A first taste of winter!

Terri and I atop Gudauri

Raising a glass with Brian on our first evening

It's nearly 8 am here in Tbilisi and it's still dark outside, as we're only 2 days from the shortest day of the year, and since the increased speed of the earth's rotation as we near perihelion on January 3rd means that the sun will come up a few minutes later a day until December 27th.  It will certainly make getting out of bed and going to work that much harder in early January once our Christmas holidays are over!

We are back in Tbilisi for a couple of days of rest, recovery and resupply after starting our Christmas holidays with 4 days of skiing in Gudauri, Georgia's biggest, highest-altitude and best-known ski resort.  We had originally planned to start with a trip to Bakuriani, but we found out a few days before our departure that our resort of choice, Bakuriani, wasn't going to open on schedule due to a lack of snow, so we reshuffled our itinerary.

Brian and Terri in action

On Friday, December 14th we welcomed Brian, a friend of friends of ours, to Tbilisi.  He arrived at the usual unsocial hour of most Tbilisi flights (5:20 am) and had a much-needed nap to beat jet lag while I went off for my final half-day of classes.  I returned, we packed up Douglas, our faithful Delica, and Terri, Brian and I drove north towards Gudauri.  The road was eerily empty, at least on the driving part of the road.  We drove past hundreds of trucks parked on the shoulder of the highway, waiting to cross the Jvari Pass to Russia.  It had snowed heavily on Wednesday and Thursday, and the pass was still closed to trucks, although open to cars.  We drove along, up the Aragvi Valley, until we reached the steep wall that marks the climb into Gudauri.  In the village it took a bit of tense maneuvering and navigating to get ourselves to the parking lot of our accommodation, as snow clearing hadn't yet really taken place.  Both we and Brian had booked apartments in a big complex, Gudauri Loft, located right beside the slopes.  We unpacked and Brian treated us to supper in the complex's restaurant, along with a huge, boisterous group of Russian tourists and entertained by a Georgian band.  The festivities continued long after we had gone to bed and echoed down the hallways, impeding sleep.

Me in the powder 

The following morning was the first day of the ski season in Gudauri, and the lifts were unexpectedly free of charge for the day, attracting big crowds.  There was plenty of powder accessible from the lifts, and we had a marvellous day under blue skies playing in the soft, fluffy snow.  The topmost lift wasn't open yet, and looking at the remnants of avalanches off the slopes below it, it was easy to see why.  There was almost no snow on the ground before the big dump on Wednesday, and so the new wind-driven snow didn't bond very well with the warm, bare ground below it, releasing in avalanches on almost all steep faces.  

An outdoor lunch on our first day

Georgia and its mountains

The conditions kept us from exploring too far afield in search of fresh tracks, although we had no need:  there were plenty of mellow, deep powder lines to be had everywhere.  For Terri and myself, it was the first time on skis in several years, but I found that, like riding a bicycle, skiing powder is something that I never forget how to do.  I was on my faithful fixed-heel Movement Goliath touring skis, and they handled as well as ever in the powder, leading to effortless floating over the top of the snow.  Terri also had a good day in the soft stuff, although her leg muscles were complaining by the end of the day.  Brian had a few more problems in the powder (not helped by the short, skinny skis he had rented), and his left leg was definitely unhappy by lunchtime.  We lunched at the top of the mountain, gazing out over the snowy peaks of the Caucasus and soaking up the sunshine.   

Dramatic light on nearby peaks

That evening we ate in our apartment, dining on fine mtsvadi (grilled meat) that Terri cooked up on our tiny hotplate; Terri has outfitted us with a travelling kitchen, inspired by our setup in Stanley, that leaves us independent of restaurants.  Brian is a cribbage fanatic, and so he and I played a few games.  He ended up well ahead in the final accounting, but we both enjoyed the games; cribbage was a big part of family evenings from a young age, and I really like the game.  Terri, Brian and I fell into an easy rhythm of conversation, as though we had known each other for decades rather than just two days.

A fine spot for lunch!

Sunday morning Brian awoke feeling unwell, probably a combination of altitude (we were sleeping at 2000 metres) and jet lag, so Terri and I set off alone up the mountain.  (Brian would venture out later on his own and ended up having a great day, with his leg feeling much better than on the previous day.)  We bought our season pass (a steal at US$ 225 for every ski resort in Georgia!). It was even sunnier than the day before, and the views were magnificent.  I was on my brand-new telemark skis; after a decade of skiing on a lovely pair of G3 Barons, I decided this year to trade up to a pair of properly fat powder skis, some Salomon Backlands.  In the powder, they proved magnificent, letting me ride far higher on top of the snow, making turning much more easily than I had in the past.  I was a bit wary of how well my fifty-year-old knees would hold up to the rigours of telemark turns, with their alternating lunges, but I needn't have worried.  My technique in powder came back to me very quickly, although I fell a couple of times on the groomed piste when I forgot how fat the skis were and managed to put one ski right on top of the other.  We climbed up to the highest available point on the mountain and soaked up the panoramic view of Caucasus peaks, including the beautiful Chaukhi Massif that we had twice hiked below in the fall.  Terri was skiing well, but was feeling whacked by altitude, so after a long, sun-drenched lunch halfway up the mountain, we parted ways, with her returning to the apartment to rest while I headed off to explore a ridge beside the resort.  

New telly skis, front and back

I remembered this ridge from our previous trip to Gudauri back in 2015.  It provides an easy ski tour, with 100 metres of climbing giving almost 400 metres of descent.  Luckily it's not steep enough for avalanches to be a serious worry, and there were other tracks to reassure me.  I shouldn't really have been up there alone, but it was close enough to the resort that Terri could keep an eye on me from the apartment should anything go wrong.  I ended up making two descents, both of them magnificent.  The snow was the best I had skied in two days, steep, deep and almost untracked.  I got into a good rhythm on the telemark skis, and looking back uphill I was narcissistically pleased with the even sine curve I had left on the snow.  Telemarking is a much more physical, technical style of skiing than you have with fixed heels, and it's indescribably pleasing to get it right.  I mused as I skied that there are few things as exhilarating in life as doing something complicated and doing it well, especially if it's something that involves both physical and mental skill.  Solving math contest problems, playing blitz chess, skiing powder, playing serve-and-volley tennis, playing piano and taking pictures of wildlife all fall into that category and I enjoy all of them.  I also enjoyed the sensation of putting on my skins and climbing uphill, earning my turns and getting a bit more exercise than you get riding the lifts.  I returned uphill on my skins to another delicious meal concocted by Terri and more cribbage with Brian.

