July 28, 2010

Swakopmund and Sossusvlei Sand Dunes

wind blown sand dune ridge

We spent 2 nights back in civilisation, which was weird, slightly intrusive, but extremely luxurious and convenient after 4 nights in the bush. We all had our first shower in days, but most of us kept wearing the same dirty clothes in protest of being clean on a week long camping trip. We indulged in meat pies, and eating meals that werent cooked over fire coals, and then the first night in Swakopmund went to the bar Rafters for some socializing. It was Tuesday, so not so busy, but a group of Eastern Canadians involved in oil rigs kept the bar quite alive with them buying basically everyone else in the bar most of their drinks. We realized later the one sleezebag paying for them was just a big creeper, trying to chat the girls up. My two personal bodyguards, the Australians, decided he was overstepping his boundaries when they caught him trying to squeeze my butt, so after paying the bouncers to kick him out, tried to coax him into a taxi to leave. But, he was drunk, and made a horrible decision when he tried to swing a punch at Griffo. The other aussie, Jimmy, happens to be an ultimate fighter, a very good one in fact, and even though the guy was pretty big and fat, had him on the ground screaming like a girl in fetal position within seconds. The guy was fine, in Jimmy’s defense, but even one hit from him probably did some serious damage.

We laughed about it the next day, since we probably could have just left to take care of the situation, but at the time the way things went definitely seemed like the most obvious solution. Life goes on, so instead of feeling bad about it we went dune boarding on these huge sand dunes only 5 minutes from the center of town. You just ride a plank of wood down, head first on your stomach, and hope to make it to the bottome before becoming separated from your board and sand rashing your stomach and arms in a cloud of dust. The latter happened more often, at least for me. Griffo and Steve were stars at it, and at one point when a line of quad bikes were driving past the bottom of the dune we were surfing, bombed down all the way down to cross their path but missing the last bike by a few seconds.

gnarly trees in deadsvlei

We spent 2 days at the really big dunes in Sossusvlei, which are even bigger and made up of red sand. We entered the park around 3 pm, and instead of leaving at sunset when the gates closed, got our car stuck on a 4×4 track and, after very little effort, decided we just had to camp overnight and leave when the gates opened again the next morning. We dune boarded some of those dunes too, but broke both boards since these tuffs of grash and bushes are scattered throughout the bottoms of the dunes and both Griffo and Steve managed to crash straight into some. Good thing Steve was even alive, since he hit one at probably 80km/h and then got thrown around like a rag doll another 50m.

happy us 🙂

We were told that people had been looking for us the night before, but managed to sneak out the gates without anyone noticing our car plates which they had on file as missing. We stopped by Sessriem Canyon on the way out, a beautiful deep canyon that looks like its made of man-mixed gravel, and then spent the afternoon in Solitaire, a town thats basically just one big parking lot with a gas station, a convenience store, a restaurant, and a bakery. Needless to say we spent a couple hours at the bakery, eating the most delicious pies, and even though it was Sunday – an illegal day to sell alcohol, convinced the restaurant to sell us 3 six-packs of beer.

July 25, 2010

Namib-Naukluft National Park

moving a little slower along the main highway, a simple dirt road that goes on forever

riding into nowhere

jumping over the moon

There are these gnarly plants that grow like palm leaves out of the ground, spiraling like overgrown fingernails, that apparently live hundreds of years. There is a lot of sand and rocks, almost no water, yet still random herds of springbok and gemsbok roaming around. I guess they’re quite safe there, but still not sure how they survive, especially with such little grazing.

being curious about the welwitschia plant, probably circa 800 years old

We camped the first night at Bloetkoppie, “blood hill,” named after the orangy-red boulders that make up the mountain. Really cool, golden trees grow between the cracks, and otherwise it was just big, threatening rocks piled precariously ontop of eachother. I wandered off too far too long and almost prompted a search party by my friends, but finally came over a rise and managed a wave back at a very relieved looking Steve. We didn’t see any wildlife except for tonnes of scurrying little hyrax’s, but Im just glad none of us ever stepped on a snake or scorpion.

