Hello future ICTers in the United States of America!

So Lance told me he gave this blog address to the family that is replacing us and another future ICT FAO. And then he ducked. Bright man my husband. Not that I swung. Not that I was really tempted. It was just cute.

So, hi there you FAO people you! How's Georgia? Aren't those walking trails great?!? Make sure you explore the ones behind the dental office as well as the one next to the Commissary. Say "hello" to All Purpose Flour and Mexican Food for me. (You miss the darnedest things.) And don't worry, your next living quarters will be much larger than the hotel rooms you've been living in for the last few months.

Of course as I write this I'm sitting in a small hotel room, waiting for visas to strange countries, quietly cussing in as many languages as I can remember. (I really need to learn to cuss in Klingon. That would just be too cool.)

This, eventually, brings me to the real point of today's entry. This is a blog written basically because we love our mothers don't want them to panic. It's a silly little thing with pretty pictures and grammatical errors. Don't take it too seriously and don't quote me on anything. Except maybe the point about All Purpose Flour and Mexican Food. I really miss those things. Mmmmm salsa.

Don't worry. It will be great, except when it's not, but then it will be great again. Pack lots of sunscreen because it is mad expensive over here. Get all your accounts online and stock up on your favorite socks. Noise canceling headphones are FANTASTIC for airplanes and blocking out noisy neighbors.

And do resist the temptation to smack the Charlie ICTers whining about their move to Europe or anywhere else where going to the ballet is an entertainment option. I know it's hard. Sit on your hands if you have to.

All the best,
Kristin

But You Know What They Don't Have in Namibian Parks?

Proper doors on the bathrooms! From our selectively published list of "strange places to go" I offer the following photo: Nice huh? The problem is I took this photo from an outhouse WITH THE DOOR SHUT. Outhouses with half the door missing = not a big problem. Outhouse with half the door missing and it is the bottom half = problem.

And, of course there was no seat cover and toilet paper would have been totally ridiculous. Little trick for you future travelers: when your household roll gets low, put it in a plastic bag and carry it with some hand sanitizer all the time! Someday soon I will be in a fast food restaurant in the United States of America and there will be a door and seat and toilet paper and maybe even soap and I will smile but be missing Africa a little.

And You Know What else They've Got in Namibia? (Part 3)

Gorgeous skeletons of camel thorn trees protected by the dunes. They have been water-free for over five hundred years and are only disturbed by the occasional tour group or music video crew.
Of course Lance and I were there too.
And that was our far too brief visit to the beautiful Namib Desert and the amazing trees in the Dead Pan. It was really a photographer's dream with the dunes changing color through the day and the black streaks of iron ore coming out as it got hotter. Goodness, but it got hotter! We enjoyed a late breakfast with conversation in the shade and headed back to the lodge by noon. A loooooong drive back to Windhoek through the changing landscapes and racing the setting sun.

Btw, I don't just say we "raced the setting sun" to be poetic, though I was kinda going for that truth be told. In many areas of Southern Africa, if you are driving at night time you run the very high risk of hitting something or someone. (It does happen and gets very complicated very quickly!) There are no lights outside the cities and fences are never a guarantee. We have lucked out so far but that is after slowing down considerably and the occasional shout of "Donkey on the left!" or "Cows!" or "Guy!" What's funny is the last 150 km into Botswana are always the worst as far as animals in the road and we are inevitable driving it in the dark. TIA m'dears. So that is why we could only spend half a day in that amazing park. Honestly, it is the one place we have visited that I feel like we must go back to. Preferably with a better camera, a tripod and big floopy hats.

You Know What They've Got in Namibia? (Part 2)

Well of course you do because you read the last post. What you may not know is that once you walk up a dune you can run down it with nearly no risk to life or limb. Soft sand = soft landings!

You Know What They've Got in Namibia? (Part 1)

Big Beautiful Dunes.

All the running around. All the great food and interesting people we met, those memories are barely there. But the memories of the day we spent at the dunes are going to stay with us forever. Or maybe it's just the sand that will stay forever because I keep finding that stuff in our luggage.

The visit was divided into three parts (as are these entries). First was the climb up "Big Mama", the second highest dune in Namibia at 180 meters high. The dune at the top of this entry is "Dune 45" so named because it is 45 miles from from Sesriem and is the 45th dune from Sossusvlei. Our guide said that all the tours go there just because it's just off the main road but really isn't that big of a deal. We were headed for this lovely piece of landscape.
Shots from the ride out and the walk up:

Why Kristin Thinks the Kaiseb Pass Needs a McDonalds.

So as nice as it was seeing the ocean again, we had a long day ahead of us and needed to hit the road. A road which started out pretty nice ...
... and quickly deteriorated into a very unpaved trek through a lot of "not much" and "nobody." This was the lovely and lengthy drive (6 hours!) through the Kuiseb Pass.
See all that nothing in the previous picture? I hated all that nothing. You know why? A hypothetical traveler of the female persuasion who drank a glass of water with breakfast is not likely to find a discreet place to go to bathroom in all that nothingness.

Hypothetical gentlemen travelers do not seem to have such problems. Or at least they don't worry about it. That kinda sucks and proves that smart women who drink water on crazy hot days are not meant to drive through the desert for 6 hours. I've done it so none of my world-traveling sisters will ever need to attempt it again. Sisters, you're welcome.

Now the next photo is very, very important.

Yeah. It's okay. Neat view of a funky African bird nest. But the real reason why I'm posting this photo is because I really had to fight for it. We were driving through a particularly sandy stretch of road and stopping was not advisable, as my beloved husband pointed out. However, I had to get a picture of that tree, in that ravine and the sky was perfect and the shadows were interesting and it will only take a second really and, because Lance loves me, he stopped and I took a few pictures.