Terri rips up the pow

Monday was a bit of a write-off.  Brian departed on a marshrutka for Tbilisi to meet up with his grown daughters while we lazed in our apartment, dissuaded from skiing by the whiteout fog blanketing the mountain.  Eventually, around noon, the clouds parted somewhat and we headed uphill, intent on doing the ski-tour line together that I had soloed the day before.  Sadly the clearing in the clouds proved to be a sucker hole, and we were enclosed in fog once we got halfway up the mountain.  There are few sensations more nauseating than trying to navigated downhill across a pure white landscape through pure white clouds:  there's nothing for the eyes to focus on, and you feel as though you're not moving when in fact you are.  We picked our way down slowly, both feeling a bit physically sick, trying not to lose the piste.  When we finally came out of the bottom of the clouds, it was grey, flat light that made it almost as hard to discern features as in the fog.  We bailed on the idea of touring and headed back for a lazy afternoon of studying Georgian and reading.

The infinite promise of a skin track

Tuesday was much better.  We checked out, packed our Delica, then set off to ski.  The skies were blue again and we decided to try our tour again.  The descent to the start of the skin track was wonderful, through fluffy, deep powder.  We put our skins on our skis and glided easily uphill.  Terri was feeling the altitude at first, but then got into the rhythm of the climb.  I love the feeling of climbing up on good snow sparkling in sunshine:  you never know for sure how the ski down will be, but the fluffy powder holds out the infinite promise of untold pleasures to come.  It was pretty and we were alone in the world, staring out at the neighbouring peaks.  The steeper faces were starting to shed snow in full-depth whale-mouth avalanches, exposing brown earth below.  There were alarming crown-wall fractures on many other faces, showing that the snowpack was far from stable.  We didn't venture too far off the tracks of other skiers in choosing our descent line.  I was on my fixed-heel Goliaths again, and the descent was just as satisfying as it had been two days previously.  Terri had recovered from altitude and had a great descent as well, laying down a series of elegant shorter-radius turns in the powder.  We both loved the ski down, and a brief skin brought us back to the piste.

Terri skinning up the hill

A rich reward for our efforts!

We skied down to our car, packed up and then made the fateful decision to drive uphill towards the top of the Jvari Pass to scout out off-piste descents and possible ski tours.  We got to the crest of the climb and then ran into a huge lineup of cars stuck, waiting for uphill convoys of trucks to pass.  Nobody was going anywhere in our direction, and there were limited options for turning around.  Eventually we backed out of our place in the queue and backed past everyone during a lull in uphill traffic, then pulled a seven-point turn between the high walls of snow and headed back downhill.  We did see a couple of fabulous-looking off-piste descents and filed them for future use; the full-blown ski touring possibilities, however, all seemed to be avalanche-prone and not so appealing.

We ground our way slowly back to Tbilisi behind hundreds of trucks.  When I cycled this road back in 2009, the Russian border was closed and there was almost no traffic.  Now trucks from Turkey and the entire post-Soviet world from Kazakhstan to Belarus trundle up and down relentlessly, making it far from ideal either for cycling or driving a car.  We were relieved to make it back to Tbilisi in one piece.

Terri descending the final pitch of our ski tour

Our tracks (along with a few dozen others)

Now we are planing our next adventures.  It seems as though Gudauri and Bakuriani aren't scheduled to receive more snow anytime soon, so we are looking at visiting Goderdzi (in Ajara, southwestern Georgia) and our autumn playground in Svaneti to get more snow.  With our legs and gear tuned up, we look forward to plenty more great descents! 

Terri on our way to the bottom of our ski tour

Back In The Saddle: A Quick Bicycle Trip Around Bali

Lipah, May 1, 2018

Dozens of sails along the RollerCoastal

I got back to Bali about ten days before Terri at the beginning of April, and used some of that time to put right something that has been bothering me for months.  I hadn't gone on a bicycle trip in over two years, the longest such gap since 1994-97.  Terri and I rode our bicycles up the Carretera Austral in Chile, and around Paraguay, in 2015-16, and since then I have done lots of travel, but none of it on my trusty Rocky Mountain.  I decided that I should do a short jaunt around the eastern part of the island of Bali, and quickly charted out a 4-day itinerary to hit a few of the highlights that I had so far missed.  On April 8th I loaded up my bicycle very lightly (just two rear panniers, as I was going to be sleeping indoors every night and eating in restaurants) and set off to explore.

Eye candy along the RollerCoastal

Day 1:  April 8.  Lipah-Peneloka          91 km, 2660 vertical metres

The coast east of Lipah is very pretty indeed!

The first day was the hardest ride of the entire trip, with some 2660 vertical metres of climbing in some pretty intense heat.  I started off by riding the RollerCoastal, the back road to Amlapura, the biggest town in Karangasem Regency (in which Lipah is located).  I often ride part of this road as a fun morning outing, but I had never cycled all the way to Amlapura.  My nickname for the route tells you what you need to know about it:  lots of short, steep ups and downs.  The road climbs up and down over a series of sharp ridges coming down from the caldera of the extinct volcano that rises just behind Lipah.  Lempuyang and Seraya are the two highest surviving bits of a mountain that blasted itself to pieces sometime in the dim prehistoric past, but looking on a map you can see that there is a clear outline of what was once a much broader, higher volcanic cone.  It was a hot, challenging ride, with lots of it ridden in my lowest gear.  About two thirds of the way to Amlapura, the road finally became gentler, with better pavement and kinder grades.  It felt amazing to be back in the saddle, headed out for more than a couple of hours of riding.  I had missed the sensation of freedom and exploration that a bicycle tour always brings me.  The views along the RollerCoastal are sensational, with every headland bringing another vista of a black sand beach crowded with fishing boats, with the shimmering azure of the Bali Sea studded with sails beyond.  This stretch of coast has escaped tourist development, and the villages are devoted to fishing as they have been for generations.

Gunung Agung seen from Amlapura

After two and a half hours of tough riding, I got to the big city and had lunch in KFC so that I could use their free wi-fi; my SIM card had been locked by the government, and I was hoping to get it unlocked at the Telkomsel office in town, but I had forgotten that it was Sunday, and the office was closed.  I sat in the air conditioned restaurant, loaded up a Google Map route onto my phone and then set off northwest into the highlands under the fierce midday sun.