moonrise behind the big, red boulders we slept under

The second night we camped at Mirabib, another popular campsite at the base of basically just a big pile of rocks in the middle of a huge prarie. We started our afternoon right with a techno dance session by Dana, which became a regular event since her trendy music made some of us want to dance around. Like the campsite before, we managed to hang my hammock and enjoyed another leisurely night in the bush, with not another single soul to be seen or heard.

the southern tropic latitude, not looking very tropical

We drove past the tropic of capricorn, and carried on to our next destination, another national park full of more sanddunes and Namibia’s very own Grand canyon.

hard to show scale, but it was big and deep

July 23, 2010

River Bed Camping

Leaving Etosha and roadtripping for a week was not only an awesome camping trip, but an absolute blast because of our roadtrip crew. We had me, Steve, a city-girl from New York, and 2 Australians that literally had beers in their hands from the moment they woke up. We had dance parties in the car despite barely fitting in the crew cab and squished all our stuff, food, and water for your week-long bush camping.

A pretty fresh jackal skull

There is a river that feeds into the northern boundary of Etosha called Ekuma and we spent a night there capturing jackals surrounded by the receding riverbanks. It was so strange to see this abundance of water, both because Namibia is an extremely arid country, and also because it flows into the completely dry salt pan. Since there were so many water points, animals were scarce and we only ever saw a couple honey badgers and some antelope horns far off… and a jackal skull, but that doesn’t really count as an animal sighting.

our nightly campfire

The next night we camped in the dried out Ugaub river bed which only flows for a short time during the wet season. It has a sandy bottom so made tent pitching easy. It was another beautiful camping location, with the most amazing backdrop of a river path winding its way through big, red, boulders and rocky mountains. The next morning we decided to drive back to the main road by following the river bed west, but somehow made a full circle return to the same road we had been driving all along, but didnt realize that until we turned around, drove the riverbed back to our original camp site, and drove along the road just to see the same spot we thought was east of us.

trying to figure our way out of the river bed with the help of some herero locals

It would have been annoying except it was just exciting to actually drive the hilux in low 4-wheel drive, although only Griffo managed to really manage with the deep sand.

lots and lots of stinky seals

In the afternoon we made it to a huge seal colony in Cape Cross on the skeleton coast, with thousands of seals just lying around moaning and playing and fighting… and pooing. They stank. But, they were very cute and entertaining, and I was so relieved to see and smell the ocean after my 6 weeks in dry Etosha.

yummy salty goodness

As we drove south towards our next destination, Swakopund, we passed the spookiest ship wreck ever, just barely seeing the mast of it from the road in the thick fog. Along the way we could stop for a salt lick from raw blocks of salt being sold on the roadside, since a handful of salt factories were pretty much the only form of civilization we saw on our hours of driving along the Skeleton Coast.

one of the many shipwrecks claimed by the skeleton coast

July 15, 2010

Wildlife Capture

UC Berkeley isn’t the only university with research presence here; the University of Queensland also has giraffe DNA studies going on – ironically also a University I’ve attended and fell in love with. Their research offices are located in the Etosha Ecological Institute, a small office building located in Okaukuejo shared with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism government staff and scientists. It’s fun to see the daily in and outs of the few people that work here; you get to rub shoulders with very important people in the Ministry and I’ve also taken to becoming friends with the resident vet and his girlfriend who are super nice, laid back, environmentally-minded folk – Michelle is currently researching and lobbying for real recycling programs to be put in place in Okaukuejo and she gets to go dumpster diving every week to sort recyclables from the trash. Its a smelly research project, that’s for sure.

