day 4: damaraland (namibia)

Day 4 began and ended in Damaraland, which did not involve much driving--yay!  The big hit of the day was the San art rock engravings that date from 2,000 to 6,000 years old.  The site is called Twyfelfontein, which means 'doubtful spring' because the amount of water coming out was considered to be too small for permanent human occupation.  However, the spring has continued to bubble constantly over the past 65 years or so--the time of the first white occupation following World War II.  Yes, the first white occupation was after WWII, wow--that was the time period when emigrated Germans and Afrikaners forcibly removed the native people from this land.  

Before the sun arched too high Jennifer and I climbed to the top of a large ridge line, forging a hiking trail of our own, in order to look out over the plains.  This was one of our best panoramas.  You will note the white and black surfaces that look scorched from fire, but are actually the color of exposed rock.  The white rocks are quartz and the black rocks are a volcanic intrusion that is similar to basalt.  

These vertical rock columns are called the organ pipes--you can see why--and were exposed through a stream eroding the landscape and cutting through the rock.

This is an interesting rock formation--next to the basalt intrusion on the left we have a different type of mineral form that I haven't identified.  It is shiny and gray and flakes apart in thin planes.  If you know something about this rock/mineral please let me know.  It seems to have formed in the cooling process after the magma intrusion.

This is the "burnt mountain" that is actually just exposed rock.

A rock with significant iron deposits--you can tell from the orange rust.

Very interesting to note that the white sections of this picture are actually exposed white quartz.

day 5: damaraland to swakapmund (namibia)

On day 5 Jennifer and I left Damaraland at sunrise to drive across a landscape that had received its first major rain in three years only two weeks prior.  So, it looked a fantastic green--the desert in bloom.  We drove past huge outcroppings of red-orange sandstone that lit up in the morning sun and dodged cows that roamed free throughout the landscape.  The only people we saw lived in shacks and maintained the herds of cows, besides two roadside stops, where a nearly naked Himba impersonator, with breasts bared, would try to motion us off the road to buy trinkets from her stand.  The Himba tribes in Northwestern Namibia are famous for retaining their ancient culture and are often visited as a tourist attraction.  The Himba tribe visit was something we cut out of our original plans.

To arrive at the coast of Namibia we needed to cross a vast desert that contained almost no vegetation.  There were a couple of succulent bushes that were able to absorb moisture from fog or mist once we came within 20 miles of the coast.  In this vast desert we were fortunate to come across a brown hyena--one of the rarest predators in Africa.  Sadly, the hyena was dead on the road and had been hit earlier that morning or in the night.  Brown hyenas are almost never seen because they move through the desert at night and are solitary animals covering vast amounts of space to find food.

The fur seal colony was interesting, but smelled so awful that it almost wasn't worth the trip.  There were just as many living seal pups as there were dead seal pups and the flies were swarming us in the summer sun.  The pictures were fun to take and the living seal babies would cry to us as we walked by them over the boardwalk.  The seals--both mothers and babies were gathered under the boardwalk to hide from the sun, or at least that is our reason for this behavior.  Thousands of seals were gathered on the beach, with each male having a harem of multiple females.  All of the seals needed to compete for space, which created a cacophony of grunts and yelps.  Mother seals need to hunt for food every few days, then return to find their pup on the beach midst this ruckus--not an enviable job.  

One of the most amazing parts of this picture is the green grass--all of the grazers seemed pretty happy with it.

This is the Brandberg Mountain, which rises strait out of the desert.  It is not part of any mountain chain and is over 6,000 feet tall.

This is the brown hyena--note how long the fur is.  Brown Hyenas, differing from the more common spotted hyena, are more like wolves of the desert.  They have small family groups and often hunt alone for small game

day 3: etosha national park (namibia)

We woke up at Namutoni rest camp before sunrise, packed the car and hit the road with hot coffees in hand to try and spot some game before moving on out of Etosha.

Our morning had a magical start as we watched black-faced impala and zebra bound out to their morning grazing spot just a few minutes after the sun rose. We watched a group of zebra fend off a hyena, and then watched the hyena track the zebra for ten minutes or so across the big plain before disappearing from view.

We made our way back west across the park, retracing our steps and seeing more oryx, wildebeest, and giraffe.

After leaving the park, we drove another four hours or so to the tiny outpost of Khorixas, beyond which the road turned to dirt. We were slowed by herds of goats and cows in the road; they always managed to run out of the way of the car, but usually not until the last second. We also saw people traveling the same paved and dirt roads by donkey cart. The axel of the cart and wheels were usually from a car.

We stopped at a petrified forest site to see the hardened remains of 250 million-year-old trees. These giant coniferous trees grew in central Africa during an ice age, and as the ice age melted they were washed down to north-central Namibia in floods. They were buried under silt and mud where they landed, outside the town of Khorixas, and after millions of years wind and rain erosion began to uncover the petrified wood. Locals first started finding pieces in the 1950s. One tree is nearly preserved at its full length of over 250 feet.