Lovely rice terraces on the way to Besakih

I had a wonderful view of Gunung Agung as I rode out of Amlapura.  The volcano has returned to its usual peaceful state after a few months of intense rumbling, shaking and puffing from September to January, and it looked magnificent in an almost cloudless sky.  I rode along the main road for a while until Google Maps directed me off onto a side road.  I am usually a huge fan of side roads, but in this case the side road was a tiny bit shorter by being a lot steeper, with a series of steep ups and downs through the spectacular rice terraces for which Bali is famous.  It was gruelling work, and when I finally re-emerged onto the busy main road, it was actually a bit of a relief to have gentler grades, despite the incessant noise of motorcycles and trucks and the standard Balinese maniacal driving style.  The road led around the western slopes of Gunung Agung, past the turnoff to Besakih, the main temple of the mountain and the starting point for climbing Agung.  I was definitely feeling all that vertical climbing when I finally reached the rim of the Gunung Batur caldera.  It was disappointing to discover that this was not the end of the uphill, as the road undulated, more up than down, for the next several kilometres until I got to the junction at Peneloka.  There a road plunges down to the shores of the lake, Danau Batur.  I was less than keen to lose all that hard-earned elevation, so I took a room at a hotel perched on the caldera rim, hoping for a fabulous sunrise view the next morning; it was already dusk by the time I climbed off my bicycle, legs weary but otherwise feeling pretty good.  A much-needed shower, a big meal and an early night completed the first day.

Day 2:  April 9.  Peneloka-Candikuning          65 km,  1510 vertical metres

Dawn over Batur

I was up in the predawn the next morning after the soul-satisfying deep sleep that comes after a big day of riding.  There was a pretty dawn light show in the eastern sky, but thin cloud led to rather flat, disappointing light on the new cinder cone of Gunung Batur.  I could see the headlights and camera flashes of hordes of trekkers near the summit; Batur is a popular climb for tourists, and has been sewn up by a local guiding association who make it remarkably expensive for a relatively short walk.  I felt no real need to climb the volcano, as there was plenty of exercise ahead, despite it being a significantly shorter and less vertical leg than the day before.  I took a few photos, stretched and juggled a bit to wake up, then climbed onto my bicycle.

Early morning light on Gunung Batur

Festival time

The road continued to climb, albeit fitfully, as I circled the caldera clockwise.  There was a lot of traffic on the road, as this is part of the main north-south route from Denpasar to Singaraja.  Luckily there was a festival at one of the temples along the route which closed the road to all but motorcycles and one lucky cyclists.  After 11 kilometres and some 350 metres of ascent, to just over 1600 metres above sea level, I was happy to turn away from the main road and start descending to the south.  I could see the mountains enclosing the day's destination, another volcanic lake called Danau Bratan, to the west, seemingly close enough to touch, but the jagged gash of a deep gorge means that there is no direct road between the two lakes.  Instead my route led me 25 km south to a crossing point, then another 25 km north again.  The southward leg was all downhill, making for an easy morning.  The scenery was appealing too, across volcanic highlands devoted to plantations of oranges, coffee and marigolds.  I had not breakfasted before leaving, so in the small village of Catur I stopped for a big helping of gado gado, one of my favourite Indonesian dishes, at a small roadside stall.  The woman running the place spoke exceptionally good English, and it turned out that she had worked abroad for over a decade in Turkey, the Maldives and Dubai.  She worked first as a masseuse, then as a massage instructor and supervisor, and had only returned to her native village to care for her aged parents a few months previously.  We chatted about travel, and it turned out that she, like me, is a big fan of Kyrgyzstan.  These sorts of serendipitous encounters with people along the way are one of my favourite aspects of bicycle journeys, and I pedalled off with my belly full and feeling good about being back cycle touring.

A well-travelled restaurateur in Catur

Volcanoes lining up from near Plaga

I lost altitude increasingly rapidly, eventually crossing one deep canyon and climbing into the small town of Plaga before dropping again to the main crossing over the Ayung River.  I was now less than 30 km north of Ubud and the landscape, all rice terraces and pretty ridge-top temples and villages, was very similar to the magical countryside that made Ubud famous (too famous, to judge by the appalling traffic that was choking the place the last time I visited, last September).  Now all that remained was 900 metres of regaining lost elevation.  It was a steep, hard grunt, but much of the way I was on a small side road without any traffic at all, so I had time to look around and appreciate my surroundings.  It was a bit grey and hazy, not so good for views but a welcome relief for a cyclist sweating his way uphill.  About 6 km short of my destination, I joined another major north-south road and resigned myself to more heavy traffic and obnoxious driving behaviour.  I finally got to the village of Candikuning around 1:30, found a cheap hotel, showered and then set off in search of sustenance, both physical and intellectual.

Highland plantations

Marigolds grown in the highlands

The former came in the form of mujair, the fish that is raised in fish farms in both Danau Bratan and Danau Batur; it was pleasant, but the sweet soy-based sauce was a bit strange.  I then wandered up the road to the Bali Botanical Gardens where I hoped to do some birdwatching.  I had read several accounts of birdwatchers who had seen a couple dozen species of highland birds in an afternoon there, but I was either incompetent or unlucky, or both.  I could hear birds calling high overhead in tall trees, but peer as I might through my binoculars, I couldn't spot anything.  It was a complete strikeout in terms of new species; at least I had a pleasant stroll through the gardens.  After a big dinner of nasi goreng, I was in bed early, feeling a bit tired.

Near Danau Bratan

Day 3:  April 10, Candikuning to Lovina        33 km  330 vertical metres

It was a good thing that I was in bed early, as I had not paid enough attention to the religious makeup of Candikuning.  Bali is mostly Hindu, but there are pockets of Muslims here and there, and Candikuning was almost exclusively Muslim.  I was sleeping with my earplugs in (Bali's obsession with roosters, along with its packs of feral dogs, make for noisy nights), but they were no match for the high-decibel call to prayer that shook my hotel at 4:30 am.  I eventually fell asleep again, but I was not a well-rested little cyclist when I crawled out of bed.

Overlooking Danau Buyan

The day's riding was amazingly short and easy.  I rode out of town along the shore of Lake Bratan, then along a level valley leading to two more lakes, Buyan and Tamblingan; all three are nestled under the caldera wall of another extinct volcano.  At Buyan the road climbed steeply up to the rim of the caldera and then continued fairly level, with expansive views of the lakes to the left and the ocean to the right.  I felt suspended in mid-air and it made for wonderful cycling, especially when the main torrent of traffic disappeared downhill towards Singaraja.  Not long afterwards I followed Google Maps down a very steep route to the tourist hotspot of Lovina Beach.  I had 1500 metres to lose over 15 km, an average gradient of 10%, but the first half was surprisingly level.  The second half, however, was precipitous, and my forearms were starting to cramp by the time I got to the bottom.  It was very pretty and there was next to no traffic, and I really enjoyed being so far off the beaten track.  At the bottom I was able to boil water from my bottles on my brake rotors; all that gravitational potential energy that I had gained the day before was converted into heat, a fact that pleased my physics-teaching brain.