The vet is probably one of the most important, well-paid positions with the coolest job, since his job basically licenses him to capture, drug, and/or handle wild animals. He gets to dissect animals if they die from an unknown, natural cause, and recently a black rhino with suspected enteritis drowned in a water hole and Ortwin had to drag it out before cutting it wide open for dissection. The thickness and roughness of rhino skin would almost make you believe it had an exoskeleton, but since it had already been gutted, made it very accessible to scavengers. We later went back to that mutated rhino carcass after dark and watched a pride of 11 lions feast on the find.

a very cooperative little jackal, waiting for his poking and prodding to be over

The funnest and most exciting thing we have to do is definitely jackal capture. The vet, Ortwin, came with us one day to dart a specific jackal whose collar needed to be removed, and it was a perfect situation since the scent of the opened rhino lured him right up to our car. Once shot with the drugs, it takes a few minutes for the animal to go down, but once it is, you just blindfold them before handling them like a puppy dog.

They’re tiny up close, usually scruffy to touch, and when they get woken up again, turn back into the growling, biting little jackals that they are. But then they have to sit in a cage, still half dazed, until they’re fully awake to release, and even when you think they’re ready to be released, they sort of hesitantly stumble away, still looking all drugged up. Steve also captures without drug administration; he uses a padded leg trap method and tricks the jackal with a scent trail of some bloody meat to get them to step where he wants. Recently we were using some guts that were a few weeks old , and I cant even begin to explain how foul meat smells after sitting in the heat of the day. *shiver* Its gross.

Steve and Jimmy man-handling a powerless jackal

Anyway, then you have to grab them by the neck using a blanket for distraction, while they’re still totally awake and fiercely vicious, ear muff them, Velcro their mouth shut, blindfold them (with a stinky sock), and bind their legs together. By this point they’re totally obedient, and you can take your samples and measurements without too much trouble. One jackal we caught near Namutoni was seriously psychotic though, and after biting Steve on the leg, had to be released before she was fully sampled because she kept struggling and wiggling her blind fold off.

Even more entertaining than handling jackals is elephant capture. A week ago a caravan of 4 cars and one helicopter went up to the north-eastern edge of the park to collar 5 female elephants, and man oh man is that a mission and a half. The helicopter circles around a few hundred metres above the ground to spot an elephant breeding herd, then it swoops down close enough for Ortwin to shoot one with 2ml of drugs, we wait 8 minutes until it crumbles over, and then drive through thick, prickly bush on the back of an open flat bed truck to where its lying. Then we all run to the elephants side, pull it and poke it in all sorts of places for feces samples, ticks, blood, measurements, age, and finally, a collar fastened around its neck. Im not sure if you can imagine, but an elephant neck is very, very thick, and these collars must have weighed 20 kg each.

trying to get my arms around the tummy of a sleepy elephant

At the end of this flurry of activity, and after getting some great photos of each of us cuddling a sleeping elephant, the vet gives it 1ml of drug reversal, and we all get the heck out of there as quick as possible before it stands up, pissed no hell.

Its definitely an adrenaline pumper, and if it wasn’t the elephant who was going to kill someone, I thought for sure our off-road driving with 8 people squished and exposed on the back of the truck driving through thorny acacias certainly would… but we all escaped with minor scratches and ripped clothes.

July 12, 2010

Life as a Researcher in Okaukuejo

the Okaukuejo gates

I live in the William Gasaway research camp, a small site within Okaukuejo camp gates but behind the staff housing, furthest away from the tourist area. There are a couple parked trailers and 3 tents; I live in one of those, a big, old-school, Army-type tent with zip up windows and a big canopy. Ive hung my hammock on the tree growing beside it, and there are anywhere between 2 and 8 other people in camp at once.

If you ever come to Africa for a long time, or even a short time but do a lot of camping, there are a few things and skills I highly suggest you bring. First of all, bring binoculars, a flashlight (preferably in the form of a head lamp), and a camera that has either a dust or water proof case. You should also bring your own sleeping bag, sleeping mat and tent since you can camp virtually anywhere and a lot of places won’t offer accommodation except for at ‘western’ prices which is surprisingly more expensive than one would think of budgeting for Africa (at least I grossly underestimated the expenses of being a tourist in southern Africa). Finally, make sure you know how to make a fire and how to barbeque, since these are two must-have assets for the braii culture so prominent here. Related to this point is a suggestion for vegetarians: its tough to avoid meat or meat products.

