Change In Plans

Greetings from Cape Town!  This post tries to summarize our nearly three weeks in the desert.  As I wrote a few days ago, it may be my favorite part of the trip so far.  I have been trying to figure out why I liked it so much, and what lessons we can apply to the rest of our travels.

Here are some of the fun facts from the trip:

• We were on the road for 20 days, from the date we flew from Cape Town to Upington to the date we flew from Windhoek to Cape Town.
   
• We stayed in 13 different places, which seems like a lot.  These ranged from the very basic (camp sites in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park) to the extremely comfortable (Wolwedans, Little Kulala, Little Ongava, Mowani).  None of these fancy lodges existed in Namibia ten years ago.
   
• We drove 3,400 kilometers on the roads, which means about 40 hours in our rented bakkie.  We also took 21 game drives, averaging about 3 hours each.  All in this means we were driving around on average 4-5 hours a day.  Wow! That seems like a lot as well.
   
• We went on 8 guided game walks, mostly seeing insects, birds, plants and sand.  We also had the long walks to climb sand dunes, to go for sunset drinks, and to go sandboarding.  We shook sand out of our shoes at least 2,000 times (an estimate).
    

CHEETAH IN MID-GROWL

• We saw a lot of game: about 25 lions, 9 cheetah (four essentially in captivity), 26 desert-adapted elephants, 4 venomous snakes, 8 rhino, 500 or so zebras, and about 8 million gemsboks.  No shortage of gemsboks in the desert.
     
  

  THE UBIQUITOUS GEMSBOK

   

• We bought 300 liters of diesel fuel for the bakkie, and no liters of normal gasoline.  I worried about this all of the time.  Also, we only really got stuck once, which was a relief.  We also did not crash, although I nearly ran over a suicidal ostrich, and we had an uncomfortably  close call on the dune track near !Xaus Lodge.
   
• Mostly while we were driving, Zola read about 2,500 pages: three Hardy Boys, the last three books of the Artemis Fowl series, the last two of Percy Jackson, five Michael Morpurgo novels, and a few desert-specific novels (eg, Meerkat Manor).  We are glad he can read in the car and not get carsick.  We are also glad that Swakopmund had some good bookstores.
   
• We met some great guides and people working at lodges: Jason (the Argonaut), Samuel (the musician), Moses (who led us through the desert), Gabriel (the Archangel), Lister (the elephant finder), the three Americans, Joe at Doro !Nawas, Jennifer at Little Kulala, Ellen and Vincent at Mowani, Arne, Ingrid and Rob (the wonderful Dutch), Frederick the Studious, Hayward the Chef, and our favorite all time name - Mighty Power.
  

  MIGHTY POWER AND HAYWARD AT WOLWEDANS

   

• The desert attracts characters.  Many people seem to flee to Namibia to avoid extradition or publicity.   Wesley Snipes hid from his tax problems there.  Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie famously waited for a baby in Swakopmund.  We met and were charmed by Eva, la femme mysterieuse. We met a very rich American father and son, and their too young and beautiful wives (?), whose story didn’t quite make sense.  We wondered, idly, what some of the very elderly German men in Swakopmund did during the war.  India wondered how why the proportion of ruggedly handsome men is so high in Namibia.

RELAXING ON DUNE 45 - SOSSUSVLEI

HAVING FUN IN NORTHERN NAMIBIA

Greetings from Windhoek, Namibia!  After 20 days and 3,400 kilometers of driving, our desert adventure is coming to an end.  We fly back to Cape Town tomorrow morning.

In a later post, I will try to summarize some of what we have seen and done in the Kalahari and in Namibia.  I think the joy of this part of our trip boils down to just good, old-fashioned red-neck fun. 

This post is about our last day at Etosha.  Because it had rained so much, we did not see a lot of game.  That said, yesterday I saw four things for the first time in my life.  Once I am able to download photos, you will be able to see some of these things as well.

1- Lethal Scorpion Up Close and Personal: Driven by Zola the Obsessive, we have been talking about scorpions more or less continuously since we were at Tswalu three weeks ago.  We have been driving around with a dead parabuthis transvaalicus (maybe the deadliest of them all) drying on the dashboard of our truck.  Zola found it in the sand dunes near Swakopmund last week.   We have even been singing a little family song I made up, to the tune of “We are the Champions” by Queen.

