Change In Plans

Greetings from Doro !Nawas Lodge in Damaraland, Namibia. Happy Inauguration Day, America. I’m sorry we aren’t near a TV (or near Washington).

We have had quite a day. It was not filled with speeches and oaths and promises of change, but it was packed with red Namibian sand.

Yesterday afternoon, Zola and I signed up to go sandboarding. Early this morning, the whole family piled into our rented pickup truck, and followed a Volkswagen Kombi full of sandboarding dudes out to the dunes about 15 km from Swakopmund. After getting our gear (a cheap snowboard with good bindings and a pair of Dolce & Gabbana boots for me, a pressboard sled, gloves and elbow pads for Zola, helmets for both), we started hiking up a big sand dune.

The walk up took about ten minutes, climbing about 300 vertical feet. At the top, the instructions were simple: “Can you snowboard? Good, this should be easy. Use this industrial metal polish to wax your board. Then go down the hill. Ready?”

The run down took about 45 seconds and required six turns. My snowboarding skills are rusty, but the sand is slower and much more forgiving than New England snow. It was definitely fun.

Starting on my second run, the board dudes encouraged me to get air off of the wooden jump they had built at the top. I tried three times, but crashed savagely on each landing. It wasn’t pretty, and I will be sore tomorrow. India took some great pictures (still no Internet, so no pictures postable) which make me look much cooler than I will ever be.

While I sandboarded, and Tallulah and India flirted wildly with the four handsome, Obama-loving sandboard dudes, Zola was sandsledding on the slope behind me. The dudes had a radar gun, and clocked him at just over 60 km/h, which is amazingly fast when your chin is two inches from the sand . I took one run on the sled, and it was actually much more of an adrenaline rush than the pokier vertical sandboarding.

60 KILOMETERS PER HOUR!

After a few hours, we all hiked across the desert floor again to our cars, took off our gear and drank some water. Every square inch of my exposed skin was caked in sand. Zola found a recently dead scorpion (the hugely lethal parabuthis transvaalicus) as he walked in the desert, so we added it to his collection of souvenirs.

VERY DEADLY (AND VERY DEAD) SCORPION

We left the group a little early to hurry back to Swakopmund for quad biking and then to start the long drive up to Damaraland. We had been told it would take 6-7 hours to cover the 400 km distance, and India was eager for us to get going.

Driving out of the dunes area, I followed the (wrong) road down into a dry riverbed, and got our bakkie stuck up to the axles in loose sand. Even with tires deflated, in 4 Low with Diff Lock on, we were 100% stuck.

REALLY, REALLY STUCK IN THE SAND

This is one of those situations which is not fun, but could have been so much worse that we were all kind of OK with it. We could see Swakopmund and a major road from the bakkie, and we had cell phone coverage. The sandboard dudes even stopped to help us.

That said, I dug sand on my belly for nearly an hour, and tried several times to drive us out. I succeeded only in further entombing us. Eventually, I gave up, and figured out how to call a garage.

Less than 10 minutes after I spoke to an Afrikaans mechanic named Steen by cell phone, he rolled up in an old Ford F250 tow truck. He pulled us out, in five minutes, and said, “That was easy.” Steen’s fee was the best US$ 20 I have spent in a long time. .

We drove back into Swakopmund at about 10 km/h, on our deflated tires and with the transmission inexplcably stuck in 4L Diff Lock. People stared and laughed as our tires chirped and we rolled slowly by: I guess it was obvious what had happened. We reinflated the tires, and eventually the truck allowed itself to be shifted back into 2×4.

Despite the lost time (nearly 2 hours had elapsed since sandboarding, including futile digging and tire reinflation), India consented to letting Zola and me do the quad biking as we had scheduled.

The quad bike place was thrilled to tell us that we were riding in Brad Pitt’s tire tracks. Apparently he went quad biking 13 times while he and Angelina Jolie were in Swakopmund waiting for the baby to be born.

IS THAT BRAD PITT UNDER THE HELMET?

Feeling like some combination of Mr. Smith, the Fight Club founder, and the young felonious cowboy from ‘Thelma and Louise,’ Zola and I roared out into the sand dunes. For Zola, in particular, this was a pretty awesome adventure. He managed to not crash (thankfully), and definitely felt like a big man on his 125 cc ATV. I liked it too.

Finally, at 2:30, we drove out of Swakopmund, and into the lunar desertscape away from the ocean. The first hour of the drive was wildly beautiful and completely desolate.

While waiting for french fries at a cafe in Henties Bay (literally the last town for 200 miles), I bought a t-shirt that advertises some alcohol called “RamKat”. The front has a cool logo of a lion with sheep’s horns. On the back, it reads, in Afrikaans:

“Speak Afrikaans, Eat Beef Jerky, and Drink RamKat. Or Shut Your Mouth.” The direct translation of the last bit is “Or Close Your Beak,” but in very rude language you would use to command a farm animal. I’m not sure where I will wear this shirt, but it is cool.

Our expected 7 hour trip only took about four and a half hours, through lots of dramatic and varied scenery. Tallulah slept most of the way, dreaming of Fancy Nancy and sandboard dudes. Zola finished reading his third Hardy Boys mystery in two days, and then started reading the fourth book in the ‘Artemis Fowl’ series. India entertained me by reading aloud the long and very weird Vanity Fair article on “Clark Rockefeller.” Later she improvised a puppet show for all of us, starring two of Tallulah’s dolls. Both kids laughed hysterically.

So, we are happy to be here in Damaraland; tired, thirsty, and pulling sand from every orifice, We are looking forward to seeing desert-adapted elephants and rhinos tomorrow.

Namibia is great.