the tent i called home

Three Berkeley researchers have come to live in Etosha and after a few months here, all turned from vegetarians back to eating meat. Meat is one of the cheaper, most easily accessible food products, and is always offered in tourist meals and restaurants. Its also very healthy, with a lot more selection (lean game meats), and the food chain somehow seems ethically and environmentally enforced here better than it does in other parts of the world. The circle of life within the national park is also an interesting moral subject to deal with; before coming here I would always have thought a dead animal is a sad occasion, and that watching carnivores hunt and kill would be too sadistic, but it quickly becomes apparent how normal and necessary this circle is to the ecosystem. As much as I want to save a baby zebra being chased by a herd of lions, I also get really happy for the cute, furry little lion cubs that get to keep on living. I’ve noticed I eat a lot more meat and fish products in Iceland which seems environmentally justified on some grounds, but I eat sooo much meat in Namibia. The difficult thing is the closest town is almost 2 hrs away, so only getting to grocery shop once a week or every other week forces you to shop differently. Fresh fruits, veggies, milk, cheese, and bread are luxuries since they’re only fresh a few days later, but buying frozen meat, eggs, pastas, rice, and beer makes for a very high protein and carb diet. The beer here, called Windhoek Lager, is in weird 440ml size bottles and cans, and full strength at only 4%; however, funnily enough it was one of the most available, popular and cheap beers also in South Africa and Botswana. We are lucky enough to get freshly baked bread about twice a week; the Chief Science Warden’s wife makes it for the research camp and it’s delicious.

Steve basically works every day since there is nothing else to do here anyway. By work, I really mean we get to drive around in one of the Toyota’s with a big 6m pole and a bunch of stray antennas sticking out in all directions tracking jackals. The antenna on the top communicates to the collars put on some of the jackals Steve is using for his research, but we only ever get downloaded information once every other drive. So, we just get to enjoy the scenery and wildlife, until we see a carcass and then Steve has to swab it for anthrax and record all sorts of data. That’s strangely fun, not because of the poor, dead animal, but its really the only time we are allowed out of the car since you have to remain inside your vehicle anytime youre outside of a camp. Sundowners is a fun, routine thing to do; at sunset, you crack a drink and stop and enjoy the sun disappear behind a waterhole, and wait for something exciting to come to drink water like a rhino or a breeding herd of elephants. Me and Steve recently tried sun-uppers, having coffee and Amarula with the sunrise during a game drive we took with NWR (for research purposes, of course).

The days here are funny because it makes no difference if its Wednesday or Saturday, and I actually missed Canada Day since I had no idea when July 1st actually was. Although, with 2 other Americans we had a pathetic little July 4th party that just involved making a fire and sitting around it.

I walk between camp and the office, past the senior staff housing, and many of the people here are called Owambo, who speak a cool language called Ochiwambo where almost everything, especially place names and animal names, begins in O. There are these elderly Herero women who wear their traditional clothing around camp, and they look like busty dolls in big, beautiful dresses that are made of layers of colourful material with a matching cloth hat that kind of resembles a hammerhead shark. When I was driving into town for our weekly grocery shop, two women were sitting curbside by the entry gate and hitchiked a lift into town. We didnt speak much, but listening to them laugh and talk whiles their dresses overflowed in the back seat certainly made the 2 hr drive more entertaining than my ipod music.

