Namibia weblog 2005

Michael and Rosanne describe their Christmas holiday in South Africa:

Christmas in South Africa

January 18th 2005

"Imagine being told to go away and play for five weeks! Hungry for sea and for sea breezes, we knew to head straight for South Africa to find sea and whales and penguins. Oshakati to Capetown is a mere 2,300 kilometres. By catching the rumbling old bus ankle deep in discarded maize husks to Windhoek, 12 hours, and then changing to the high luxury night bus to Capetown, 20 hours, we arrived bug eyed but ready for action. We had driven through some interesting situations including driving off after a brief stop without two women passengers and when the driver realised he simply stopped and we waited for half an hour for them to run and catch us up.

We had a sluggish two hour stop at the Namibian border post while everyone had to fill out two forms and have their passport stamped, all 60+ of us, by just one bleary customs officer and attendant cockroaches.

It was really exciting to descend from the high plateaus of Namibia into the rolling vineyards and citrus plantations of the northern Cape. Suddenly everything was looking lush and green and carefully tended. River courses were flanked by great sprouts of trees and reeds. It was a welcome and beautiful sight.

We were met by Clarissa’s mother, Lavinia, and her driver in a museum piece Daimler and stopped on a cliff edge to gaze and drink gins and tonic! This was very much setting the pace for the weeks ahead. Luxury accommodation, huge swimming pool, a garden visited freely by sunbirds and Hamada ibis and the resident tortoises, fabulous meals - bliss.

Lavinia had bought a seventeen year old beat up and embarrassingly noisy VW Golf on our behalf and this gave us the freedom to be proper tourists and so our first move was to get a boat trip to Robben Island to visit Nelson Mandela’s prison. Luckily for Michael the high speed boat was full and so we were carried over by a slow chugging fishing boat and we threw up a huge wake and attracted dolphins and seals alongside. I swear it was the first and best sea breeze a grateful body ever experienced. The whole trip was fascinating and moving. The idea of using ex-convicts to act as guides was a good one; they explained their routines and conditions unemotionally but it was a powerful story they told.

Once back in the highly modern and throbbing commercial waterside development we realised that we were going to be in trouble: we were relatively penniless and experiencing culture shock. It was disappointing to see black faces still doing all the low jobs and doing none of the swanking about. We headed for the mountains.

Suffice it to say that the hiking boots were an essential part of our bus luggage. We climbed up all the hills and peaks we could, revelling in the cool breezes and enjoying the most fantastic flowers and plant diversity. We didn’t really mean to climb up Table Mountain and down again, but the cable car had way too long a queue and so we shivered at the top, hunkering down behind crags in high winds and fleeting but enveloping clouds, to gasp at the views, before realising that it was going to be a two hour descent as well. We later drove to the base of the mountain to watch the city in sunset and then lighting up.

We swam in two oceans, Atlantic and Indian, with a full six degree difference between them: 16 and then 22 and tried to tell where it was that the two oceans met. One of our beaches was full of penguins who were quite unfazed by humans and continued their comical gossip and activity.

Michael, true sailor, decided that the most awesome part of his South African experience was walking around the Cape of Good Hope. It was staggering to think that beyond us lay Antarctica. The wild and rugged beauty of the coastline was superb and we wandered for hours enjoying the smells and wildlife. We were amongst grazing ostrich and springbok and fat cheery guinea pigs called dassies. We scanned the sea every day for sightings of whales, alas none left from the breeding season. Just about every day we managed to find a beautiful walk on beaches or mountains or forest. We were in Capetown for three weeks… wine estates and museums and bizarre anachronistic towns."

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