Our first camping trip...we return alive

Tristan is in the midst of a 2.5-week holiday from School. We took advantage and planned a trip back to the south, where Larkin had visited before with a Polytechnic colleague. You can click on the archived photo link to view photos of the trip. There are only about 80 of them, so pace yourself. There are captions galore, so we won't repeat the details here.

We left on Tuesday, traveled straight south past Hardap Dam and then angled to the southwest to Helmeringhausen, where we spent the night in a hotel. We were traveling with another Fulbright family, the Bates'. You can follow the link here to their blog for their nice description of the trip.

Wednesday found us driving slightly north of Helmeringhausen to the Jorn Miller farm Aubures, where we set up our first campsite with rooftop tents on our rented 4x4. Poly, our lil' Toyota stayed home on this trip. We received a great tour of the farm, and Tristan got his first good taste of rock hounding. A wonderful secluded campsite.

Thursday was a drive through blowing sands of the Namib desert, straight west to Luderitz on the coast. Windy weather kept us from camping, but we had a great night in a guest house high on a rocky hill.

Friday found us searching for agates on the beach and driving northeast of Luderitz to Farm Namtib, another wonderful guest farm where we camped. Camping in these sites is great--running water, showers with hot water (sometimes you have to heat it with firewood), and real toilets out in the middle of nowhere. We met some wonderful ladies from Switzerland who camped near us that night.

Saturday, we drove north to Sesriem, passing through more dry scenery with the Namib on our left and mountains on our right. Check out photos of some friends that Kelly made on the way. We camped at the Sesriem campground, part of the Namibian National Park system. After playing 'road tag' with the ladies from Switzerland, we ended up offering to share our campsite to them this night--when the campground lost their reservation.

Sunday started with an early morning trip to Sossusvlei through the red dunes of the Namib. We climbed a dune. Well, Larkin climbed 1/2-way. Kelly and Tristan got a great view. Larkin got great photos. Then, we headed for Windhoek.

The trip ended with a breakdown of the Bates' Land Rover. We were rescued by (in order) men on horse and donkey carts, a US AID couple who we know, and a wonderfully nice mechanic from Windhoek. All happened to pass by on the lonely road near Klein Aub--two hours from Windhoek. Amazingly (late on Sunday afternoon), a part was found, the vehicle was repaired, and all made it home that night.

It was a great trip. Perhaps a bit aggressive long on the planning for 4 kids to travel each day--and in an area where we could have stayed 2-3 days at each place we stopped. But, we saw great country and met wonderful people. In fact, we didn't meet anyone we didn't like on the entire trip. The hotel owners, farm families, folks on the street, donkey cart drivers, and mechanics all smiled, waved, and went out of their way to make our days great. It's a great country to travel in, for sure.

A drive in the countryside...come along via video

Apologies to readers of NTN for no news except for a funny goat story during the past two weeks. School started at Polytechnic, with a workshop for distance students. All of a sudden, life got busy. I'll blog about teaching soon. We haven't explored far into Namibia, yet, but are enjoying our small trips.

On Saturday, we took the morning to visit the oldest game farm in Namibia, according to their signage: Duerstenbrook. The name means "duck forest", and it was situated in a beautiful bend in a river, overlooking a valley. We'll put some photos on the Picasa link to show the scenery. This will be a video-laden blog for your enjoyment.

We traveled to Duerstenbrook with a fellow Fulbright family. They have 3 kids, and recently purchased a Land Rover. Of course, we are employing our massive field vehicle, Polly, our Toyota Corolla.

We left town bright and early, and arrive a bit after 9 for the morning cat feeding at Duerstenbrook. They have 2 leopards and 7 cheetahs in fenced enclosures. The kids all enjoyed seeing cats close-up.