July 9, 2010

More on Etosha

I won’t criticise NWR any longer but Etosha is the most heavily visited National Park in Namibia and most tourists that visit the country make it here so I would still highly recommend it. However, there are a few different entry points to the Park and if you go through Anderson Gate, the gateway to Okaukeujo, there are a handful of lodges for you to choose from to stay in just outside the gate. I spent some time at Etosha Safari Camp, and even though I didn’t see any others, can give it my highest recommendation. It’s a cozy, quirky camp with luscious grass camp sites, with braii stands, lights and trees and you only pay $10US per night per person to stay (instead of $100/night at Okaukejo NWR). There are also hotel rooms, and the communal area is a big, open space with an elevated pool, an outdoor bar, a fire lit everynight with live music, a sports bar with a pool table and big screen TV, and a restaurant that is scattered throughout an alleyway of covered rooms and shack huts that they’ve decorated into a maze of brick walls with windows made out of vintage car doors. A lot of political posters and decorations display thought-provoking messages, and also an interesting insight to the history of colonial Africa. There’s an old train cart inside acting as the food storage room, and all the other old, wooden furniture almost makes it seem like a Wild Wild West Disney Park setting. The food is served buffet style, and coffee and tea sit out all day with cake for guests. And then with their tour guides, you can take day drives to visit the park and still have a great experience of Etosha without giving your money to NWR or paying too much for very little.

We spent a couple nights at Etosha Safari Camp to watch world cup games at their sports bar. The first was a great success; me and 4 German-Namibians cheered our hearts out and blew German-coloured vuvuzelas as loud as we could to watch Germany beat Argentina 4 – 0. The second game, Germany’s semi-final against Spain, was a bit more grim, and the Germans were much more quiet with their vuvuzelas. Oh well, it was a good run for Germany, and now we got to watch Netherlands and Spain contend for the World cup, two teams who have never previously won. Good for them 

All the reindeer, ahem, i mean pretty hooved animals drinking at Okaukejo waterhole

The great thing about Etosha National Park is that it is absolutely full of animals and it doesn’t really make a difference if you see it by day or night since you can’t leave camp at night anyway. However, there is one waterhole at each camp that is spotlighted so that would be the only thing you miss out not staying overnight within the camp.

During the day you still have a pretty good chance of seeing all the animals in Etosha, especially early morning or late afternoon. You have access to one of the healthiest population of Black Rhino, a species brought back from the brink of extinction against all poaching odds for its very valuable horn. There are soooo many different types of ungulates in the park, what my cousin Sara might call all reindeer, but they’re mostly different types of antelopes. There are tens-of-thousands of zebra and springbok, thousands of gemsbok, wildebeest, eland, impala, hartebeest, ostrich, jackals, vultures, mongooses, giraffe, and elephant, a few hundred kudu, bat-eared fox, wild cats, lions, hyena, white rhinos, and who knows how many cheetah and leopard, but there are some although spotting them is a stroke of luck. You can drive up to around 40 waterholes, and the bird-life here is a haven for bird-watchers, especially since it’s so flat and theres never a cloud in the sky during the dry season. After 3 weeks here, only going on drives about every other day, I’ve seen all of the above numerous times except white rhino, cheetah and leopards. Ive also seen a lot of spiders, skinks, other lizard things, and a dead puffader snake – all less exciting events. One evening I almost stepped on the cutest, tiny spotted owl that was camoflauged perfectly into the grey stone ground, and once we knowingly scared a wild cat out of its hole in the ground we saw it dart into, but then got more of a freight watching it jump out in lightning speed even though we knew full right that would happen. There are no mosquitos this time of year, but there are so many barbed bushes and spiky trees that you almost always have burrs or thorns on your clothes.

Since the park is fenced, migratory animals like elephants and wildebeest instead become resident, and even though the occasional animal digs itself out (lions), jumps the fence (eland, kudu) or bulldozes it over (elephants), animal populations seem to stabilize at very high densities. As much as it locks the animals into an area, it also locks out people from hunting or illegally poaching, so many animal populations are flourishing at much greater successes than they would without the fence. But, there are many problems and arguments against fencing, and the few stories I’ve heard of animals escaping from a fence but not being able to get back in (ie. Due to fence repairs) are grim – lions end up getting shot since they wander onto farmers private land and that’s their right, and one lonely hartebeest I saw on the wrong side of the fence beside the road will probably thirst to death since all the water is inside the park fence.

a tiny steenbok, looking like a deer in headlights – but don’t worry, we stopped in time