I had stayed in Lovina one night back in November during a quick diving trip along the north coast, and I had been surprised at how tatty the village is.  I knew that lots of expats and retirees live in Lovina, and I was hard-put to figure out where.  This trip revealed another side of Lovina in the hills above the coast, where genteel villas have been constructed to catch the mountain breezes.  I stayed closer to the coast, in the cheapest hotel so far; 150,000 rupiah (about US$ 12) bought me a spacious room in a complex with a swimming pool and pleasant gardens.  I went out for a sizeable lunch, then ended up spending much of the afternoon catching up on my beauty sleep, undisturbed by any muezzins.  I went out for dinner that evening overlooking Lovina's rather underwhelming beach and listened to quite a good cover band before retiring to my room.

Danau Buyan

Day Four:  April 11, Lovina to Lipah         90 km, 740 vertical metres

The last day of the trip was a bit of an anticlimax.  After the mountains, climbs, descents and new scenery of the first three days, the final stage was a fairly flat, uneventful trundle along a road that I had travelled twice before in each direction on visa runs (Singaraja is the nearest visa extension office to Lipah).   I stopped in Singaraja and got my SIM card issue resolved, a process that took almost an hour as I was behind a line of Chinese visitors who had also been stymied by the government's obsession with having all SIM cards registered.  After Singaraja I was able to ride fast enough to generate some wind cooling in the heat of the day, and I made good time all the way to Tulamben, site of the USAT Liberty wreck and many more less well-known muck-diving sites that Terri and I have visited many times.  From there the road got a bit hillier, but I was still back in Lipah by 2:30, having taken less than four hours from Singaraja.  I was hungry and a bit sunburnt, but elated at having seen a few more corners of Bali by bicycle.  I can't wait to do more cycle touring (probably just weekend jaunts) when I move to Tbilisi in August!

A couple of Google Maps of our Southern African overlanding trip

Queleas in front of the setting sun at Mwandi View, near Chobe

Now that the main narrative of the blog of Stanley's Travels is done, it's time to start filling in details and looking at things from different perspectives.  In aid of this, I've been busy creating Google Maps.

These two Google Maps might be useful in following the blog, and visualizing where we went.  The maps have all the main places we visited, along with dates, descriptions and a few photos (click on the place markers to see them).  As well, if you click on the layers further down the page, it will show the routes we followed in sections of the trip.  I think it's a reasonably useful resource for following our trip, or to help you, gentle readers, in planning your own African adventures.

Click here for the map of the first section of Stanley's Travels, from March to October of 2016.

Click here for the map of the second section of Stanley's Travels, from December 2016 to March 2017.

I hope the maps (also available in the sidebar of the blog) are useful!

More "best of" posts coming up over the next couple of weeks.

I love maps and flags.  Hope these maps are useful!

First adventures in Namibia (January-February 2017)

Rock patterns in Etosha

Thunder Bay, March 29, 2017

So now I'm only two months behind on my blog.  With any luck, within a week I might have brought everything up to date; it feels good to be catching up, rather than falling further behind!

First Steps in Namibia:  Quiver Trees and Rainstorms

When I last left you, we were entering Namibia, my 132nd country and number 78 on Terri's life list. We immediately lost the asphalt road that we had been following on the South African side of the border, but the Namibian dirt road was in excellent condition and it was easy to steam along at 75 km/h in comfort and safety.  There was next to no traffic as there was next to no population on this dry landscape.  We stopped in briefly for fuel and to pay our road tolls (N$ 259, or about US$20) in the small town of Aroab, then continued along our way.  The landscape had changed, becoming more varied and dramatic than on the other side of the border, with escarpments, plains, pans, tiny volcanic cones and dramatic haphazard piles of huge fractured boulders.  We made our way to Keetmanshoop and continued 15 km out of town to the lovely oasis of the Quiver Tree Forest.  

Terri looks very nervous as she pets the cheetah!

Quiver trees (Aloe dichotoma) are endemic to Namibia and the Northern Cape in South Africa. They're a distinctive tree, with fat trunks and stubby branches slightly reminiscent of baobabs, but with a golden flaky bark and a few more leaves.  The campsite is on the edge of one of the densest concentrations of these trees to be found anywhere, and is a wonderful spot to stay; we liked it so much that we stayed an extra day!  It's on a commerical farm, and one of the highlights is the fact that the farmer, Coenrad, has four cheetahs who were found abandoned as babies and raised by him. At 5:30 pm every day he feeds them, and allows his guests to come into the enclosures with him and pet the oldest, tamest cheetah on the head while she devours her meat.  It was a slightly unnerving activity, as the picture of Terri shows:  it's hard to be completely at ease when you're that close to a big hungry cat!  Coenrad also has a pet warthog, and I was never very comfortable around it either, with its huge tusks.  Later events would confirm my instinctive unease.

Rosy-faced lovebirds at Quiver Tree Forest

That night we cooked up a pot of spaghetti and Terri ended up hiding in the cab of Stanley as a massive thunderstorm swept in, complete with huge gusts of wind and dramatic flashes of lightning. I was on cooking duty, so I put on my raincoat and got wet until supper was ready, then climbed into Stanley to eat.  It was rather ironic that we had come to Namibia to escape the rains in South Africa only to get rained on apocalyptically on the first night in the country!

We slept poorly, as the storm left and returned twice more with flashes of lightning, stertorous thunder and deafening impacts of huge raindrops on Stanley's aluminum roof.  In addition I had left the waterproof window flaps unzipped to give us some fresh air, so by the time I had woken up and realized what was happening, our bedding and mattress had gotten quite wet.  We woke up at 8:15 and had a lazy big breakfast, deciding over bacon and eggs to stay another night.  I did some juggling and played some guitar before the clouds parted suddenly and illuminated the quiver trees.  I grabbed my camera and Terri and I headed over to walk around, admiring the other-worldly boulders and trees.  It was very pretty, with the golden bark contrasting beautifully with the deep blue sky.

Quiver tree bark

I did some yoga that morning, and then saw even better light break out on the quiver trees, so I ran off to take some more photos.  When I got back to Stanley, Terri greeted me convulsed in giggles. When she finally was able to speak, she pointed to my yoga mat, and I saw that it was shredded.  She said that she had turned her back, and when she looked around, the warthog was busy destroying the mat.  Coenrad wasn't terribly surprised, and kindly gave me a blue camping foam mat to use.  I guess it was an example of a downward-facing hog position?

Love the toes raised to stay off the hot rock

Blue-headed agama at Giant's Playground

We then pulled out the bicycles and rode 5 km up the dirt road (it was a bit washboarded, making cycling a bit annoying) to the Giant's Playground, another scenic spot owned by Coenrad.  It was now genuinely hot in the blazing midday sun, but we still walked dutifully around the hiking trail, taking photos of the dramatically perched boulders.  It was actually the wildlife that caught our eye even more, with gaily-coloured lizards sunning themselves atop each outcrop, many of them the spectacular blue-headed agama (Agama atra).  There were plenty of birds as well, and the views out over the seemingly endless expanse of ancient boulders made us feel like very insignificant time travellers.  

