The Sea and the Plains

The next morning we went out on the Atlantic to see the dunes from the water and view two species of dolphins, colonies of seals and visit the oyster farms. We saw a huge rose colored jelly fish that was bigger than one of the seals! We were startled when a friendly seal named Fluffy jumped up onto our boat. We fed him some fish, but he like it so much that we had a hard time getting him to leave the deck. On the way back to Swakopmund, our Captain broke out some champagne and shucked some fresh oysters for us. Why can't they do that at the Jersey Shore?

Later that afternoon, Clay, Kristin and Max went quad biking on the dunes. Although it sounded like a lot of fun, Laura and Alex went back to the hotel for a nap....we are worn out.

Tuesday morning we left for Etosha Wildlife Park. It is a huge game conservancy in the northern, central part of Namibia. We checked into our tent camp and went off to see the animals. We had unbelievable luck as we drove out the gate a family of lions was walking down the road. There was a mother with 3 cubs and 3 male lions. They walked right by our car and we got excellent pictures of them.

The next morning we went on an all day game drive and saw elephants, lions, a black rhinocerous (extremely rare), kudu, springbok, red hardebeest, wildebeests, waterbucks and many beautiful, brightly colored birds (think Zazu in real life).

After 3 nights in the game park, we moved to Dirk's ranch 5 hours south of Etosha. It is a tented camp, but very luxurious and equipted with everything that we need. We spent a few lazy days reading and watching True Blood while Max and Clay hunted. Then Dirk's wife, Rena, took us into Windhoek for a couple of nights. Windhoek is the capital of Namibia, but felt more like a small town to us - maybe something like the size of Landsdale. It had a very cosmopolitan feel to it and Kristin commented "If someone dropped me off here and asked me "Where are you?" I would never guess Africa. Dirk says that Namibia is Africa's best kept secret and we have to agree. We shopped and went out to Joe's Beer House for dinner. It was a jolly place with crazy decor and hearty German food. Everywhere you go in Namibia, you can feel the German influence.

A couple more days at the ranch included an encounter with a Black Mambo snake that was over 10 feet long (I'm not kidding). Clay shot it as they are very dangerous and can stand up to half of their body length and look you in the eye - yikes! Laura was glad she was not along for that adventure.

Swokopmund and Plane Ride

These sand dunes are unbelievable! So gorgeous and beautifully shaped with magnificent colors. Max and Kristin could not stop themsleves from rolling down the tallest one. It took a while to get all of the sand out of their ears, hair and noses!











The town of Swakopmund is the nicest, cleanest beach town we have ever been to. The Germans settled it and later the Dutch came. The buildings are all colorfully painted. Lots of great seafood restaurants and the freshest, best tasting oysters we have ever had! Don't miss the Lighthouse restaurant or The Raft in Walvis Bay if you visit.

In the afternoon, we took a sighseeing trip by plane to view the dunes from above. This area of Namibia is called The Skeleton Coast. The Atlantic Ocean is very rough here and there are many hidden reefs. For humdreds of years there have been shipwrecks here and as you travel along the coast (by water or air only for most of it) there are a multitude of shipwrecks, and from time to time a human or whale skeleton! This is a ship from early in this century.

This shot, taken from the plane, shows a huge, steep wall of sand that plummets into the ocean. It is very high and goes on for miles.

Living Desert Tour!

We woke up to the beautiful multicolored sand dunes. The colors range from tan to orange to red to black, depending on how the wind has blown the different sized particles. These giant dunes which can be as high as 1500 ft (the highest is 2000!) can shift up to 20 ft depending on the wind, so every day there is a new vista.