Even though a place like Chobe National Park operates without any fencing at all and I thought it was just great that way, there are convincing arguments that fencing has its pros and may be necessary for the park. However, the road infrastructure in Etosha seems very unnecessary. First of all, the roads marked on the map that’s given to tourists show a lot fewer roads than there actually are. There are a bunch of staff only roads, gravel pit roads, and old blocked roads that have become undrivable from flooding, fine dust or simply not being maintained. You can easily spot the 60 or 80 gravel pits dug all around the park to make these roads, which have been contemplated sources of anthrax spores, and sometimes the main roads are wide enough for 4 lane traffic. The speed limit is 60km/h, way too fast to avoid daily roadkill, and there’s something wrong about seeing a BMW sedan taking a speedy ‘safari-drive’ through the park whose roads cater easily to any type of car – even 60-passenger coach buses. Strangely enough, the most common roadkill are birds in flight – the silly things fly right under your wheel, or in my personal experience, into the side of the car or into the car antenna poles.

After becoming intimately connected to Kubublanco, it was comforting to see that the majority of all trucks both in and outside the park are Toyota Hiluxes, with the occasional Land Cruiser or Isuzu in the mix. At the research camp in Okaukuejo, UC Berkeley has 3 hiluxes, all with 400,000km+ on them, but still trucking, although very unreliable in an early-morning, cold start.

Links: http://www.namibiareservations.com/etoshasafaricampe.html

July 8, 2010

Namibia so far…

wildebeest on the Etosha salt pan

I never thought southern Africa would have such a strong American or European presence, but South Africa was definitely heavily European influenced, and the installment of English as the national language in all 4 of the countries I visited was also strange, but quite useful. However, Namibia was even more complicated, with their recent independence from South Africa still leaving a bunch of Afrikaans speakers, and their prior colonial ties to Germany allowing German to be even more common, yet English declared the official language. Deutsch, Flemish and German tourists benefited greatly in both South Africa and Namibia, often understanding bits of all three languages. The English or American presence was more noticeable in South Africa and Botswana, with a lot of ex-Peace Corps, researchers/scientists, and African-born British citizens working in tourism, government, or as doctors/vets.

zebra drinking at Okaukuejo Waterhole

I barely spent any time in Windhoek before making the 5 hr journey north to Etosha National Park, where Im staying. June and July are considered winter in Namibia, but according to my familiarity with Canadian and Icelandic winters, I can tell you its certainly more like summer time. Winter here really just means the days are a little shorter and the nights get cold. One night it did drop to 3 degrees celsius, which I agree is cold, but the day highs are still 20 or 25, and its been sunny every single day without a cloud in the sky. Sometimes its windy, which can either be a refreshing breeze or actually cool you, but damn is it dry here. Its also super flat and dusty so when a car drives along a road throughout the park, you can see the cloud of dust it kicks up from miles away. Etosha Salt Pan is a dried out lake bed that is so dry it is one of the biggest sources of dust in Africa. Add a little bit of wind and you can try to imagine what the air is like here. EVERYTHING is covered in grayish dust, and my skin is so dry that the baby oil I smother on it after showering is completely absorbed within minutes. My hair is fried, but Ive got enough to spare so that’s ok, but the dust is no good for cameras, changing lenses, changing film, or typing outside. It kind of reminds me of burning man conditions, and when you look over the vast expanse of the salt pan, hundreds of wildebeest, zebra, springbok, oryx (antelope that look like Samurais), and the occasional jackal or lion trying to create havoc look like their having their own Burning Man festival, Wildlife themed. When they’re far away, they look like floating black dots in the mirage, and then I feel like Im experiencing some artistic, optical illusion they’ve planned perfectly.