After she finished her lunch yesterday, Tallulah was sitting on the floor of the outdoor deck at Little Ongava.  Because it has been such a topic of conversation, no one really paid attention to her when she said “Scorpion!” until she had said it several times.

Sure enough, crawling around on the underside of the wooden coffee table was a juvenile “Deathstalker” scorpion.  He was light brown and black, with slender pincers and a fat tail.  Thank goodness Lu had the common sense to look and shout repeatedly rather than touch.

With incredibly high-tech equipment (a post card and a drinking glass), we captured the specimen and looked at him closely.  He seemed pretty mad, and struck against the side of the glass several times.  Based on “it’s us vs. them” rationale, my vote was to squash him, but Rob, the lodge manager carried the scorpion out into the woods and set him free.

Slightly scary encounter, but amazing to see one at such close range.

A COMICALLY HUGE HORN

2- Comically Long-Horned Rhinoceros: in our afternoon game drive we came on a female rhino with a year-old calf.  Because both animals had their heads down, grazing on the deep grass, it took a few minutes to realize how long the mother’s horn was.  Crazy long. Like four feet (or 120 cm) long.  Double the length of any rhino horn I had seen before.  The Boogie Nights of rhino horns.

It is hard to describe why Cyrana de Bergerhino’s horn was so funny to look at.  It was just so wildly out of proportion with the rest of her (still huge) rhino body.  In the days of rhino poaching in Namibia, this would have provided dagger handles for a thousand Yemeni warriors and princes.  We kept waiting for her to raise her head from the thick grass, just to gawk at the giant horn. 

For what it’s worth, the baby rhino appeared to have a completely normal and body-size proportional horn.

BRAWLING GIRAFFE POSITIONING FOR THE FIGHT

3- Giraffes Fighting:  later on in the same game drive, we saw two young male giraffes engaged in neck-to-neck combat.  Most of the same-species animal fights we have seen (including an awesome warthog vs. warthog match two weeks ago) are very quick and violent, with the winner and loser quickly determined.  Neither animal seems to get hurt badly, and one backs away and runs for it.

The giraffe fight happened in slow motion.  For most of the 30 minutes we watched, the giraffes stood shoulder to shoulder, facing in different directions, and jockeying gracefully for position.  This involved a lot of foot shuffling, generally on a circular path, with one giraffe always walking slowly backwards.  Both giraffes held their heads high, and kept looking straight ahead, not at the other.

Occasionally there would be a short break in the action, when the circling had led to some new forage, and both giraffes would stop to graze for a few minutes.

Eventually, one of the giraffes would start a crazy swinging motion with his neck and head, build up some momentum, and whomp the other one in the hindquarters.  The whompee would stagger a little, regain his balance, swing his neck and head, and return the blow.

Apparently, the objective is to knock the other giraffe down with a head butt to the flank.  This almost never happens.  The reason they are so cautious is that if you end up behind the other giraffe, he will kick you in the head and kill you.  With a lot of downside risk, and not much offensive upside potential, the actual contact is sporadic and not very damaging.  I tried to make an analogy between giraffe fighting and the Cold War, but no one wanted to hear it.

4- Green In the Desert: I still can’t get over how much water there is on the roads, and how lush and dense the vegetation is.  It is completely different from the three other times we have been to Etosha.  This much green in the desert is definitely a first for me.

Last night it started bucketing down again right after we got back from our game drive.  So much for sunset drinks.  We found out that the thatch roof in our bungalow leaks pretty badly, as Zola and Tallulah got dripped on in their beds. 

On that wet note, our three weeks in the desert is coming to an end.  We have had a great time: it may be my favorite part of our world-round trip to date. 

Surprisingly, at least to me, the long and lonely drives have been the most fun.  The kids have been (generally) very pleasant company, and we have had time to talk and sing and laugh on the road.  Zola has read at least 2,000 pages, and asked at least 2,000 questions.

That said, when I suggested that we skip tomorrow’s flight, and spend the next three days driving from Windhoek to Cape Town, I was voted down 3-1.  Everything in moderation, I guess.

NAMIBIA IS AWESOME!

Greetings from Etosha National Park in Northern Namibia.