Our first day we went on the Living Desert Tour, which sought to prove that there is in fact life in the desert. We are believers! Most animals get their water from the fogs which descend upon the desert regularly. In particular, one type of beetle collects water with its glossy wings and then many other creatures eat them. We saw geckos, chameleons, snakes, skinks (legless lizards), beetles, and amazing plants. Our guide, Tommy, was hysterically funny! One joke he told went like this: "A Nambian man went to study in the US and was asked what he would do if he felt into a river. He responded, 'I would stand up and dust myself off.'" This is funny to us because we have yet to see a riverbed which actually held water! This gecko is very strong and holds on once its teeth are clamped down.
Tommy chased Laura down until she would touch the skink, the legless lizard, which greatly resembeled a tiny snake. "I'm going to have nightmares!" she cried.
The dunes stretched on for miles with their beautiful curves.
This sign is quite comical because, duh, we can see the sand. It is meant to warn drivers that the sand can cover the highway overnight, but funny nonetheless.
This is our tent at Dirk's (didn't get posted with the last post). We awoke the first morning there and it was 20 degrees. FARENHEIT!! Whoever said Africa was hot? We put on all our clothes and Kristin and Laura did their best to start a fire, wasting half a box of matches. Little did they know, the secret is lighter fluid...

Stay tuned for more Swokopmund adventures!

On Our Way to Namibia

We wake up at 4:30 to catch our transfer to the airport. One thing is for sure, we are not getting much sleep on this trip! We are all a little delirious. When we arrive, we find that we didn't remind Kristin to check the safe in their room and she has left her passport in the safe, ooops! Luckily she has two and Laura brought the duplicate. Not so luckily, the South African passport control requires you to have a visa sticker in the passport that you are using to come and go from the country. Clay and Kristin take a wild cab ride back to town and return just in time to board the plane with us to Windhoek, Namibia.

We land and after much scrutiny by the passport and customs officers, our guide Dirk de Bod meets us. We head out to his ranch. On the hour and a half drive we do not see any people, but we do see plenty of baboons and warthogs. Namibia has a population of 2 million people, with only 200,000 of them being white. The rest belong to 11 different indigenous tribes. Dirk's ranch is awesome, 3 tents (with real bathrooms) built around a cool main lodge. We go out for a game drive, but the weather is very cold (it dropped to 22 degrees that night) so the wild life viewing is slow. We did manage to spot some gemsbok, kudu, springbok and lots of pumbas.

The next morning we depart bright and early for the coastal town of Swapkomund. It is a stunning beach town full of brightly painted houses of either dutch or german origin, surrounded by HUGE sand dunes that change in color as the light changes. We check in to the hotel and finally have a couple of hours to relax! Dinner is at The Raft, a great seafood place built out into the harbor. The oysters here are the best we have ever tasted. There is a marine biologist who has perfected a way of farming them so they grow much more quickly than in other parts of the ocean. They are plump, juicy and full of fresh briny flavor. We figure if we can eat street food in Mexico, we can certainly eat raw oysters in Africa :-) This country is pristine, with no pollution because there are very few people here. Oh, we forgot to tell you that we are staying at a small hotel called The Burning Shore and it is the place that Brad and Angelina stayed when she had Shiloh. Clay and I have Angelina's room. Brad stayed in the suite with the kids! They say she was not very nice...something that I have always suspected. Having a problem with photos so will post those later.

More South African Adventures

This entry belongs before the Namibia section (you can tell Laura tried to master the technology alone!) We still had 2 more days in Cape Town.

The next morning we took the ferry to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other famous South African liberators were imprisoned. The Island held several prisons, one of which famously contained many political prisoners. Interestingly enough, many of these black men were educated and earned university degrees during their incarceration. Our tour was conducted by a former inmate!

That afternoon, we all went to the aquarium on the harbor. Clay, Max and Kristin went scuba diving in the shark tank! It contained 5 Ragged Tooth Sharks, several sting rays, many varieties of fish and two turtles. We salvaged 4 shark teeth and one set of sting ray teeth from the bottom of the tank. Max loved getting to know the sharks but Kristin felt like it was cheating (although she didn't mind).

We went to a wine tasting to sample 60 of the best reds from South Africa. Clive was very knowledgeable and led us to the top producers. Alex enjoyed the first four and ended up napping outside. Laura added some decorations to his chair...and we have a funny photo to share. That evening we had a spectacular Indian dinner at Bukhara, they had some of the best garlic naan ever.

