Shake, Rattle 'n' Roll!

(Editor's note: we'll need to publish the next two posts without any pictures, due to the lamentably slow, wind-up internet connections in Namibia. Even slower than at the Quadrangle! We'll bring you up to date with pics as soon as technology allows).

I keep thinking of this song as we travel, in our Nomad truck, along these dirt and boulder-strewn roads which sometimes run for hundreds of miles in a straight line through nothing but rust-red (and occasionally more 'sand' coloured) Namib desert. From time to time the noise the truck makes as it clatters, swerves and lurches over these seemingly cobble-stoned ' highways' stops dead any kind of conversation, even between two people sitting next to each other! Our driver, Martin (or Matin, as pronounced Zimbabwean-style) laughingly refers to the experience as an 'African full-body massage', for which we should be paying extra!

The truck (we keep getting corrected when we call it a bus) has no shock absorbers - because the hydraulics would burst on the bumpy roads apparently - and occasionally we get lifted out of our seats, especially when sitting near the back of the truck, landing with a bit of a thump just a second later. But, despite all this, it is still surprisingly a great and exhilarating experience (I'd stop short at calling it comfortable, and yet it is not entirely uncomfortable either ). Also, I don't quite know why, but it somehow feels very strange when, after several hundredx of kilometres driving in a dead-straight line through this almost feature-less, traffic-less and arid terrain - albeit with several small undulations as we drive into and out of the many dried-up river-beds - we then arrive and stop at a crossroads, even though there's obviously nothing coming in any direction for maybe a hundred kilometres, and then if turning right or left, take a really sharp right-angle in the required direction. You might think that a little, or even lengthy, meander to cut the corner occasionally might be in order, or that it wouldn't actually be necessary to come to a full stop before turning - but no.

Also, the truck is amazingly functional. Most days we stop on the road and assist the crew to make lunch, wherever they can find at least two trees together to give enough shade (not always easy in this vast desert). Then, out of all sorts of drop-down hideaways on the sides and back of the truck, emerge a large two-ring bottled-gas cooker, several huge pots and pans, tin plates and cups, cutlery, trestle tables and chairs, as well as crates of food, and, whilst the rest of us go and find a 'bush toilet', the crew starts to rustle up an amazing meal for us. Sometimes this is a salad with cold meats, cheese and bread rolls, etc, but once or twice we've had cooked meals like spaghetti bolognese, miraculously produced within a mere 20-30 minutes of setting up camp. Despite having no air-conditioning, the truck is also very well ventilated, so that, once we pick up a bit of speed, there's usually a coolish - or, in the early mornings a very cool - breeze flowing through. We have to be careful to open all the small slidey windows at the top of the truck to allow all the dust and sand to blow in, and then again out, otherwise it would all collect in the cabin. It's then surprisingly unnoticeable just how much dust blows through whilst we're travelling, and yet, at every stopover, when we collect our bags stored in the lockers in the back of the truck, we have to beat them like rugs to get all the dust and sand off before we can start to unpack.

Since our last posting, we've travelled several hundred kilometres through West and Central Namibia. We've:
made an early-morning attack on the summit of the famous, dramatic, rust-red sand dunes (Dune 45 in our case, over 170m high) at Soussouvlei, against the backdrop of an unfeasibly blue sky, in the Namib-Naukleft Park. Here we also spent a couple of hours with a !Xung (San) bushman, who showed us how 'easy' it is for the bushmen to navigate their way through this seemingly feature-less desert, to survive in this hostile terrain with their impressive hunting skills (hunting for certain insects and bushes as well as game), and ways of storing water in ostrich eggs - sealed with beeswax and buried in the sand with just a straw marker to indicate their location - for up to 9 months at a time. And we also learned from him that in the wet season this year (July and August) they'd had an almost unprecedented 200mm of rain (as against 2mm the year before, for example), which explained why there are so many millions of small, grey-green spiky bushes and grassy hummocks dotting the desert this year - the first time since for 40 years we were told ).
walked through the Deadvlei ('vlei' means a valley where water is sometimes found), but where water is no longer found, and where there is now a standing forest of dead, but not yet fossilised (or petrified) trees;
visited a big cat enclosure in the farm whose lodge (Hammerstein Lodge) we were staying in - and where one of the Cheetahs took a real 'licking' to Andy (see the photo below);
explored the Bavarian-looking coastal town of Swakopmund, with its wonderful ethnographic and natural history museum, beautiful old railway station now converted into a 6-star hotel. Whilst we had a relatively lazy stroll around the town, some of the more adrenelin-loving members of the group went sky-diving, quad-biking on the dunes, or sailing trips to see the dolphins and seals just offshore. Shortly after leaving the town, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, and of course stopped for a photo-call (or Kodak moment, as our Cambodian guide always called it);
taken 2-hour, very hot, midday hike in the Brandberg mountains near Khorixas in Damaraland to see some beautiful cave paintings, discovered during the 1970s and dated back to around 1500 years BC.
Now we're having a rare post-lunch relaxation in our accommodation (the Oase Lodge in Kamanjab) before we go out to meet some people from the nomadic Himba tribe this afternoon, and then on to the Etosha National Park tomorrow.

Oh, but we just thought we'd share a little sad news - particularly with those of you who followed our past travel blogs from South East Asia. We learned by e-mail yesterday that Neville, the very entrepreneurial Director of the New Futures Orphanage in Cambodia, where we'd worked for some weeks on our last two visits, died suddenly of a heart-attack just last week. We're now waiting to hear from the volunteer 'community' with whom we are still in touch, just what the future might hold for New Futures now. Will keep you updated if and when we hear anything (though internet connections are few and far between here in Namibia, you might be surprised to hear!).

TTFN