“Etosha” is the Otjivambo word for “a large white expanse.” For years, India has referred euphemistically to big bellies (including mine) as Etoshas. This is more polite than “beer gut.”

The Etosha Park is roughly the size of Massachusetts, and is normally very dry. It is usually a great place to view game, because you can sit by a water hole, and the animal kingdom comes to you.

It rained hard here for the several days prior to our arrival. Everything that is normally sparse, brown, and dry is dense, verdant, and lush. Dense vegetation and dispersed availability of water make it difficult to see a lot of animals - except for giraffe, whose heads still stick out above the low vegetation.

We spent our morning game drive appreciating birds, dodging big puddles, and smelling the incongruous smell of dense vegetation in the desert. We also saw a cool-looking Namaqua chameleon.

NAMAQUA CHAMELEON WALKING VERY SLOWLY

The center of the park is the Etosha Pan, which is a dried salt-lake bed covering about 5,000 square kilometers (about 2,000 square miles - slightly larger than Rhode Island). Even with the rains, Etosha Pan continues to be “a large white expanse,” too salty for anything to grow.

From a slight elevation (about a meter), it was hot, dry salt pan for as far as the eye could see. A few brackish ponds have formed after the recent rains. 

On the horizon, shimmering in the heat waves, we could barely make out hundreds of birds, standing immobile in the pan. Weird. It was difficult to tell whether the birds were storks or flamingoes, they were just too far away.   The pan flooded most recently in 1970, but given how much rain has fallen already, this could be the year.

To be honest, I think all of us (even India) are a little game-drive weary. We have seen so many animals, in so many different types of terrain, and had so many awesome rangers. The last few weeks have increased my enthusiasm for safaris and game lodges and conservation a lot.

That said, we are probably ready to move on to a new activity. For the first time ever, the kids are very restless on the game drives.  Even Zola has run out of hypothetical questions for our perplexed guides to answer (”If a hundred black-backed jackals fought ten cheetahs and five giraffe, who would win?”. If a klipspringer raced a mountain zebra were being chased by a hyaena up that hillside, which one would get eaten?”).

I will definitely be happy to have Internet access again, to add maps and pictures to the blog, and to type on a keyboard instead of my BlackBerry.

We will enjoy another night at the absurdly comfortable Little Ongava Lodge, and then start the long drive down to Windhoek tomorrow.

PostScript- I stand corrected. In India’s words, “I am NOT weary of game drives. I just want a wilder experience. Next time, no fancy lodges, no hobbyist game drives. We are going hard core: mobile wilderness camps, deep in the bush. I will never get tired of this! Never! ”

In the timeless words of happy marriages the world over: “Yes, dear.”

SUNSET AT MOWANI MOUNTAIN CAMP

Greetings from Mowani Mountain Lodge, in Damaraland, Namibia. We made the short (25 km) drive up here from Doro !Naus yesterday afternoon.

Despite being so close together, the physical setting of Doro !Naus is totally different from that of Mowani. We went from looking at flattish desert plains, with sparse pale-yellow grass yesterday, to looking at steep hillsides covered in giant red-granite boulders today.

The west-looking view from the door of our tent is 30 kilometers of red rocks and low mountains. It looks a little like Enchantment Lodge in Sedona, but with 14 tents instead of 200 condominium units. Spectacular.

Mowani Lodge organizes sunset drinks each evening from a rocky viewpoint, set about 20 meters above the few thatched common buildings. After going on a guided nature walk in the late afternoon (which became the ‘Zola Asks a Thousand Questions Hour’), we hiked up to watch the sunset.

Mowani has the most guests in residence of all of the lodges we have stayed in in Namibia. There were 18 Germans, two flamboyant Austrians, the Namibian-husband-and-Belgian-wife manager team, and the Baird family, all sitting on cushions in the fading red sunlight. Not including us, the average age was about 65. It was a very festive atmosphere.

Klaus and Sylvia, the flamboyant Austrians, live in Namibia 4 months of the year, and have done so for the last decade. Back in Vienna, Klaus is a fashion photographer. As he waited for the optimal reddish light to photograph the sunset (it was his fifth day of waiting) he took some hilarious catwalk shots of Tallulah. She vamped wildly for his camera. Watch out, boys!