Our destination for the night was Abu Huab community-run rest camp, where we took a beautiful campsite next to the dusty Huab riverbed. Just a couple of weeks before desert elephants had come through and stepped on a pipe, making one shower unusable.

Black-faced impalas graze a few minutes after sunrise.

A large male black-faced impala.

These zebra were grazing in the same field as the impala. It was interesting to see how many animals chose to graze near each other.

A kori bustard struts through the grass.

A view of zebra walking across the pan under early morning skies.

A troop of helmeted guinea fowl. These guys are common near our house too - we see at least one or two every time we go for a walk.

Oryx, or gemsbok, go grazing. We saw oryx all across the country.

day 2: etosha national park (namibia)

Jennifer and I began our day at the Halali watering hole which is located in shrubland dominated by mopane trees. There was not much to be seen at the watering hole, so we quickly moved on to taking down camp and driving towards the Etosha Pan to step into a world beyond.

The crackled and salty surface of the pan stretched to the horizon where heat waves separated the surface of land from sky. We dug with our fingers into the hardened surface of the pan to find moist clay below which we shaped into a dice and baked under the windshield over the next ten days.

From the pan, we drove to a few different watering holes, seeing many giraffe up close. The giraffe were larger than life and seemed most closely related to diplodachus from The Land Before Time movie rather than any animal we know.

Other interesting sightings included black-faced impala and kudu moving under the mopane trees to keep cool while eating fresh green grass that was shooting up after a recent summer rain.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset that we watched from a fort tower in the Namutoni rest camp. After dark, we watched a few hyenas (or hy-henas, as Bill Petoskey says) walk around the watering hole under a full moon. Our awesome new binoculars were able to give us a sort of low-light night vision that made viewing possible.

Halali watering hole around 7 am.

View over the park from a hill near Halali rest camp.

I threw a rock down this hole and immediately heard a bunch of bats begin flying around and squeaking at me. They were not happy, but luckily they stayed inside.

A beautiful plains wildebeest.

Our first sighting of a white rhino!  White rhinos are larger than black rhinos and have an extra fold of skin under their arms.  They are very big animals.

Turn and face.  These guys want to make sure you know that they know that you are there.

Rhino rears.

Yes, this was our third rhino spotting of the day.  Sorry we can't hand over binoculars, but if you zoom way in you can see a large brown-gray lump in the middle of the picture.  It is resting in the shade of the tree.

The bakkie (Afrikaans for pickup) and the sky.

day 1: etosha national park (namibia)

Here comes part one of a long series of blog posts full of pictures of our road trip north to Namibia! We had an absolutely amazing time, and can't wait to share the whole trip. We drove from Windhoek (after a short flight from Cape Town) north to Etosha National Park, where we spent three nights. We then went to a region called Damaraland, west of Etosha, between the park and the coast, for two nights. Then on to the Skeleton Coast for one night in the bustling vacation town of Swakopmund, and back into the desert for three nights in the Naukluft mountains to do some hiking. We finished the trip with two nights in Sesriem to see the sand dunes at Sossussvlei. We got to watch the sun rise on Christmas morning over the dunes.

More on that later! Here's a description of what we did and what we saw on our first day.

We flew to Windhoek, the capital, picked up our rental car (a "4x4" - pickup with 4-wheel drive, equipped with a rooftop tent and camping gear) and braved the shopping mall in the center of town on the last Saturday morning before Christmas to buy groceries before heading up the road to Etosha.

We drove north on the B1, one of only a handful of paved roads in the country, to Okakuejo (oh-kah-kwey-yo), a camp and lodge just inside the southeastern gate of Etosha National Park. We had pretty high expectations for our Etosha trip - we'd heard it is in the same range of parks as Kruger National Park - and we weren't disappointed.

The park is oriented around a giant (mostly) dry lake bed called the Etosha Pan. Once a year (or every few years) this pan fills with a few inches of water, and giant flocks of flamingos come to visit. We didn't see that, although we were there during rainy season, but we did see lots of heat shimmers that looked like water! And tons of other wildlife.

We got into the park and were pleasantly surprised to see a bull (male) elephant near the side of the road. After setting up camp and cooking dinner, we spent about two hours at the floodlit water hole where we saw lots of action: jackal, owl, two male lions, another bull elephant, and a black rhinoceros. 

The next morning, we got up and took our first game drive. We were so excited to see the many grazing animals and some bigger guys too.

We had our first big animal sighting (aside from 5 warthogs, goats and cows on the highway, and a red hartebeest and two giraffe on the road from the airport) just a few minutes after we got into the park! A big bull (male) elephant with half a tusk missing.

After watching a jackal chase an owl for about 15 minutes at the water hole, we were thrilled to see this guy and his friend come in, drink, and play for about ten minutes. If you can't quite make him out yet, check the next picture.

Yep, a male lion. Young males sometimes roam around together. We watched them lay around at the water hole, then get up and slowly stalk away. One turned and let out a low roar, which was truly amazing to hear.

The excitement at the waterhole continued that night: the two lions moved off with a roar (literally, so cool!) and a minute or two later, this guy moved in. Our second bull elephant!

