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.