TALLULAH

Vincent, the husband of the manager couple, looked like a German army colonel out of a movie: balding, with sharply defined handsome features and excellent posture. His khaki work clothes added to his military bearing.

Vincent and Zola got to talking about snakes, which is Zola’s third favorite current topic, after Pokemon and scorpions. Vincent, the old desert hand, told us a great snake story in his soft German/Afrikaans accent.

Here is Vincent’s story (as close to verbatim as possible):

“A few years back, I was managing a camp in the Caprivi Strip, about 800 kilometers from here. We had Black Mambas there, which, as you know, are the deadliest snakes in Africa.

“One evening, an Australian couple came to me, and said, ‘Excuse us, Vincent, there is a dead mouse in our tent. Also, we may have seen a snake.’

“So I grabbed a plastic bucket and my snake stick, and I went down to their tent. Sure enough, there was a dead mouse on the floor, just inside the mosquito net. I scooped him into the bucket, and started looking around for a snake.

“Underneath the desk, I saw about 10 centimeters of a black snake tail. I started pulling the tail, to get the rest of the snake out from behind the desk. I kept pulling, and pulling, and pulling. Suddenly I was at one end of a meter-long black mamba, and he was very cross with me.

“With my Mag-Lite torch, I bashed the snake right on the head before he could bite me. I really donnered him, and killed him stone dead on the floor.

“I put the snake in the bucket, closed the lid, and tidied up the tent. The Australians went to bed.

“The next morning I went to dump the snake and the mouse into the garbage. When I opened the bucket, that black mamba flew up and struck me. I guess I had only knocked him out, not killed him.

“Fortunately, I had broken his jaw, so he couldn’t work his fangs properly. He struck again and again, his broken jaw flapping harmlessly against my leg. agains. Gave me a hell of a fright.”

Vincent drained the remainder of his gin and tonic in the twilight, and said, “Right. So who is ready to go down to dinner?”

MOMMY AND BABY

Greetings from Damaraland, Namibia. This short post is about our relatively quiet day here. Aside from a long, and great, elephant game drive this morning, and some unproductive fretting by me this afternoon, we didn’t get up to much.

The game drive was pretty awesome. We left at 7:15, which was very civilized. In the first 30 minutes, our guide, a Caprivian named Lister, showed us a lot of bush-medicine plants, and talked about the conservation area and the nearby goat-herding residents. Most of the people moved up here from South Africa in the 1970s to escape apartheid. This is a little counterintuitive, because Namibia, known then as South West Africa, was a South African colony, and had the same odious laws. Maybe the refugees just wanted some elbow room. There is plenty of that.

We stopped at a water hole, and Lister picked up the overnight tracks from one of the desert-elephant herds. He tracked the herd for about 10 kilometers, and we came upon them in a dry riverbed. The Rosie herd we had been tracking, named for its matriarch, had met up with the Oscar herd, named for its eldest recent elephant calf

In all, there were 26 desert-adapted elephants (about 4% of the world’s population), of all ages and sizes, grazing away happily on the leafy thorn trees in the sandy river bottom. Occasionally the matriarchs eyed us with defiant suspicion, but for the most part the herd focused on breaking branches and scarfing leaves.

BABY

Seeing a host of baby elephants was incredibly special. The smallest was a two-month-old, who would have come up to Zola’s shoulder (if we were foolish enough to get out of the game vehicle). All together there were about 10 sub-adults, many of whom were too little to graze. They played by chasing each other around, wrestling a little, and occasionally taking a break to find mom and breast feed.

We watched the herds for about 90 minutes. It was by far the best elephant sighting that India or I has ever had.

On the long drive back to the lodge, I read an Artemis Fowl novel aloud to Tallulah and Zola, pausing occasionally to marvel at the rugged desert landscape.

The rest of the day was lazy. Zola and I did schoolwork. I nearly finished the biography of Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, which I started two weeks ago. Tallulah reused to nap. We sat for a while by the small pool, until the hot wind and burning sun drove us back inside.

I spent a fair amount of this lazy time fretting about what we will do when our sojourn to Never Never Land, trip around the world, comes to an end. Totally unproductive behavior, and it made me unsuitable company for the rest of the family.