The next day, we all went to Kirstenbosch Gardens and Clay, Max and Kristin (The Adventurers) set off for a hike up Table Mountain. It was a very foggy day so they decided not to climb to the summit, but the hike was still wonderful! There were views of all of Cape Town and we experienced a large variety of terrain. First rocky climbing that got so steep we needed ladders, and then a beach on top of a mountain, and then 40 degrees with high speed winds and almost no visibility from fog. It was a 4 seasons hike.

They rejoined Laura and Alex for our final dinner. Tomorrow we start on safari in Namibia!

Cape Town

Day 4:
What a beautiful city Cape Town is. Nestled between the mountains and the Atlantic ocean, it is an immaculately clean city. We are staying at the Victoria and Alfred Hotel, right in the middle of the Harbor. We have a "pet" seal who lives on the dock outside of our room. There are hundreds of beautiful shops and fantastic restaurants all within walking distance.

We left the hotel very early (again - remember this is a Clay Heckler Bootcamp vacation) to take a walk into the mountains with a naturalist to see the endangered Chaka Baboons. It was a great hike, we paused among the baboons and they came right by us, brushing our legs. One of them had a baby that was only 2 weeks old. She was strong enough to hang on underneath her mother who trekked her around as if she weren't there! Totally adorable. They are endangered because they break into people's homes, open their refrigerators, eat all the food and leave behind a terrible mess. So people shoot them or turn the dogs on them. This conservation group had raised money to keep them in the wild by hiring trackers (tribal people who would not have a job) to keep them up in the mountains in their natural habitat. The unemployment rate is 43 percent here, so they are doing a lot about trying to create jobs.

In the afternoon, we went to see the African Penguins and had a lunch on the beach nearby and tried a local specialty called Malva pudding, similar to our alltime favorite: Sticky Toffee pudding. Then our guide, Clive, took us out to the Cape of Good Hope. Although it is not technically the southermost point, it is roughly where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans merge. It was very beautiful, as all of the area is.

Wine Tasting in Franschoek and False Shark Diving

Day 1:

We land in Cape Town, South Africa and depart directly for the wine country to the north. Leaving the airport, we passed miles of squatter shacks. Basically, small houses built of scraps of aluminum siding. It was devastating to think that people could there. Our guide, Ivan, explained that post-Apartheid the banished people returned to the cities to find there was insufficient housing, and created these townships. Currently, the government works rigorously to provide jobs and more adequate housing, building 750 houses per day across the country. We decide we are awake enough to have a nice dinner at our hotel. Look! The menu is fantastic but “Pig’s Trotter” is the highlight, and all five of us ordered them. Before dinner, the electricity in our room kept going on and off so Kristin had to do Laura's make up by flashlight. Quite a comical sight!

Day 2:

We awake early Sunday morning and Ivan takes us on a tour through several of the wineries near Franschoek. The architecture and artwork at the wine tastings is stunning. Also, we have been graced with fantastic weather, clear blue skies and 70 degrees! This is the kids in front of a vineyard called Rickety Bridge. We tasted wines which got better and better including sparkling wine which was served at Obamas inauguration! Exhausted, we returned home for a nap, only to be greeted by friends of Diane Versfeld who had invited us to dinner at their home. Mick drove us through the mountain passes where we stumbled upon some baboons on the side of the road, as common as deer! Their house was looking over a lake surrounded by mountains, completely breathtaking. Mick and Althea prepared a braai (South African BBQ) for us. We loved their down to earth and friendly company.

Day 3:

Unfortunately, awakened at 4:30 for our 5 AM pickup, we drive to the coast near Cape Town to try our hand at diving with the Great White Sharks. It was freezing cold as the boat departed from Simon’s Town into False Bay, named because many ships accidentally entered False Bay instead of Cape Bay. We rode around Seal Island, a small rock almost infested with seals which smelled like rotten fish (the seals were completely adorable). The Great Whites feed at sunrise and their food during the winter is limited to these seals. Professional photographers lined the back of the boat, on their knees, with their cameras poised, as we waited for hours upon end to see the sharks breach the water. We saw a few dorsal fins but one of the sharked attacked the decoy and we got a glimpse of his body. Otherwise, this was a False Shark Expedition. The seals and sunrise redeemed the several hour freezing cold trip. We decided to skip the afternoon trip and went home for naps. Traveling through Africa is grueling!