My allergies aren’t bad here, since all the vegetation is totally dried up, but I maybe sneeze ten times per day on average with all the dust. It gets annoying, and everyone must think I have a persistent cold. But, the dry season is great for animal spotting, since all the herbivores and therefore carnivores start to concentrate around the few remaining water sources. Many water holes in Etosha National Park aren’t natural, for different reasons. Some water holes fill naturally during the wet season, but are only created because of the gravel pits dug by park management for creating roads. Some water holes are natural but pumped articially to keep the water levels high enough to drink out of, and this is probably because the resident population of Etosha National park takes water for itself. There are 3 main camps inside the park (which is a huge 22,000km²), and I am staying in Okaukuejo but there’s also Halali and Namutoni. All three are inhabited with permanent staff from the Ministry of Tourism and Environment, lodging facilities for tourists, and all the tourism staff from NWR, the para-statal Namibian Wildlife Resort organization that monopolizes all camping in the park. Other operators can only enter during the day and drive around with their tourists for a while and then must exit before sunset. For it to be partly privatized but still 51% owned by the government means there is a lot of corruption in the higher rankings, with ridiculous salaries paid out to a certain few funded by the exuberant prices tourists must pay for the monopolized industry. However, NWR still quotes annual losses, so the government ends up bailing them out, and thus tax dollars are actually being used to pay for national park management where elsewhere, and in more typical situations, national parks are supposed to be a source of revenue for both local people and the government. NWR staff are all local Namibians, which I support fully, but there is little job accountability since being fired is almost impossible and even though tourists pay between $100-$300US per night for indoor accomodation, the quality of service is poor. The indoor accommodation is perfectly clean and somewhat luxurious, but rooms are small and the landscaping around the camp is almost non-existent. The only green, relaxing part of the camp is around the pool, while the camp site is comprised of square plots side by side on a big, dusty gravel lot. The game drives that go three times a day are 3 hrs long, with sometimes unqualified tour guides, so you may be lucky and see something exciting, but you learn very little and the snack time offered half way through the drive seems like a way of prolonging the tour and making you feel like the $80US you’ve spent is well spent.

a guilty looking jackal, who probably ate some leftovers and plastic from camp

The staff all live here, in housing given to them which varies from a tent to a trailer, or an actual house to a tourist-hut meant for the $150US/night paying guest. Clearly the organisation is a bit skewed, but the most horrifying thing is that NWR promotes themselves as a green resort, advertising their attempts to recycle at the recent centenary birthday of Etosha, and is meant to follow the rule that no trash can be dumped in the park; the reality is there are huge refuge dumps within the park gates, that burn trash right there, and another, unburnt pile of all the sorted recyclables sits separately, rusting away. They still manage to complain about jackals and ground squirrels getting into their trash and becoming a pest problem, but maybe if there wasn’t trash everywhere, those animals wouldn’t be snooping around so close to camp pestering tourists.

July 7, 2010

Menoakwena & Makgadikgadi

On our last night in Botswana, we were down one with the sad departure of Chris. Clare offered we splurge and spend it at a luxurious camp called Menoakwena, ‘teeth of the crocodile’, owned and run by an old friend of hers when she used to do research on the Makgadikgadi Park where its located. The only thing I remember being told before going was that it cost $135US per night per person (discounted at the ‘friend’ rate) so I was expecting something special but had no idea how wonderful this place actually was. The capacity of the camp is only 16 guests, and its an all-meal included camp and all the guests sit together at one long table for breakfast lunch and dinner. To give you an idea of its exclusivity, Prince William regularly goes there and we only missed him by a few days since he was on his way down when we were leaving.

Even though Botswana is generally quite flat, this camp sits on a 60m ridge overlooking the Makgadikgadi, with a newly flowing river at its base where David, Clare’s friend, originally had an artificial water pump to supply the wild animals with water. After almost a 30 year draught, the river bed has started to fill again and is even borderline flooding, with the water level rising daily, and all the elephants and zebra are super happy. A family of hippos has taken a section of the water near camp as its personal territory, marking half submerged trees with its projectile spray poop. You can see quite far off into the park and wait as herd of elephants, kudu or zebra approach, and usually hear activity throughout the night.

the view from Menoakwena

The camp had a spectacular location, but still Menoakwena was also an amazingly managed, sustainable, intimate place, it almost felt too good to be true. All the light torches around camp were solar paneled, water use was very controlled (you have to order your showers in little bronze buckets in the morning), all the employees were either local or international volunteers, and everyone there (including the tourists) are supporting projects that Menoakwena runs to benefit the local communities and the environment. Their little gift shop sells crafts hand made by the community, and all the funds support different projects (Water for Life, Mothers for All) or make it back into conservation efforts like reducing human-wildlife management around the park boundary. You were treated like family visiting an old friend, and even the bar was self-service and you simply kept track of your own drinks to pay later.

