Day 26 (02-13-09)

Friday the 13th. I didn’t even realize it was today until someone mentioned it in class. It’s impossible to have any sense of time on this trip. When we’re on the ship, days and dates don’t matter because we have class every day, regardless of weekend or holiday. In port, we try to cram as many activities into our days as possible and no one has any need to know what day it is. Tonight there was the typical pre-port lecture talking about what to expect/avoid in country. Peel-able fruit = good. Tap water = bad. Crime rate = high. AIDS = kind of a big deal. The usual. And apparently northern Namibia is a moderate risk zone for malaria, so I probably should have some extra pills to take for that, but my doctor at home told me I didn’t need any. So if I get malaria, I’m blaming her. I’m sure I could make a lawsuit out of it, so it’s really a win-win.

I’m on the activities/events planning committee on the ship, and tonight we had to carry out one of our events: Valentines. As tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, we created a few generic valentines and invited everyone to make their own as well. Someone put a drop box on the Student Life desk and we had to sort through an unbelievable amount of valentines for delivery tonight. It actually turned out very well; we got all of them delivered to the cabins in about 30 minutes and now lots of people have found out that they have secret admirers onboard. It’s adorable, trust me. Whatever, we get bored after 8 days at sea. What else are we supposed to do? And no, “study”is not the correct answer to that question.

The safari commences tomorrow morning! Stay tuned.

Day 27 (02-14-09)

Happy Valentine’s Day, lovers. An early morning wake-up revealed something I still wasn’t expecting. More palm trees. I haven’t been to a single country since leaving Philly that hasn’t had palm trees. It’s crazy. There was an African Children’s Choir waiting on the dock when we got there and they sang for us as we walked down the gangway. It was pretty fantastic. And I just realized, duh, of course it’s an African Choir. I’m in Africa. But. It has more of an effect than if I had just said Children’s Choir. You know I’m right.

A short walk across the dock landed me at a row of 9 minibuses labeled “Wild Dog Safaris.”I found bus number 9 and the adventure began. Sort of. First of all, the student who organized the trip told us that our bus ride would be approximate 4 hours long. False. Very false. If you get a chance, look up a map of Namibia. It’s not that hard, I’m sure Google Images is easily accessible right now. Findthe port city of Walvis Bay (where we docked) and then find Etosha National Park (way up north). Got it? Yeah. Not 4 hours. Try 8. Although, I should give you a disclaimer. Let’s get Tarantino here and rewind for a second. About 5 hours into the drive, we come across one of the other buses in our group sitting on the side of the road. Several SAS students are standing in the street. We stop and find out that the battery in their bus has died. So we had a street party while the guides tried to figure everything out. I laid down in the middle of the street just for kicks. Come on, it’s Namibia. There’s NO ONE here. It’s one of the most sparsely populated nations in the world. Comparison: Take the population of Houston, TX. Spread it out over the entire area of Texas and Oklahoma combined. Then give 250,000 of them AIDS. Welcome to sub-Saharan Africa.

We got the bus situation sorted and continued our trek northward. We made it to the park just after sunset, and we settled nicely into our tents, we sat around the campfire singing, and all was well and good. Really? Do you honestly think it would go that well? No no no, you are dearly mistaken.

10 minutes before we got to the campsite: Torrential downpour. Oh, right. It’s February. Summer in Africa. The wet season. We pulled into our area; the guides grabbed the tents out of the back of the bus and threw them on the ground. “Grab one, find a spot without puddles, and set up camp.”Excuse me? We’re spoiled Americans here. What makes you think we’re capable of doing this? Sadly enough, that seemed to be the general consensus. I’m not a camper. I’ve never set up a tent in my life. But it’s pretty intuitive. Put the poles together, stick them in the ground, and attach the tent. Not too difficult. I ended up putting 5 tents together with 2 other guys and the 2 tour guides in the pouring rain while several girls sat in the bus watching us.

