A Hungry Cat Our decision to visit Namibia was originally based on its proximity to South Africa and some extra time between Brice’s folk’s departure and Ben and Melissa's wedding. Naomi also wanted to visit because she was once the Namib representative in a Mock UN in college.  We arrived in the capitol of Windhoek the day after the Brian and Anne Lynn flew home and we were greeted with a surprisingly cosmopolitan city. The next morning we made our way south towards an area know as the Quivertree Forest. Within minutes of leaving Windhoek, we began to understand some of the realities of Namibia. It has one of the lowest population densities of any country in the world. Its extremely inhospitably dry environment makes for very difficult living conditions. This low population coupled with its relative poverty means that there are very few towns and even fewer vehicles. Only a small percentage of Namibia's roads are paved, most are dirt or sand and some are even salt. Driving in Namibia is truly a unique experience; the closest parallel would have to be Australia's Outback. You can drive for hours without seeing a town, a gas station, or even another vehicle. Due to a poor transportation infrastructure, there is a noticeable lack of mass transit options - no real bus system or train and few taxis mean that most people rely on hitchhiking to get from town to town. With only a priliminary understanding of Namibia's history and political situation, we began to draw some of our own conclusions. Namibia does not have as noticeable of a disparity between rich and poor or black and white as South Africa. We saw less extremes of rich or poor. We also did not see as much in the way of racial segregation as we expected. All in all, we quickly began to feel more comfortable in Namibia than we anticipated.
Fish River Canyon

Our first few nights had us exploring some of Namibia's many unique wonders. First off was a Quivertree Forest; trees that look like weird palm trees that got their name when the natives would use their hollow limbs to make quivers for their arrows. After that we poked around an area of bizarrely stacked and eroded rocks called the "Giants Playground" which was the first sight of Namibia's weird geology. When we arrived at our campsite that night, we had a real treat: the feeding of a pair of tame (relatively speaking) cheetahs. These beautiful cats were rescued as babies from a farm when their mother was killed and the owner of the campsite had adopted them. While these two beauties were enjoying a fine meal of horse meat, we had the pleasure of sitting with them in their cage and Naomi even got to pet one of them while it was chowing down.... never expected to watch my wife pet nearly every species of wild cat in Africa! Our next destination was the Fish River Canyon. This canyon was a African version of the Grand Canyon. Formed by the Fish River, with similar effects as the Colorado, this canyon was a bit smaller in scale but also much greener. Where the Grand Canyon is known for its beautiful shades of red, on our visit the Fish River Canyon is all about shades of green.  However, 2006 has been an incredibly wet year for Namibia, much to the locals happiness, so it could have been a browner, dustier experience.
A Kolmanskop Tub

Next up on the itinerary was the town of Luderitz, which is located on Namibia's southern Atlantic coast. A quick bit of geography: the west coast of Namibia from about Luderitz north is made up of the Namib Desert, one of the oldest in the world. Many years ago, diamond chunks were actually found on the beaches south of Luderitz. Since then, a large area south of Luderitz has been cordoned off as a diamond region with strict patrols and access only to employees of the diamond interests. Luderitz is a bizarre conglomerate of remote desert community, German outpost, and fishing community. Beyond its unique character and history, Luderitz is known for its neighboring ghost town of Kolmanskop, an abandoned diamond mining community from the early 1900's. Kolmanskop was abandonded as the mining industry moved further south and has become a ghost town overtaken by sand. An extraordinarily bizarre site to see sand dunes filling up this once modern and flashy town.  It was a wild experience to see the shells of huge homes, bathtubs half buried in dunes and a whole community overtaken by the immense power of nature.
The Dunes

The next stop and one of the highlights of this leg was the Soussusvlei National Park, which is essentially an entry point into the Namib Desert at its grandest. This area of the Namib is home to some of the oldest and tallest sand dunes in the world. The next few days were spent exploring this unreal landscape. We spent miserable hours slogging through scorching hot sand that burned our feet through our flip flops, breathtaking moments walking along the spines of sand dunes hundreds of yards in the air and exhilarating seconds careening down the nearly vertical sides of these dunes safe in the knowledge that the worst that could happen would be a few minutes of somersaults until we reached the bottom. Every sunrise and sunset, we spent with coffee or beer in hand, Brice sitting behind the tripod, being awestruck by the play of light on the sand.
A Young Male Lion

After a few more days of toodling around red sands of western Namibia, we struck out for the last highlight, Etosha National Park. This is a unique national park in the context of African wildlife parks, distinguished by the enormous Etosha Pan. This pan, when  briefly filled during rainy season makes for a massive inland lake and as it dries, a massive flat expanse that has little groundcover to hide wildlife. The result is a stunning backdrop to relatively easily spotted game. We spent four days touring through the park from sunrise to sunset, blessed with some of the most amazing wildlife experiences imaginable. We nearly petted zebras and giraffes, sat feet away from mating lions, watched giraffes gallop away from an approaching pride of lions...truly feeling like we were observing the full power of nature running its powerful course.

After an amazing overall experience in Namibia, we were left with two really bad problems. Another dead motherboard in the Sony laptop and a $1200 dollar illegitimate charge on the credit card from our rental car company, Europcar. Needless to say Sony and Europcar are less than desirable companies to deal with...Dell and Enterprise from now on.