And THEN we saw this guy! A black rhino! Really. It was a big night.

The elephant moves off under the full moon.

We set off on our morning game drive the next day and saw giraffe barely out of the gate.

A jackal's den! We counted four pups. Can you pick out this one?

Herds of springbok (the namesake of South Africa's rugby team) grazed on this flat landscape.

nelson mandela memorial service (as viewed from cape town)

You've probably heard about this memorial service on the local news. It was certainly the talk of the town here in Cape Town yesterday. Nelson Mandela's official memorial service was held in Johannesburg, at a soccer stadium near the township of Soweto (where Nelson Mandela lived in the 1950s with his wife Winnie).

Jim and other teachers streamed audio from the event while at school; I was in Cape Town, and stopped at the Grand Parade outside City Hall to watch a few of the speeches on the big screens set up for crowds there. The day was not declared a national holiday, which may have had an impact on crowds - they seemed to be smaller than expected in Cape Town.

I was interested to hear who was popular with the crowds, both in the stadium and on the street in Cape Town. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received cheers as he began his speech from the Cape Town crowd, who were much more respectful than the audience at the stadium (who continued to sing songs during almost all the speeches). Former President Bill Clinton also received applause. Images of Zimbabwe's long-time president Robert Mugabe on the big screen were also big hit (Mugabe is controversial for his human rights abuses, nearly 30-year grip on power, devestating impact on Zimbabwe's economy, and policies of "indigenisation" - a law passed in 2008 that gives black Zimbabweans the right to take over and control many foreign owned companies in Zimbabwe). Former President George W. Bush (who Mandela had criticized over the invasion of Iraq) got a few boos, as did current South African President Jacob Zuma (Zuma's were much more intense, and likely stem from the ongoing and recent accusations of corruption as well as general dissatisfaction with poverty, unemployment and crime in SA, especially in black communities).

But the biggest applause by far went to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Every time they were captured on camera, the crowd erupted at the stadium, and I heard loud applause in the Grand Parade in Cape Town. I was back in the car by the time Obama spoke, but it was clear that his speech was well-received (to say the least) - it got a standing ovation.  I was awed by his speech (as were the radio commentators I listened to), and appreciated that he used the moment to call listeners to action and not just reflection. Here's a link to the audio and the prepared text, in case you missed it.

Rest in peace, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. 

bees shut down the middle school

 Better HD videos will be loaded later--internet here is a little slower than the states.

Bees Swarm Middle School Courtyard

Moving bees into the box

Queen Bee Walks into box

mandela movie and new political organization

After watching "Mandela:  Long Walk to Freedom" last night Jennifer and I were blown away by how accurate and vivid the imagery of South Africa and the race relations was portrayed.  The violence and struggle for political freedom has changed forms, but the sociopolitical landscape remains largely unchanged since Mandela was elected.  The pervasive attitude towards race has changed much, but there are still many ignorant people of all races.  In addition, economic conditions for white, black, and people of color have not changed much.  The poorest settlements are nearly 100% black and most do not have any running water.  Currently, there are large protests taking place to improve sanitation in the settlements.  In Khayelitsha there are currently ten households sharing a single porto-potty.  It is incredibly sad to drive by these settlements on our way to and from great adventures in South Africa.

One important realization that Jennifer and I have come to is that the settlements are a constructed reality--that they do not have to exist.  They were created in a system that was designed to make living situations so horrible that black Africans would move into the interior of South Africa.  Of course the interior of South Africa is not arable and there are no chances for employment--besides the mines of course, which have a continual supply of very cheap labor.  So, after twenty years of political freedom there has been little progress in addressing rampant poverty in the settlements. 

An interesting movement to watch is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who are currently vying for a majority vote in the Cape Flats.  The EFF stands in support of gaining more land for settlement and improving sanitary conditions within the settlements.  The EFF is running as opposition to the African National Congress (ANC), which was Nelson Mandela's party.  Corruption within the ANC and opposition to leftist proposals, the ANC is leans way left and can identify as communist, by the Democratic Alliance (DA) have thwarted much of the progress.  In other words, change is possible, but the political gridlock and corruption prevent progress from occurring.  For this reason I think the introduction of a third party and truly the second black party in South Africa will prove very interesting to watch.  The DA is the white party within South Africa and leans right. 

Here is the website for the EFF:  http://www.economicfreedomfighters.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7SKQZYdZ1c

Despite Malema's beret we hope he continues nonviolent protests, such as the Poo Protests, in which human faeces is dumped in front of government buildings, on major highways, and at the international airport, in an effort to draw attention to the horrid sanitary conditions within the settlements.

Hopefully positive change will continue--economic repression is still rife within South Africa--yet I believe these protests would never have been allowed to happen twenty years ago.  Democracy isn't always pretty, but it does mean progress towards a mutual understanding.

This is my first socially focused blog post, but I think it comes at an apt time as we reflect on the socioeconomic landscape that was changed so much for the good by Mandela.