India and I need to spend some real time talking and deciding and planning. Generally I am in moderate denial about this golden period in my life (in our lives) concluding, and us needing to replace it with a more sustainable arrangement.

This change isn’t imminent, but it is coming, just as surely as autumn follows summer. Soon we will face up to it like adults, but probably not tonight.

Both before and after our great adventure ends, there will be fun to be had, kids and a wife to be loved, and life’s rich pageant to be enjoyed.

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.

Greetings from Swakopmund, Namibia’s favorite Atlantic beach-resort town. Everyone in the family is asleep, after a very long day. Photos and a map are forthcoming, I promise.

Last night we stayed at a hyper-chic desert lodge called Little Kulala. It is only 70 kilometers north of Wolwedans, but it feels like it is on a different planet.

Little Kulala was featured on the cover of Elle Decor magazine. Everything is finished in gray stone, natural cement, or oyster-colored paint. It has a Rasilia commercial espresso machine in the main hall for guest use. The sofas are oversized, and covered in off-white cotton. Every wall that faces toward the huge sand dunes is made completely of glass. Wolwedans is classic, but Little Kulala is self-consciously au courant.

Little Kulala is also positioned hard by Namibia’s famous red sand dunes. It feels very much like being in the desert, particularly as the hot afternoon wind creates a sand storm that briefly blocks the view of the sky. The rock-lined path to Little Kulala’s designer chalets is nearly obliterated by drifting sand.

This morning we were roused from hyper-chic slumber at 5 o’clock. Little Kulala’s primary guest activity is a sunrise tour and walk through the sand dunes of Sossusvlei.

We rode in the dark in a closed Land Rover for about 45 minutes. We entered the huge Namib-Naukluft Park (fourth largest in the world) through a private gate about 20 km south of the main gate. Zola and India, being competitive, were thrilled that we had gotten a dune-viewing advantage over the crowds at the public-gate.

The highlight of the excursion was a long hike up a sand dune called ‘Big Daddy,’ which gave us access to a dried lake bed called ‘Dead Vlei.’. As the sun rose, we quickly climbed about 250 meters above the desert floor. From the ridge near the peak of the dune, Zola and Tallulah pitched themselves over the edge, jumping, tumbling, and sliding down in the soft desert sand.

One of my abiding memories of Zola will be him laughing away at the bottom of this giant dune, his face coated with the cinnamon-sugar colored sand. At that moment, he was as happy as a nine-year old can possibly be.

After an elegant picnic breakfast, in the rising heat of the dry Sossusvlei lake bed, we started driving back to Little Kulala. Our guide, Moses, almost immediately got the Land Rover stuck in the hot, loose sand. The Old Testament references flew as we dug and pushed and (critically) deflated tires to liberate ourselves.

We arrived back at the lodge at 12:30, having been out in the desert for nearly seven hours.

Little Kulala’s water system had broken during the night, so there were no showers for the returning desert sojourners. Instead, we all jumped in the small pool, and drank fruit juice on the sand-blown deck.

Despite our intention to leave at 1 pm, 3 o’clock found us still talking to other guests, saying goodbye to the staff, and checking out. Finally, at 3:30, we got on the road for the long drive to Swakopmund.

The estimates we had been given for driving the 360 dirt-road kilometers to Swakopmund ranged from two and a half hours (impossibly fast) to six hours (ridiculously slow). In the end, it took us just under four and a half hours, including two stops to buy diesel (one successful, one not for confusing reasons), two roadside bathroom breaks, and a family photo beneath the sign that indicated we were crossing the Tropic of Capricorn.

Neither kid slept in the car, but they were both remarkably well behaved. Aside from one “Stop copying me!” blowup, the drive passed without significant drama inside the vehicle.

Outside, however, the landscape was morphing dramatically every 30-40 kilometers: flat and completely barren plains, brutally rugged looking low mountains, expansive yellow grassland, a crazy quilt of steep hillocks and valleys. Namibia is wildly beautiful.

Several years ago, India and I came upon a fatal car accident on the road to Swakopmund. The memory of that Volkswagen Golf on its roof occupied our minds as we drove, and prompted India to say “Slow down!” every 90 seconds or so throughout the drive. It would probably have been fine to reduce the speed, and to have made the trip in five hours instead of four and a half.