Cheetahs are an interesting creature, with several adaptations that allow them to be efficient hunters. We have heard that cheetahs have a poor sense of smell (they don't track their prey--they kill it and eat it quickly, because other, bigger cats and hyenas will come chase them away) and that they are far-sighted--having excellent vision to see prey in the distance, but very poor sight close-up. We got some pretty good evidence of this during the feeding today--the tour driver tossed some meat that got hung up on a thorn in a tree, above the ground. The cat in the video is actually the third cat to try to find the meat. They could smell it 'somewhere', but could they see it? Could they find it? At one point, he looks right at it, and it swings right above his head. Take a look:

After the cat drive, we saw some 'wild' wildlife on the way back to the main road. We passed a pretty big herd of impalas that were enjoying the lush grass along the river:

The road to Duerstenbrook included an 18-km stretch of gravel, and most of it was very good. Because of high water across the main road, we were directed by small signs on a detour through some two-track pasture roads, through 4 gates, and forded the river at a better location. Even this crossing made us get out to check water depth to see if Polly could make it across. Of course, she could! We took this video on the way out:

It's been raining a lot near Windhoek, and the temperatures have been much cooler than when we arrived--still in the 70's and 80's. Other quick updates:

--Tristan has a part in "Fiddler on the Roof" which will be put on by the International School's middle grades. He's the butcher. They only had 4 boys try out, so the lead male parts are played by girls--tradition! If I were a rich man, I'd buy you all plane tickets to come watch. I'm not sure of the production date, but it will be here soon (quickly go the days...). I'm not sure if it will be held at sunrise or sunset. OK, enough 'Fiddler' puns. Try to keep your balance...

--Tristan has started two sports at WIS (Windhoek Int'l School): track and field, and baseball. After only two practices, he represented WIS in the city track meet (private schools) in the shot put. He got 5th place. Baseball is a new sport at WIS--started by one of the Fulbright dads, who got a nice donation of gloves and other equipment from a Michigan little league team. Namibia is all about cricket, so baseball is new for most kids at WIS. Both sports practice once a week after school.

--We enjoyed an afternoon at the US Ambassador's house last weekend--she invited all Americans in Namibia to come chat and enjoy hamburgers and hot dogs and some American movie trivia games. There were about 80 folks there--and 650 Americans are in Namibia on 'extended stays' (longer than 3 months).

--Regular classes start this week at Polytechnic. I'm teaching a research methodology (research proposals and statistics) by distance to 4th year students and helping with a natural resource management course. We're going to draw up a management plan for a local game farm--introducing problem-based learning ideas.

--We got our first mail from the US--took a bit over 1.5 weeks from Iowa and Nebraska. Arrived just fine. It was a happy moment!

Dolphins and milestones

By the end of this week, the Powell family will have been away from Lincoln, NE for one month. We started keeping track of visitors to NTN on Jan. 7; as of the 26th we passed 1000 hits on the blog site, which is an average of 52 hits per day. It has been fun to watch where people are coming from and guess who has been on the blog. Libby, MT is easy, but Athens, OH--we still haven't figured out who you are. It's good to know we are still connected to our friends and family back home.

This past weekend, we traveled to the coast to the town of Walvis Bay. Walvis means 'whale' in Afrikaans, and the area is the recipient of oxygen-rich, food-laden currents coming north along the west coast. Whales visit during certain times of the year. We had the fortune to be on a marine cruise when a large number of Dusky Dolphins showed up (estimated by our skipper at 800-1000). They are small, deep-water dolphins (only 1.5-2 meters in length, compared to 6m for the bottlenose dolphin). We'll try our first video posting here. Kelly is the photographer, capturing some close-ups and some great footage of just a portion of the sea with dolphins popping up everywhere. Just click on the play button on the video below.

More photos of our quick trip to the coast are found on the Picasa link to the left. We enjoyed the trip, which was 4-5 hours from Windhoek (5 hours going, 4 hours returning--because Larkin got used to going 120 km/hr (a little over 70 mph) on a two-lane, narrow road with construction. It reminded us of Hwy 169 between Lamoni and Leon. Walvis Bay is also one of two shipping ports, so the road is used by all large trucks carrying goods to the country. Most local drivers wanted to go about 140-150 km/hr on the hilly roads. So, you can probably imagine why they were happy only 40-some people died on the highway over the holiday season (December) this past year.

Despite the harried road conditions, the scenery was spectacular along the way, as we went from relatively lush and green Windhoek to the eventual completely barren sands of the coastal dunes. The cool winds off the sea caused Kelly to ask if we could just stay the week, or perhaps the year, in Walvis Bay. It is a great place, and we'll be back.