Days 54-63: Namibia

I am starting to run out superlatives in describing this trip, but what I have seen in Namibia has been nothing short of stunning. There´s a couple of reasons why I have found it so amazing.

The first is that it has been totally unexpected- you hear nothing of Namibia as a tourist destination. Nor has it been in the news for the murderous regime of some despotic madman or tribal massacres, the kind of tragedies which are always made out to be so much worse if they happen somewhere beautiful.

So I was expecting a sort of South Africa-lite travel experience. Lots of game parks with springboks, impala and oryx. And this is true, at least in the northern part of the country. But it changes.

Fertile plains become dusty desert, stark rocksacpes and yawning canyons. Places that could just as well be on the moon.


This is a vast, timeless land- and this is the other reason why I have enjoyed it so much- because it stands in complete contrast to the other parts of Africa I visited.

In East Africa and the Serengeti- that quintessential representation of Africa- everything is about the circle of life. Although it is an ancient place- birthplace of man and all that- everything is focused on the day to day business of survival. All the life is focused on the here and now of getting through another day- animals feeding, hunting, sheltering from the midday heat, villagers harvesting crops, rival males competing for the right to be pack leader.

In Namibia, things run on a geological timescale. The sort of timescale where a river can, through the irrestible force of time, carve the world#s second largest canyon. Where 900 year old trees stand frozen in rock, blackened and dead but their roots are so strong that they stand resolute, until one day they will be swallowed by the sand. Giant, 500m high sand dunes slowly migrate across the desert, as the wind picks them up and repositions them, one grain of sand at a time.

And there is almost noone around. It´s an eerie, humbling and magnificent sight.