Hi, y’all. I’m a little surprised to be able to blog again so soon. We were in the boonies of southern Namibia until yesterday. There was definitely no opportunity to get to a computer. Shoot, there is a lot of nothing in this big country of only 1.8 million where what people there are are mostly in the northern half. This picture is typical of what you see here in the south.
We saw a couple of towns with about a thousand people, and given the size of the print they warranted on the map I figured, okay, no place is big. I can handle that. The capital of Swaziland has only 60,000. One of the five or six biggest cities is Luderitz, on the west coast. We headed for there.
As you can see, it’s not too big, I’d say about 20,000. I went to one internet place and it was so slow I assumed they didn’t have high speed and I was lucky to be able to slowly open my emails. Then I found this place. I think they have satellite. So, I’m blogging while I can. We’re heading for the boonies again after this.
Here’s what one of the few paved highways looks like while driving across this lunar landscape. I may have to kiss my windshield goodbye.
One of Namibia’s premier attractions is Fish River Canyon. If you’ve seen Utah and the Grand Canyon, maybe you aren’t totally impressed, but it’s quite a sight, really.
In some ways, Naamibia is like South Africa. There is a largely white upper class, mostly decendents from the days before Germany lost WW 1 and lost Namibia to South Africa. There is a majority of blacks, many of whom live just as poorly as in South Africa. The big difference is since there are no big cities, there is no large scale urban blight. They have rural blight here. It’s not as bad, but these people are definitely just getting by. Soon we hope to visit traditinal villages.
Despite the lunar nature of much of the landscape, they had a little bit of rain in the late fall, so it’s like springtime in some places. If you’ve ever been to, say, Death Valley, you know that for a short time the flowers are spectacular.
We got to Luderitz in good shape, including going over a hundred miles or so of dirt/gravel roads. (Oh, I’m glad I have this tough truck.) It’s was a diamond mining center until the early 20th century when better diamond fields were found south and north of here. Then it got pretty pokey, and it’s pokey to this day. The most interesting thing about it is the early 20th century art nouveau architecture the Germans built at that time.
There are other quaint views.
We drove around today. There is a rocky seashore which is generally unimpressive. One place had sea lions and penguins out on a little island you. You could see them well with binoculars. Here’s a picture from back near Cape Town. I was tempted to say it was here, but we didn’t get this close this time.
While we were out there, Myung gathered a bag full of snails from one of the tide pools. Man, she likes to gather those. We’re having them again tonight.
In fact, I should be getting over to the backpackers place we’re staying at. Like in South Africa, Luderitz at least has a place to sleep cheap in a dorm and a kitchen to use. Myung should be getting about ready to make snail whatever for dinner. I’m outta here.
Be well, all of you.