Quiver Tree Forest

Properly baked by the sun and the infrared radiation off the hot rocks, we cycled back to the Quiver Tree Forest; it was a lot easier going downwind and downhill!  It was nice to beat the heat in the swimming pool, but I managed to drag myself away for a run before flopping back into the pool.  We watched the cheetah feeding again, and then bought ourselves some game meat from Coenrad.  Terri stir-fried some springbok for dinner, battling a huge wind that blew out the flame on our gas stove twice. We managed to finish eating and wash up before the night's storm blew in. 

Quiver Tree Forest

Tuesday, January 24th we were up and off in reasonable time, but we lingered a bit in the metropolis of Keetmanshoop getting ourselves sorted for our new country:  groceries, SIM cards, Namibian dollars and a new pair of reading glasses for Terri.  I also climbed under the vehicle for my daily top-up of the transfer case oil, a process at which I was becoming more and more adept.  We eventually set off north along the asphalt of the B1, the main north-south highway, eating meat pies and listening to an audiobook until we heard a noise from the back.  I stopped and had a look, but didn't see anything obviously wrong.  I set off again, but within thirty seconds I realized something was drastically wrong.  The initial sound had been the sound of a back tire puncturing, and by now it was flat and the tire was a shredded mass of rubber.  It took nearly an hour to change the tire, most of that time being spent on the irritating process of removing the spare tire from underneath the camper.  We put the wrecked tire inside Stanley and drove off in search of a tire dealership.

More quiver trees

In the town of Mariental we found a garage that sold us a nice new tire and mounted it, and put it back under the camper (the longest part of the operation, even for trained professionals).  It was now too late to drive to Sesriem as we had planned, so we decided to find a place to stay in the vicinity. We ended up in the Hardap Nature Reserve, a small wildlife park based around a big water reservoir about 20 km outside Mariental.  It was a surprisingly beautiful spot, well set up for domestic tourists. There were excellent camping facilities and a lot of well-built cottages, and a fabulous view out over the reservoir.  Terri cooked up some lasagne in our oven and we sat outside around a campfire until (inevitably) a downpour rolled in and drove us inside and to bed.  That made three straight nights of heavy rain, and it was starting to annoy us.

Namib Nights:  The Beautiful Dunes of Sossusvlei

The next morning we were up by 6:45 and rolling by 8:45.  We took some time to do a very short game drive inside the game reserve before leaving; we had been told that there were black rhinos to be seen, but we saw none of them.  A few gemsboks and springbok did make an appearance and lots of ostriches pecked away at the grass on the plains next to the reservoir, but the jeep track was muddy and promised to get worse, so we eventually pulled the plug on the safari and headed off towards Sesriem.

Dessicated desert wood at Sesriem

We bumped our way back to Mariental, bought our usual lunch of steak pies and then drove west towards the coast and the Namib Desert.  The road was paved at first, and then turned into more excellent recently-graded gravel.  The scenery was fabulous, with sweeping vistas of canyons and a big descent from the interior plateau into a Tibetan-style gravel plain ringed by steep desert mountains.  Namibia was certainly delivering as promised on the landscape front.  We arrived in the tiny outpost of Sesriem at 4 pm, got our (very expensive) tent site and set up camp.  It's a big campsite, very popular with large overland trucks, although the tent sites are sufficiently widely spaced to give the illusion of being alone in the desert.  We bobbed in the pool for a while, although it was very crowded with overlanders, then went back to our campsite for juggling, yoga and dinner.  We watched a dramatic sunset, then stoked up a roaring campfire and sat out under the stars, revelling in the surroundings and the clear, rainless skies.

Ghostly early morning misty dunes at Sossusvlei

Sossusvlei morning

We were up very early the next morning for our visit out to the iconic sand dunes of Sossusvlei.  We were up at 4:45 and were the third vehicle through the access gate at 5:30.  It was still pretty dark as we sped along the paved road between unseen dunes.  Twice spotted hyenas appeared out of the darkness, loped across the asphalt and vanished again into the gloom.  It was 60 km to Sossusvlei, and as we passed Dune 45, scene of many a tourist snapshot, it got light enough to see that the dunes were enveloped in thick morning mist; we were not going to get a picture-perfect sunrise.  We drove on and arrived at the end of the pavement.  Since Stanley's 4WD wasn't working, we weren't comfortable trying to drive the last 4 km along a deep sand track, so we paid an outrageous N$ 150 (US$ 11) for a one-way lift to Sossusvlei itself, then set off on foot.

Tree in the pan at Sossusvlei

Sossusvlei is easily the most famous tourist sight in the entire country of Namibia.  The Namib Desert extends along the Atlantic Coast, and is full of high ancient sand dunes, but there is next to no access to the heart of this sand sea.  The only place where the average tourist can get into the dunes is here, where a dead-end road penetrates to within 50 km of the sea, and it is justifiably on everyone's Namibian itinerary.  As we walked across small salt pans and then up a huge red dune, we paused to look around at the mist still shrouding the nearby dunes; they weren't going anywhere just yet, and actually made for a good mysterious atmosphere in photos.  We got to the summit ridge of the huge Big Daddy Dune, then ran down to the bottom to a huge white pan that apparently fills with water once every few years after exceptional rains.

Sossusvlei trees

It actually looked at first glance as though there was water at the bottom, but closer inspection revealed that it was just the greyish rippled surface of the hard salty sand.  Ghostly trees stick out of the pan surface in a way that just begs to be photographed, and in places we could see where the movement of the huge dunes (they must be well over 100 metres high, not quite as high as the dunes at Dunhuang in China, but still pretty enormous) had partially buried the trees.  The ripples of the dunes are impressive, and make complicated four-sided or five-sided shapes that, seen from above, give the reason for their name of "star dunes".  We wandered around, taking photos of trees and dessicated wood and dunes and generally oohing and aahing at the picturesque beauty of the place, until the big tourist groups started arriving and we made our way back to the track.

Abstract shapes in the Sossusvlei pan

We had planned to walk back to where Stanley was parked, but as we hiked along, an empty shuttle vehicle came by and offered us an unofficial lift back for a reduced price, payable in cash to the driver.  We said yes, paid up our N$50 and held on as we slalomed along through the sand, past hapless tourists who were getting mired in sand going the other direction.  We pulled out our cooking gear and had a big breakfast of fried eggs before setting off on our second mission of the day, a hike out to lovely Hidden Vlei.  An indistinct line of wooden posts led across the desert towards the vlei (pan), and after 45 minutes of walking, we found ourselves looking down on a pan that was even more dramatic than Sossusvlei itself.  More photographs and admiring the views, and then it was time to trudge back to the parking lot.  