After seeing the ocean and turning north at Walvis Bay, we arrived in Swakopmund just after sunset. We are staying in a beach house, on stilts over the sand, with the roar of Atlantic waves breaking nearby.

Having been in the desert for nearly two weeks, the cool, moist air of the coast feels wonderful. Swakopmund is a century old, heavily German, classic beach town. Except for a few who venture all the way to Cape Town, all of Namibia’s upper-middle-class holidaymakers converge on Swakop in the summer. It is great to be back here after so many years.

For dinner, Zola picked us a great restaurant on the water, which happened to be housed in a decommissioned tug boat. Both kids were asleep at the table before dessert arrived.

Another long, fun day in amazing Namibia.

Greetings from Wolwedans Lodge (www.wolwedans.com) , in the hot and dusty heart of Namibia’s NamibRand National Park.

We arrived here yesterday afternoon, after a longer-than-expected, 400-kilometer drive from Mariental.  We were never really “lost,” but we definitely  took the long way around a few times.

In a gentle and totally innocuous way, our short time at Wolwedans has laid bare the introvert/extrovert fault line that runs through India’s and my marriage.

Basically, India is an introvert with some extrovert tendencies.  She likes people fine, but her preference is to be alone, or in a small group, and to be outdoors.  When she was a kid, she wanted to be a game ranger, She also wanted to invent a head bubble that would let her eat lunch at school without needing to talk to others.   I am basically an extrovert with extrovert tendencies.  I like being in crowds, and particularly love being with a large group of people that I know. 

We have known this about each other for a long time.

India’s introvert tendencies have found their purest form of expression here at Wolwedans.  Let me try to explain.

• Namibia has (I believe) the lowest population density of any country in the world.  It has the population of New Hampshire, spread over an area about the size of Texas.
• Within Namibia, the population is concentrated heavily (~85%) in the North and East quarter of the country - Windhoek, the capital, and the area up toweard the Angola border and the Caprivi strip. 
• The remaining 75% of the country’s land mass has about 15% of the people - about 350,000 people spread over an area the size of Utah and Colorado combined (roughly).  Even the “big” towns, like Maltahohe, have no more than about 1,000 citizens.
• Relative to the rest of Southern Namibia, the NamibRand park is even more deserted.  For the last two hours of our drive yesterday, we literally did not see another person.

Once we arrived at the gate to Wolwedans, we drove another 20 kilometers in off the public road, to a small reception area in a huge desert valley.  The pale yellow dune grass, the red sandy soil, the mountains, and the pale-blue sun-washed sky are all we can see in any direction.

This sounds pretty isolated, doesn’t it?  Perfect for the introvert in the group?  Not quite. 

Being at the main lodge, with 3-4 other guests would have been too crowded.  India reserved the “Private Camp” at Wolwedans. Getting there required another 15 minutes of driving into the desert.  They even made me park our truck, and ride down in one of the game vehicles.

So, here we are, staying in a beautiful open-air tent/wood chalet, with only birds and gemsbok for company.  India is in a state of absolute bliss, having achieved the logical extreme of isolation.  She can run on the road (no predators here), read, lie in the sun, and spend time with me and the kids. 

I, on the other hand, am feeling very anxious.  This scenario strikes close to the core of extrovert nightmares.  We are physically trapped: no car, but “try calling in on the radio if you need anything.”  There is no BlackBerry or cell phone coverage.  We are  isolated from the rest of the lodge by 6-7 kilometers. Walking to the lodge across the desert would qualify as a definite survival situation.  The main lodge, of course, is already pretty isolated in itself.  We are in the oldest desert on earth.  We do not have any structured activities planned, just an open expanse of time and space.  Anyone want a drink?

We had the rangers take us to the swimming pool (beatifully set in the high dunes) yesterday afternoon.  It was a 40-minute Land Rover drive from our camp.  This morning, Zola and I came up to the lodge’s computer to do on-line math, and for me to reassure myself that the rest of the world still exists.

To be honest, once I got past my initial anxieties, it has been fun.  Both kids are thrilled to really be out in the desert.  The sunset last night was amazing, and the little camp is very elegant and comfortable. 

I am determined that I can survive this without going crazy.  I will also have more sympathy for India the Introvert, the next time we are standing on 5th Avenue and 57th Street.