I’m not lying.

It’s really sad how spoiled people can act. I mean, I’m not saying I’m not spoiled. In comparison to most, I am. I’m spoiled and I’m privileged and I take things for granted. But I can admit it, and I’m certainly open to trying new things and roughing it for a while. That’s part of the experience. It’s why I’m here in the first place. But enough of the self-righteous ranting. It was a great experience, and I loved it.

Dinner took a very long time to cook, but it was well worth the wait. Spaghetti with meat sauce and hollowed out squash filled with sweet corn and cinnamon. All cooked in giant kettles over a campfire in the rain. The ship’s food isn’t this good and we have a full staff and things like, ya know, amenities. Crazy.

Tired. Wet. Sleep.

Day 28 (02-15-09)

Someone is shaking my tent. It’s still dark outside. I can smell breakfast. It’s cool outside, probably in the mid 60s. I open the flap and take a look around. There’s a fire going, with bacon and eggs on the way. My fellow Americans are emerging from their tents in a similarly groggy fashion. The sky is just beginning to turn those shades of red, yellow and orange that only seem possible in animated Disney movies.

A full day of safari-ing starts with a morning game drive. I don’t have my hopes up too high because it’s February and the best time for seeing animals here is June-August. But it’s a change of scenery that I never expected to see in my lifetime anyway, so it’s still well worth it. The first 4 hours of driving before lunch afforded us many treats. Zebras, ostriches, giraffes, sringboks, oryx, antelope, and the big daddy of them all, the Lion. Only one lion, off in the distance under his tree. But he was the alpha male and his mane was clearly visible and it was an incredible sight. If you’ve ever been to the Animal Kingdom in Disney World and ridden along on the safari ride, it’s actually quite similar to the real thing, just on a smaller scale. Kudos to Will Eisner. Lunch stop: hot dogs. More driving. More animals. We saw leopard tracks along one of he paths, but no leopards. Only one of the 9 vans saw cheetahs (it wasn’t mine). No one saw rhinos or elephants because they had already migrated north for the wet season. But it was still incredible. We stayed along the southern edge of Etosha National Park the whole time, and we were driving all day. It’s the largest park in all of Africa, and we only saw a sliver of a sliver of it.

Back to camp for dinner: a barbeque with lamb, pork, and sausage. Garlic bread. S’mores. Seriously, the food was so good. We watched the sunset from a tower in the camp and it was (can you guess?) gorgeous. After nightfall, a group of us went back to the tower and we turned our eyes straight upward to the skies. Fun fact: Namibia is known as one of the best places in the world for stargazing. Even with the moderate ambient light from the camp, the sky was still clear and filled with stars. The white band of the Milky Way was visible. I’ve only ever once seen a sky more clearly than tonight (Kelsey, you win. Your house has a better view of the universe than Namibia). Unfortunately, our stargazing was cut short by the swarm of bugs that suddenly and without warning overtook the top of the tower from below. It honestly looked like the plague of locusts just swarming over the edge of the stone wall. But we have a 5am wake up call tomorrow, so I should be going to bed anyway. Goodnight.

Day 29 (02-16-09)

5am wake up. Tent disassembly. Breakfast. 8 hour drive broken up with a stop to see flamingos and a stop for shopping. Well, there were bathroom breaks, too. But yeah, we’ve done lots of driving in the past few days. My legs hurt from lack of usage. We didn’t make it back to Walvis Bay in time for me to wander out to the sand dunes, which I was hoping for. The Namib desert has the largest sand dunes in the world (Dune 7, check it out) and several people climb them, sand-board on them, ride ATVs over them. It’s pretty intense. Oh well, I saw them from my window. I suppose I’ll just have to come back someday.

Happy 24th Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

I’m back onboard the MV Explorer now. I’m tired. I’m dirty. It’s great. I’m going to go grab some dinner now and start the obligatory story trading. Goodbye Namibia, and goodbye readers.