Sossusvlei dunes

We didn't want to drive all the way back to Sesriem, as we wanted to see the dunes later in the afternoon and maybe at sunset, so we popped Stanley's roof and slipped up into bed for a well-earned nap.  It was very hot indeed, but we had positioned Stanley under the only shade tree in the parking lot, and with the side flaps open, there was a strong cooling breeze blowing through, and we dozed, read and dozed some more until it was 4:30 pm and the parking lot was completely empty.  It was nice having this restful option for the hot part of the day.

Dunes between Sesriem and Sossusvlei

We drove back towards Sesriem with the idea of taking photos at Dune 45, the closest dune to the main road, but when we got there a big noisy group of Chinese tourists was shouting their way up the side of the dune, and it didn't look nearly as photogenic as we had hoped it would, so we decided to head back to Sesriem before dark.  It was a beautiful drive back between the sinous dunes, and we kept stopping for more photos.  We stirfried up some more springbok from Quiver Tree and then sat out under the stars with a crackling fire and some whisky.  It was an exceptionally clear night, and by the time we headed to bed, we had seen 15 separate satellites and 4 bright meteors in the sky, quite a satisfying total.






Canyons and Flamingoes:  The Road to the Coast

Part of the Kuiseb Canyon

It was distinctly cold at night at Sesriem, and I woke up regretting not using my down sleeping bag.  I topped up our transfer case oil (we seemed to be leaking about 150 ml a day, which meant that we had enough to last until we had to return to Windhoek) and we headed off northwest towards Walvis Bay and the coast.  It was a spectacular drive, along dirt roads that snaked past dramatic canyons, along a plateau backed by desolate rocky mountains and then through a crazed landscape of tilted strata dissected by the dry bed of the Kuiseb River.  We saw lots of signs for campgrounds along the road, and afterwards we realized that this area is a prime destination for people looking for isolated camping under the stars in the desert.  We cut through the Namib-Naukluft National Park, past intriguing-looking tracks leading to remote campsites, telling ourselves that in the future we would be back to explore in greater detail.  The Kuiseb Canyon was beautiful, and we saw in the distance Carp Cliff Cave, where German geologists Henno Martin and Hermann Korn spent part of their two years on the run during World War Two, told in the book The Sheltering Desert.  We climbed up the other side of the canyon and then we were on the desolate gravel plains that extend to the seashore.  By mid-afternoon we were driving into the orderly suburbs of Walvis Bay, a former British/South African enclave within Namibia, and setting up camp in a very urban campground called Lagoon Chalets. It was very windy indeed, and we were glad for the shelter of walls and trees, although it was still challenging to keep our stove lit.

We left Stanley and went out for a stroll towards the waters of Walvis Bay.  It's one of the most important birdwatching spots in all of southern Africa, with its shallows and salt flats drawing in dozens of waders and shore birds.  As soon as we got out to the wide walkway along the seafront, we saw a pink wave of lesser and greater flamingoes congregated in their hundreds.  We walked along, taking photos, and spotted other species:  pied avocets with their strange upturned beaks, various terns and gulls, and white-fronted plovers.  We had our eyes peeled for a relatively rare shorebird, the chestnut-banded plover, found in only a handful of locations, of which Walvis Bay is the most likely. Search as we might, we didn't see any of them, and after a while we were cold and tired of the raking wind, so we walked back to camp and supper.  I ended up chatting with our neighbours, a couple whose old Land Cruiser had a license plate that I didn't recognize.  It turned out to be Rwandan; he is Canadian and she is a Canadian who was Rwandan by birth, and they spent time every year in Rwanda, driving each year to other countries to explore.  It reminded us that we were only two border crossings from East Africa, where we had hoped to go on this leg of Stanley's Travels,  Perhaps next year?  I braaied some lamb chops for dinner and then sorted through photos after dinner.

Flamingoes at Walvis Bay

By this point we had made some executive decisions on our upcoming travel plans.  I picked a date out of the air (since we didn't yet know my father's surgery date) and decided that I would fly to Canada on March 16th, while Terri would head to New Zealand to see her family on the same date. We also knew that trying to tackle the rough tracks of Damaraland and the Kaokoveld, an area that we both wanted to visit, would be a bad idea without our 4WD working, and that we were going to be out of the country from February 7th to February 17th, doing some tour guiding in South Africa.  During that period of time, we wanted Stanley to be undergoing surgery to repair the transfer case and turn Stanley back into a proper 4WD vehicle.  Given those constraints, we decided that we would go up to Etosha National Park, and stop in at a garage in Windhoek to make arrangements for the transfer case work en route.  We would then poke around Etosha until it was time for our flight to Johannesburg.  We were also coming around to the idea that we might not be able to sell Stanley, at least not for the price we wanted for him, so finding a place to store him in Windhoek was also a priority.

Lone greater flamingo, Walvis Bay

Saturday, January 28th saw us getting up a bit lazily.  Terri was feeling a bit under the weather, and we wanted to do laundry before heading out, so we lingered over breakfast and internet before driving out to the shore for more birdwatching.  The wind had dropped a great deal, and birdwatching was a bit more enjoyable than the day before.  We drove along the shore south to the salt works, where some 90% of all of South Africa's salt is produced by evaporation, leaving intriguing patterns of crystal growth in the murky brine.  We did well on bird species, with greater and lesser flamingoes in great numbers, along with pied avocets, common sandpipers, ruddy turnstones, common terns and Cape teals.  If our 4WD had been working, we could have continued around the bay out to Pelican Point to see pelicans and seals, but that would have to wait for another visit.  It was wonderful to see all the birds lining the shore, such a contrast to the bleak gravel plains inland.  We even startled a pair of black-backed jackals drinking at a little pond; I wonder if they catch unwary birds from time to time?



Tennis and Logistics in Windhoek

Salt evaporation pool, Walvis Bay

From Walvis Bay we drove to Swakopmund, about 40 km along the Atlantic coast.  It's an area of tourist development, but to my eye it's too desolate and wind-swept to be really appealing.  It's very popular with fishermen, and every second pickup truck seemed to be carrying an array of long surf-casting rods, usually sticking up from the front bumper like a forest of CB radio aerials.  We got to Swakopmund, bought diesel and then decided to leave this German resort town for our next visit.  We got onto the main road and cruised towards Windhoek, keeping an unsuccessful eye out for welwitschia, a prehistoric-looking plant endemic to the gravel plains just inland from the coast.

It was an easy drive into Windhoek, but we hadn't picked a place to stay, and we ended up wasting a lot of time looking for one.  The next day was the Australian Open men's tennis finals, between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and as a huge Federer fan, I was anxious to watch what might very possibly end up being their last great match, so we wanted an indoor venue with satellite TV.  You wouldn't think that would be so hard to find in a major city, but it was after dark by the time we finally found Pension Cori, a little oasis of gardens and gentility tucked away behind a non-descript outside wall.  Rini, the irrepressible South African woman who runs the place, welcomed us in and enlisted my help reprogramming the satellite TV feed to get the tennis.

