Tag Archives: Overland Trip

Namibia Africa Cycle

It was a cool cycle and I saw it when I was walking down the street in Swakopmund. It was in pristine condition. That’s because it was a rental and I’d bet it was an expensive one. Would I want to ride it? Sure. Would I want to own it? No. Not unless I had enough money to have a collection of motorcycles and a place to house them along with the budget to maintain them properly. I can think if many motorcycles I would buy before I would buy this one. But, I had to admit it was an interesting specimen and it was a rental as well, meaning that all I had to do was to go to their web site and give them a date, a time, and a credit card number. Sounded easy enough to me.

Swakopmund Namibia Beach Western Africa

Swakopmund, Namibia advertises itself as the Adrenaline capital of Africa. The reason is that you can participate in adrenaline producing activities such as skydiving, sand boarding, quad biking, and paragliding. Swakopmund is also a beach town and it functions as one of Namibia’s premier places for the locals to go to do some recreational activities. It is also a stop on the overlanding trail for the young to do some skydiving and other activities. Did I skydive? No. My adrenaline is fine. But Swakopmund is a must-see in Namibia. People say the town is more German than Germany. That’s an exaggeration, but you get the point. There are also lots of restaurants in the city. Many more than I found at the bush camps and campgrounds I had been staying in.

Cape Cross Namibia Seals Africa

There’s a bazillion of them, aren’t there? The most significant thing about them is how bad they smell. They smell really, really bad. They’re also noisy. If you watch them you’ll see that they are constantly squabbling about something. Well, not all of them and not all of the time, but enough of them are irritated at another seal, and expressing that irritation vigorously, to let a person know that parts of the community are not in the best of spirits at any given moment. But, they are amazing. I could have watched them for hours, even with the stench. Some of them were so cute. It’s said that the total population of the several colonies of seals up and down the Namibian coast is 1.2 million seals. They are a political hot potato in Namibia as a segment of the Namibian population brutally slaughters a percentage of the herd at a certain time of the year. I’m just glad there was not a protest at Cape Cross and we were able to see the sight. We had been told if there was a protest at the site, the overland company had a policy of avoiding any situations that might lead to bad publicity. Now, that’s what I call taking the moral high ground, isn’t it?

Cape Cross Namibia Visitor Africa

The popular Cape Cross Seal Reserve is one of several breeding reserves for the Cape fur seals. Are there a lot of seals located here? Absolutely. This one location is Fur Seal Central as far as I can tell. There were thousands and thousands of the seals at his location when I visited. What was my first impression? "Man do these seals stink or what?" I recalled thinking.

Namibia Africa Tire

What we see here is a tire that we all thought fell off the truck. It did not. It just was laying ion the road and the driver must have ran over it. We all thought it was one of the spare tires on the back of the truck.

Spitzkoppe Namibia Camp Site Africa

Spitzkoppe is one of the local rock formations in Namibia. Here, rock climbing is king. We stopped at the campground and many of the group spent the afternoon making like they were a goat. I stayed behind and helped set up camp. It was my contribution to the group’s getting to go rock climbing as we showed up an hour late due to elephant problems.

Namibia Africa Elephant Problems

This is interesting. Dave, the driver, is taking one of his patented shortcuts and he stops the truck, telling us that there is a group of elephants crossing the road in front of us. We let the elephants cross the road and we start to proceed, only to get stuck in a large expanse of sand. A bunch of the group then get out to try and get the truck out of the sand. About that time, here comes another large group of elephants who appear to want to cross the road right where we are stuck. Needless to say, we hope the elephants are patient. In the end, we got the truck unstuck and headed back the way we came rather than trying to go through the high sand and try to deal with a herd of elephants. It only cost us an extra hour.

Namibia Africa Campground

We camped at the Cheetah Park campground. We got to build a big fire and found a lot of wood. Lately, I have been the unofficial fire starter in the mornings because I get up earlier than the others in the group and I go out and get the fire working again. It’s better than laying in my sleeping bag thinking about how cold it is. It is now the middle of winter in the areas of Africa where I am traveling. Fortunately, it rarely gets below freezing here. I’m not sure I’ve seen it below forty degrees very often on this trip.

Namibia Africa Cheetah Park

I’m getting pretty good at this wild animals stuff. Here we have me petting a couple of cheetahs. Yes, of course they’re tame. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t tear my arm off in a couple of seconds. I mean I’m still a little nervous about the whole thing. Anyone who says they are going to pet a couple of cheetahs and says that they aren’t the least bit scared is either not the brightest bulb on the tree or is just blowing smoke. I may look like I’ve got everything under control, but that’s because these guys have just been fed.

Namibia Africa Biltong

It’s called biltong. That’s what the Africans call it. Beef biltong is simply beef jerky. But, biltong isn’t simply jerky. That’s because they slice it as your order it. It hangs around in a butcher shop until you walk in and say you want some and that’s when it gets sliced. Is it better than jerky in the U.S.? I’m afraid so. Not because they have better beef. No way. We have much better beef in America. It’s because it’s fresher and because they do not dry the jerky out so much when the dry it. Plus they have "game" jerky which means that they make jerky from some of the game animals. They have types of jerky that we never hear of.

Rolling Okie

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