical, uplifting things. Check these out:
Click HERE - A happy herd of elephants parading into a refreshing water hole; Click HERE - a lioness and her two cubs Click HERE - some brief rhino action Click HERE - the impressive coordinated flight of red-billed quelea birds So many beautiful animals. Today we saw 7 endangered black rhinos, a pride of 7 lions, about 50 elephants, well over two dozen giraffes and countless zebra, oryx and springbok. Some jackals, warthogs, ostriches, kudu, impalas, eagles, meerkats and mongoose, owls and other large and small birds as well. Two dead zebras as well. It is (surprise surprise) a particularly hot and dry year, so there are more animals clustered around the watering holes. This is fortunate for us, but not for them. Still, today was unforgettably awesome. Seeing lions in the wild is breathtaking. Seeing a herd of elephants parading into the water hole was just magical - I felt a great joy watching them frolic in the water, cooling themselves off and playing together. It was also bittersweet given what humans are doing to wildlife and wild places all over the earth. There is fortunately a program in place whereby many elephants have their tusks cut by rangers to protect them from hunters (same goes for many of the rhinos with their horns). That people could hunt these animals for trophies or money or pseudo-medicine seems even more repugnant to me after seeing their beauty (and intelligence) firsthand again today. It is good to see these last remaining pockets of wildness in the world - a reminder of what things were like before humans began trying to pave, exploit, commodify, wrap in plastic, pollute and uglify every natural wild place on earth! We are at Etosha National Park, which covers over 22,000 square kilometers in Namibia. It is home to and protects countless springbok,25000 zebras, 4500 giraffes, 2500 elephants and 500 lions among many many other species. The number of rhinos is kept secret as yet another measure against hunters/poachers. We spent a couple of days in Swakopmund before heading north again along the Skeleton Coast (so called because of the many shipwrecks which used to pepper its shore). Swakopmund is a modern little town wedged between the Atlantic Ocean and the sprawling Namib desert. Quad biking on those big ole' sand dunes was a whole lot of fun. From there we continued north and camped in the desert mountains near Spitzekope before continuing northeast to the lands of the Himba. Spitzekope is exquisite - the stars at night are gorgeous, the views are most pleasing to the eye, and cute rock dassies abound (for a video of the dassies, click HERE)! The Himba are a semi-nomadic people who have managed to prosper while maintaining their traditional way of life. The women never shower, but cover their bodies and hair in a fragrant ochre paste as an ornamental/cosmetic, as a sunscreen and to stay clean. Their villages are organized in a circle, with the cow pen (cows are very important in Himba culture) and sacred firepit in the center. We visited a Himba village in the sweltering heat. The men were all out with the herds. It felt a bit forced as we had to go with a guide, and the energy of the whole experience was kind of weird. I'm not sure how the Himba feel about visitors, especially a bunch of tourists snapping pictures of them like paparazzi on a human safari. This was followed by an exit-through-the-gift-shop tchatchke sale. Still I suppose if it helps them preserve a semblance of their traditional life, it is probably a good thing.
Last night a moon like I have never seen before rose from the desert horizon, a huge radiant blood-orange African moon which had all our camp in awe. All of except our driver, Shadi, who said "you do not have these moons? Here they happen all the time!". Photographs could not capture the beautiful essence of this moon. Later on we awoke to the eerie wails of jackals in the distance.
We woke up in darkness and drove out to Dune 45, which we climbed to watch the sun rise in a similar glorious fashion. I was halfway up the enormous dune when the first shining sliver of sun peeked over the horizon. The same moon as last night, pallid now, hung on the other side of the desert sky. There I was between moonshine and sunlight, and I shot this video (click HERE). A bunch of us hung out at the top for a while, then ran down down down the long steep sandy slope From there we try took a 4X4 to Dead Vlei (Dead Valley) - trees which died hundreds of years ago but which were preserved by the dry desert climate rise from the hard packed desert floor, surrounded by massive orange sand dunes. The largest of these, called Big Daddy, is 400 meters (1200 feel) tall. Tonight I watched the same sun set which I saw rise this morning, and the same red moon rose as well. We are camped close to a watering hole, and I was just woken up by the thumbing sort-of-neighing kicking galloping herd of zebra who come here to drink in the night. I can see them from here, about a 100 meters away. Good night. From Cape Town we jumped on an overland truck heading north into Namibia. The population density here is delightfully low (only 2.54 inhabitants per square kilometers!). So, you rarely see anyone else as you drive on the rough dirt roads cutting through a massive desert peppered with satin-barked quiver trees, ostriches and eagles, baboons and scorpions and snakes and many horned beasts such as kudu and oryx. We have been camping for the past few days, sleeping in rugged thick canvas tents made for Africa. One day it is swelteringly hot, the next quite cold - our driver said that the weather has been unpredictable lately, adding that "this is the year of surprises!". The landscapes are epic and stunning. Yesterday we visited Fish River Canyon, which rivals the Grand Canyon in size and surpasses it in age. From a cost as well as a safety and convenience perspective, going overland in a group made more sense than renting a 4X4 and heading out on our own like we did in the U.S. The other travellers are mostly younger Germans, some Dutch and Australian. It's a pleasant group, and everyone pitches in to keep the camp working smoothly.
We spent a couple of days in Cape Town, a hip and happening city which feels decidedly "modern". The areas we visited were prosperous and clean, though it also felt like there was a lot of darkness lurking in the shadows cast by all that shininess. A stark contrast between opulence and poverty. The waterfront is pleasant and interesting though somewhat touristy. The highlight of our visit was clearly hiking Table Mountain. We took a couple of busses and a fun gondola ($25 a person) to ascend, then hiked for several hours on what felt like the top of the world. The views - of the city, the ocean, even regular and lenticular clouds down below - were spectacular. It was wonderful being up there, listening to the silence (except for the cool croaks of the frogs of the marsh) and taking in the views and fresh air as we hiked. We were exhausted by the time we got back, but satisfied and happy.
From Tofo we made the long trek back to Maputo, then caught a flight to Johannesburg where we boarded a 28-hour sleeper train to Capetown. The train is old but comfortable - we had our own berth compartment with pull-down beds and ate in the dining car. The ride was quite enjoyable and afforded us a varied sample of South African landscapes as we chooga-chooga-choo-chooed through the country. The best part, however, was being serenaded for hours on end by a group of African singers (click HERE for a sound sample) who were traveling in the car behind us. Joyful, soulful music punctuated by laughter and applause at the end of each song. That served as a great counterbalance to the fascinating book "King Leopold's Ghost" I read in its entirety on the train tide. It is an excellent work on the brutal history of European colonization in Africa, in particular the egregious exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold of Belgium near the end of the 19th century. Kinda heavy, but highly interesting and informative as well.
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