It was a good break from the road.  We slept well in a huge bed, sleeping late into the morning, before I settled down to watch what turned out to be a match for the ages; after 3 hours and 37 minutes of oscillating fortunes, great shots on both sides and enough suspense and excitement that I was jumping around the hotel room celebrating every Federer point won in the final set, Federer finally put his demons to rest by coming from behind in the fifth set to win an improbable title at age 35.  It was worth every penny that we spent to stay indoors!  We went out afterwards for a late lunch/early dinner, a tough task on a Sunday afternoon when most of Windhoek has rolled up the shutters, but eventually we found a steakhouse for a festive meal of spare ribs.

Monday, January 30th found us loth to move on, and it was 11 am before we finished packing and set off.  Our plan was to find a place to do repairs on Stanley before we left town.  Gearbox and Diff Doctor, our first port of call, proved to be a pretty professional-looking outfit, so we arranged to drop Stanley off the following Monday for what promised to be two weeks of work.  We stopped in to get my camera CCD cleaned (the relentless dust had worked its way into the interior of the camera and I had to use Adobe Lightroom to remove dust spots from every photo); the owner wouldn't do the cleaning for me, but sold me some exortitantly expensive cleaning pads to do the job myself.  We stocked up Stanley's lovely new Engel fridge with food at the Pick'n'Pay, and then headed out of town towards Windhoek airport, where we knew that there was a campground that also stored vehicles; the plan was to stay there and figure out whether it was where we might want to leave Stanley if we couldn't sell him.

Looking out into Etosha Pan

Ondekaremba proved to be a very lovely spot, out in the bush, far enough from the road and the airport not to hear any noise from them.  Windhoek is far enough inland from the dry coast to not be a desert; instead it's classic African bush, with lots of acacia trees.  There was a lot of birdlife around, and we had a pleasant stroll around the grounds before eating leftover stirfry and vegetables while stewing up beef for future suppers.  It was another pretty place to spend the night, and we talked once again about how lucky we were to be able to lead such a charmed lifestyle on the road.  That evening we were treated to a good view of Venus next to the slender semicircle of the new moon low in the western sky.

Magical Wildlife Moments in Etosha

Early morning spotted hyena

We left Windhoek slowly the next day, with a late wakeup after a solid night's sleep.  We did some stretching before settting off, and stopped in at the Trans Kalahari Inn, another possible option for storing Stanley, to book rooms for the following week.  We drove into town, stocked up again at the grocery store and then finally set off towards the north at 12:20 pm. It was an easy drive through pleasant scenery:  lush hilly woodland at first, then drier plateau, then a broad plain dotted with remnant mud puddles from the most recent rains.  We hadn't booked any accommodation at Etosha yet, and we had decided to stay outside the park on the first night to maximize use of our park entrance fees.  We ended up at Etosha Safari Camp, only 10 km from the main southern Andersson gate, by 4:30.  It proved to be a wonderful place to stay, with widely-spaced sites, lots of tree cover, a pool (in which we swam to beat the heat), a funky bar area and lots of birds, including our first view of the lesser masked weaver.  We sat out beside the camp fire that night suddenly aware of how little time remained for us in Africa; after months of travel, we were down to a few weeks of camping before we had to fly away.

Springbok bucks jousting

Our three days in Etosha National Park were among the best game-viewing experiences of our eight months in Africa.  Etosha is one of the legendary parks of Africa, and for good reason.  It is a very flat expanse, centred on the immense Etosha Pan, and much of the west of the park has little high vegetation for animals to hide behind.  It's full of springbok and gemsbok and hartebeest, and of the predators that eat them, and the animals are generally easy to see.

Spotted hyena drinking right beside Stanley

We set off from our campsite by 6:05, early enough that we had twenty minutes of waiting at the park gate before it opened exactly at sunrise.  We drove along the paved road to the main rest camp at Okaukuejo, where we paid for our three days of park fees and one night of camping (the plan was to drift eastward, one rest camp a day, for three days before exiting the east side of Etosha).  Properly paid up, we set off to the west to what our guidebook proclaimed to be one of the iconic sights of the park, the Phantom Forest.  It was a distinctly underwhelming visual experience, but at least it provided a picnic spot for a hearty eggs and toast breakfast.  There were thousands of springbok about, but not much else, and we headed back east towards the edge of the pan after breakfast.  It was a very striking view out into the immensity of the pan, like looking over a perfectly calm ocean, except made of salty mud.  We found the sad remnants of a giraffe who had been devoured near one of the waterholes, and saw lots of what birdwatchers like to call LBJs:  Little Brown Jobs, the non-descript species of lark and pipit and flycatcher that all blend together to those (like us) who are not committed twitchers.  We did in the end manage to identify the spike-heeled lark, Stark's lark and the chat flycatcher.  By 1:30 we were done and driving back to camp, satisfied but not overwhelmed by our day of wildlife.  The short-grass plains around Okaukuejo gave us, in addition to the springbok and gemsbok that you would expect in dry areas, a few wildebeest and ostriches and lots of zebras, along with a couple of black-backed jackals and lots of cute ground squirrels.

Black-winged stilt

We went out to the illuminated waterhole that evening in hopes of seeing black rhinos coming in for water, but we struck out.  The beautiful starry skies were some compensation, but we were keen on black rhinos, which we had only seen once on the entire trip, right at the beginning in Kruger.

Magnificent lioness

Two lionesses drinking in the early morning near Okaukuejo

We were up early the next morning as the entire campsite arose noisily around us.  By 6:50 we were driving out of the camp gates, hoping for early-morning wildlife magic.  It soon arrived, in the form of two juvenile spotted hyenas whom we saw loping along the plain with their peculiar droop-shouldered gait.  They strolled right up to the road and stopped to drink water from a puddle two metres from where Terri had parked Stanley.  We sat breathless for several minutes watching these beautiful animals up close, and got a number of good photos. It was an unforgettable encounter with an animal often viewed with fear and revulsion by humans.  No sooner had they wandered off than we drove into Nebrowni waterhole to find two rare blue cranes and, right beside them, two magnificent lionesses in the prime of life, drinking side by side after a hard night's hunting.  The lionesses lingered for a long time before stalking off with regal air, one after the other.  There was a party of zebras passing behind the waterhole and the zebras very nearly walked right into the retreating lionesses, which would have made an already amazing sighting even more improbable.  At the last second the zebras cottoned on and moved away from the lead lioness who was starting to look both hungry and very interested.