Even though Kubublanco gave us a scare the first day of our road trip, she never failed us again until the drive back into Maun. We left Menoakwena by noon to make sure me and Steve made our 3pm flight, but half way there we got a flat tire. I’ve never changed a flat tire, but between the three of us, we changed that wheel in Nascar speed, and only 10 minutes later were back on the road. Needless to say we made our flight, and 2 hrs later landed in Windhoek on the flattest runway I’ve ever seen – so flat you actually saw it round away into the horizon.

Links: Menoakwena Site: www.menoakwena.com

And, if you are interested in volunteering for Davids Water for Life project, contact him directly at kksafari@ngami.net

July 2, 2010

Maun & the Okavanga Delta

on the narrow makoro sailing through water lilies

We spent three nights based out of Maun to see some of the Okavango Delta, and took an organised, overnight Makoro trip to actually spend the better part of 2 days camping in the delta. A makoro boat is basically a hollowed-out tree trunk, and fits only 2 people plus the poler standing on the back. With all that weight plus your camping supplies, the sides of the boat are maybe only 2 inches higher than the surface of the (very calm, thankfully) water, and the bottoms of the boat also aren’t perfectly water proof as water soaks in through the bark, forcing you to sit on a stack of hay grass to keep your bum dry. This was slightly unnerving since we all had camera equipment, money, phones, passports, or something that shouldn’t get wet, but we made it just fine there and back, sailing through some of the most beautiful, waterlily-filled waters you’ve ever seen.

a huge termite mound and our guide

We had a guide with us the entire time who showed us to our very private, shaded camp site, made fire for us to cook on, and took us on 2 game walks around the area. We saw giraffe, ostrich, wildebeest, zebra, some cool birds, a whole lot of termite mounds and buffalo. I had no idea that buffalo are apparently one of the most dangerous wildlife to humans, and Steve explained to me they weren’t anything like the other ungulates since if one spots you, it looks at you like it owes you money, just before it stampedes you to death. Lovely. Our guide only had a walking stick, so luckily they weren’t close enough to care, and we also never ran into any lions or hippos, also sometimes deadly to you if you aren’t in a car.

giraffes… all legs and neck

Once we returned to the town of the poler and tour guide, a car transfer had to pick us up to take us back to Audi Camp, where we were staying in Maun. We were relieved to have made it in those boats with all our stuff dry, but the road back was also flooded. Even though we had driven it the day before to get to the Makoros, the water levels had risen overnight and quite frankly, we had an incompetent driver. The first mistake was they put us and a bunch of others in the big jeep and all our luggage in a trailer dragged behind the car, which was much lower to the ground than we were. The second mistake is the driver was either half asleep or it was his first time driving a standard and he stalled the car in the middle of the deepest part of the flooded road. The third mistake is the trailer wasn’t waterproof, and after spending 5 minutes to try and start the car, answered ‘no’ to my query, ‘umm, the trailer is basically underwater so it must be waterproof, right?’

sunset behind the delta

Goodbye brand new Olympus Evolt, my first and only DSLR camera, Steve’s 55-200mm zoom lens and cellphone, and all our tents, sleeping bags and clothes were freshly river washed. Audi camp refused to take any responsibility, and after a lot of discussing and hanging all our stuff to try in and in front of reception (explaining to every passing guest what had happened), they offered to refund us the $60 cost of the transfer (even though we paid them close to $600US for trip for the 4 of us). Moral of the story: don’t take trips with Audi Camp, in fact, don’t even stay with them, since they kind of suck and the owner is a jerk. And even though they do have ridiculously good burgers at the restaurant there, they’re super overpriced and you can get a way bigger, more delicious, local Botswana meal for under $2US in town.