Notes From An Amateur Backpacker

Time and Wi-Fi are proving difficult to find in the same place and at the same time, so blogging has been a little sporadic recently – lots to catch up on since April. After a brilliant end of term (they came in, wrote an exam, had an assembly featuring Mrs Kruse’s dancing, and then left by 9am), we’re now on holiday!

Caitlin and I are travelling for four weeks, on a trip that will take us around Namibia, into Zambia to visit Victoria Falls, and then to Botswana to visit some other volunteers. Our first stop towards the end of April was a short safari in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia – a fantastic 3 days with amazing wildlife. There are no buffalo in the park to complete Africa’s Big Five, but we did spot all of Etosha’s Big Four – lion, elephant, rhino and leopard-, plus countless zebra, giraffe, springbok and warthog. Watching the animals come to drink at the floodlit waterhole under the stars was a highlight: difficult to capture on camera, but absolutely beautiful and any pictures I take could never to justice to how remarkable it was to watch.

What also struck me about Etosha was the number of tourists we came across. Living in the middle of southern nowhere, we rarely see any other foreigners, but here, there were hundreds of them. Armies of khaki-clad warriors, with socks pulled high around their knees and permanently brandishing titanic Canon SLR contraptions, were everywhere. Whilst it meant that we were lucky to have only 5 on our tour, and benefitted from a night in a rather nice tourist lodge, it did feel rather strange to be a foreign visitor to Namibia all over again. Whilst I am by no means local, and we are still very much those two white girls with the custard cream addiction, I do have a noticeably different perspective on Namibia: what I see of this country, and the way that I see it, is completely different as a volunteer than it is as a tourist. At least it made me look a little less pasty in comparison!

Our tour of Etosha finished in Swakopmund, a fairly large town on the Atlantic coast. They joke that it’s more German than Germany, which may not be strictly true, but it was truly bizarre how European the town is. It’s full of cafes, boutiques, bars, restaurants and a very pleasant seafront – couldn’t be further from Tses if it tried.  One thing we did do was sandboarding in the dunes just south of the town. Essentially, you take a dune, a helmet and a piece of waxed plywood and...that’s it. You just send yourself flying down giant piles of sand very, very quickly. Trekking up and down was knackering, and I think it’s an understatement to say I’m not really cut out for these things, but it was good fun nevertheless. It was lovely to have some time to relax by the sea, and meeting up with Sachi and Jake (another PT volunteer) also made for an excellent break. Photos from Swakop are, unfortunately, few and far between. This is for several reasons: firstly, we spent a lot of time not doing an awful lot; secondly, it’s a bit difficult taking photos whilst out sandboarding; thirdly, after encounters with dune sand and one unprecedented wave, my camera had a bit of a hissy fit for a while.

 In Livingstone at the moment, due to visit Victoria Falls tomorrow and cannot wait. Updates on Sossusvlei and our pending Zambia adventure coming soon!