Blue crane

European bee-eater and its coat of many colours

We spent the rest of the morning meandering from waterhole to waterhole along the southern edge of Etosha Pan, through alternating bands of short-grass plains and thick mopane woodland.  We saw more blue cranes, including two babies, along with baby wildebeests, hundreds of spindly-legged springbok infants and more jackals.  The sky began to darken as we drove, and we began to get anxious about getting stuck in mud in a downpour without any working 4WD.

Black-faced impala at Halali waterhole

Remarkably we made it to Halali without getting wet.  We set up camp and then walked up to Halali waterhole where we had a slightly bizarre fight with a tour group of older French tourists from an overland truck.  The afternoon before at Okaukuejo waterhole everyone had been very well-behaved, obeying the "Silence Please" signs and watching the birds and animals peacefully and amicably.  This group was loud, boorish and refused to pipe down even when we pointed out the signs.  The tour guide, who would usually in cases like this try to keep his unruly tourists in line, was instead very pugnacious and we nearly came to blows.  I didn't see it, but Terri saw that he actually pulled out a knife to use on me.  It seemed a bizarre over-reaction to being asked to obey the rules.  Luckily they finished their picnic and wandered off, leaving us in possession of the waterhole.  We again didn't see any rhinos, but the pond was alive with turtles of all sizes, and a single black-faced impala showed up to drink later.  It's not a separate species, just a race or subspecies, but the addition of a big black blaze down the nose completely changes the look of the common impala to something a big more majestic and mysterious.

Lesser flamingoes, Etosha

That afternoon and evening, in an almost deserted campground, we chatted with our fellow campers: a party of three Americans and an Irishman travelling with both a guitar and a mandolin; a pair of Brits who had bought their own car in South Africa (like us), who had used the same "agent" in Johannesburg to register their car (based, it turned out, on our recommendation on the Africa4x4Cafe website); and Butch and Wendy, a pair of very well-travelled South Africans who had a good look at Stanley in case Butch's brother might be interested in buying him.  Wendy, though, after looking at Stanley and all the gear that comes with him, opined that we would be crazy to sell him, since he was so optimized for the kind of travel that we wanted to do.  That evening, talking it over, we decided that she was right and that we should give up on trying to sell Stanley and store him instead for future use.

Looking out into the immensity of Etosha Pan at a gathering storm

Eurasian hobby

Our last full day in Etosha was rainy.  It rained during the night, stopped and then restarted at dawn, leaving us to sleep in until 7 and have a lazy getaway after a big breakfast.  It rained off and on all day, gently at first and then with frightening ferocity, out of a pitch-black sky, in the afternoon.   We made our way out onto a lookout causeway that leads a couple of kilometres onto the soft surface of the pan and felt swallowed up by the immensity of the space around us.  Gaily-coloured European bee-eaters, Eurasian hobbies and red-necked falcons played on the posts marking the edge of the causeway, and suddenly, out on the pan surface, we saw the bird that we had failed to spot at Walvis Bay:  the chestnut-banded plover.  We drove back towards solid ground in a jubilant mood, a feeling further improved by spotting hundreds of flamingoes in a little waterhole beside the road. The sky was darkening in front of our eyes, and we seemed to be headed straight towards a wall of blackness. The skies ruptured open as we headed towards the camp at Nemutoni, and we were fortunate to make it off off the jeep track we were following and onto the solidity of the main gravel road, as the tracks were beginning to flood.

I think it might be about to rain!

At Halali we sheltered for a couple of hours in the restaurant before the rain stopped long enough for us to check out the waterhole:  again there were no rhinos, and we retreated to Stanley for supper before rain put paid to the idea of sitting outside.

Black-backed jackal

Saturday, February 4th saw us doing one last game drive before bidding farewell to the park, and we ended up glad that we did.  We went out first in search of Damara dik-diks, a tiny antelope that we had yet to tick off our list.  Despite some dedicated searching, we came up empty-handed, but we had lots of meetings with very skittish giraffes and lots of raptors, followed by our first sightings of Cape shoveller ducks and African shelducks at Klein Namutoni waterhole.

That is a serious kick by a fleeing giraffe

We gave up on dik-diks and took a lap around Fischerpan, the easternmost extension of Etosha Pan.  It was partly full of water and looked striking, particularly when we drove across it with water on both sides.  We spotted blue cranes at one waterhole and saw lots of elephant tracks in the mud of the pan, although we struck out on elephants themselves.  Then, just as we were rounding the back part of Fischerpan I spotted what seemed at first to be bat-eared foxes in the distance.  I pulled out my binoculars and realized that these "foxes" had stripes and a familiar droop-shouldered look.  We pulled out our mammal guide and checked, and, sure enough, we had hit it very lucky.  What we were looking at were three juvenile aardwolves, a species of small hyena that lives entirely on termites and is usually strictly nocturnal.  We were very lucky to see them; many guides and biologists that we talked to had told us that they had never seen aardwolves, and we had more or less given up on ever seeing them.  We sat watching them in the distance, suddenly very happy, and it was hard to tear ourselves away and start driving out of the park.

Our lucky sighting of three juvenile aardwolves

Standing atop the world's largest space rock, the Hoba Meteorite

We checked out of the park at Von Lindquist Gate and started driving towards Tsumeb.  Our destination was the Hoba Meteorite, the largest meteorite ever discovered.  It took a while to get there, but it was a pretty drive and well worth the detour.  At 64 tons, it's an immense chunk of iron mixed with nickel, pitted and melted on the outside from its fall through Earth's atmosphere.  It's a bit strange that there is no crater associated with such a big rock; maybe it hit Earth with a low relative speed, travelling in the same basic direction as our planet.  We took some photos and then began the long retreat towards Windhoek.  We ended up spending the night at an unexpected gem of a place, Otjira Lodge.  Our campsite was away from all the others, and we had a great walk through the bush, perfect stars and a massive campfire on which we grilled some great pork chops after yet another postcard-perfect sunset.  We told ourselves that we would make it back to Otjira on our next loop through Namibia.

From there our first loop through Namibia was more or less over.  We spent the next morning chatting with an Austrian couple, Manfred and Barbara, who had lived in Namibia for 25 years, and were full of great information on where to camp in Damaraland and the Kaokoveld.  We also admired their perfectly-engineered camper, particularly their electrically adjusted air shocks to level the camper on uneven ground.  Then it was time to drive back to the city and out to the Trans-Kalahari Inn, where we booked in for three nights.  Monday morning saw us dropping Stanley at the Gearbox and Diff Doctor, running errands in town (chiefly getting measured for new glasses for both of us, taking advantage of favourable exchange rates and low labour costs to save a lot of money for something we both needed) and then catching a taxi back to the Trans-Kalahari for two lazy days.  Wednesday morning found us on an early flight to Johannesburg for ten days of work.  We would return on February 17th, ready for one last month of Stanley's Travels 1.0.

Etosha sunset