And the car got stuck in the sand.

Then Lance got it unstuck.

So you understand why I had to post this photo. Married people, you really understand why I had to post this photo. : ) Driving on.

The road changed, was suddenly paved, and the scenery changed drastically. This was the Kuiseb Canyon.

Which makes sense, considering we had just crossed over into the tropics. Snicker. Snicker. (Notice that someone wrote "Pop" over the last four letters. The road does strange thing to a person and said persons tend to do strange things to signs.)
Finally we arrived at our destination. The Sossusvlei Lodge!
Tremendously cheesy, a bit expensive and totally worth it.

The life of a traveler is a rough one folks. Actually, the electricity, and therefore room fan, isn't turned on until the hottest part of the day is over so the porch was the most comfortable place to sit. I wonder what he could be looking at?


Why it's me! Pretending I'm a meerkat. Poorly. But you get the point.

I *heart* tents you don't have to set up!

That evening the hotel put out a yummy buffet dinner. I remember trying bbq zebra and oryx - the oryx was better. Lance liked the kudu. We crashed at what felt like midnight but really couldn't have been later than 9.

Early to bed - Early to rise and explore the dunes!

Meanwhile, back in Namibia

A guest in the garage!

We were cleaning out our garage and I though I'd share some pics of a guest we found living in our spare boxes. You've got to love Africa!

It is a horned baboon spider, a close relative of the tarantula. It is poisonous and agressive but not life threatening. It is a ground burrower and not usually found in a garage.

Here it is reacting to my attempt to shoo it out of the garage with a broom.

Aparently Raid works on really big insects as well. As soon as I sprayed him (and trust me I had to get much closer than I wanted to to do that) all the fight left him and he ran for cover in one of our spare refrigerators. I left him there for a few hours and then came looking for the body. (Otherwise I would never get Kristin back into the garage)

Namibia by Air

Well Kristin insists that I must contribute writing to the blog. I feel I contribute greatly to the blog but she insists that writing must also be done. She even figured out how to make it happen. By asking me to write about something she did not participate in.

Kristin and I really enjoyed our visit to Namibia. Namibia is one of the least populated countries in the world and is mostly covered in desert and savannah and it’s beautiful! Thanks to the U.S. Army I was able to see a large percentage of it when I hired a small single engine plane in Swakopmund for a 3+ hour airborne tour. Originally I wanted to fly over the northern coastal regions because we would be driving south and would miss the region known as the Skeleton Coast. The guide convinced me that the southern tour is better and more importantly I would be the only person on a northern tour and would have to foot the bill for the whole flight. As my boss would say “Uncle Sugar is generous but not that generous.” Kristin decided to stay behind and spend the morning relaxing in our quite comfortable accommodations. Just after dawn I was picked up by the agency and met the 8 German tourists (everybody is German or speaks German in Swakopmund) who would be spliting the bill with me. I lucked out and got to sit in the co-pilot's seat which gave me a great view. Though the pilot was not amused when I joked that if I wanted a better look at something I would just grab the stick and turn. I also got to sit in front of the malfunctioning engine temperature guage which went into the red shortly after takeoff. There was a functioning digital one that the pilot monitored, but he neglected to mention either fact before takeoff...nice. We took of from a dirt runway and were on our way.

This is what it looks like near the coast just inland from Swakopmund, notice how the dunes cluster along the coast. The flat area this side of the dunes is chriss crossed with thousands of vehicle tracks mostly from thrill seekers and the German tourists that flock here.

Further south there we flew over a rocky river canyon which has seasonal floods. The river is there year around but most of it is below ground. It was kind of neat to see the green vegetation that followed the course of the underground river.

Near the river canyon (in south central Namibia) the vegitation is savanah. That is a herd of zebra on the left.

Not far to the West we entered the famous soususflay region with its giant red dunes.

We actually climbed one of these (Big mama) later in the trip (and could not get the sand out of our shoes for weeks) these are the largest sand dunes in the world. We'll detail the hiking portion in a future post.

This is a picture of an old mining camp out in the middle of the desert. Those German immigrants were ethier really tough or really stupid, probably both.

We then hit the ocean and turned back North, it was about this time that I started to notice foul vomit odors from behind me but it was not constant just brief whiffs. At least one of my four my fellow passengers apparently was not enjoying the trip as much as I. The above picture is of one of the coastal wrecks. It is so far inland because the sand ebbs and flows.

Here is an aerial view of the purple salt fields Kristin blogged about. We pretty much drove around this entire picure the day before.

Hey its a FAO ICT picture! This is a photo of Wavis Bay, the best open water port in Africa. As you can see (the original photo is much better) the ocean liners litterally sail up and park. no fuss, no muss, but there did appear to be a bit of a line. We tried to get a good look at it by vehicle the previous day but you cannot get close to it. We did find our way out to the tip of the penninsula though.

A cool picture showing our partner plane and some of the ships waiting to get into Wavis Bay.

Here we are back at Swakopmund our hotel is in the back midde of the town and the ocean front restaurant from a previous post is next to the pier that you can just barely see on the right.

Salt of the Earth

Did you know that South Africa (and therefore most of Southern Africa) gets 90% of of its salt from a seaside salt pan just outside of Swakopmund?



Did you also know that when sea salt is being prepared there is a step when it is purple? Yeah, how cool is that?

Wanna know why? It's kinda gross. Suffice to say it involved bacteria and baby sea monkeys. Yes, really.
www.waterwereld.nu/artemiaeng.html

Did you also further know that when flamingos eat said bacteria their feathers turn pink?

It's a strange world dear readers.
And, because I know you're curious, the salt tasted might salty. Amazing I know. You know what's also amazing? That I would move to Africa and eat strange things off the ground.