South African and Namibian Adventures

Hello Everyone,
This definitely has been an adventure.  Not always smooth sailing but all positive in the end.  We will just start at the beginning.
Lisa passed out with her eyes open on the plane in the middle of the Atlantic for about five minutes.  Once we snapped her out of it they gave her oxygen and everything went back to normal.  We attributed it to the warm plane, poor air circulation and tiredness leading up to the trip.  She has been fine since.
We have climbed mountains.  The first was table mountain in Cape Town.  This is where we took the panoramic picture for our first blog.
From here you saw the shark cage post.
Next was when we climbed a mountain strewn with sharp rocks.  This is were Lisa scrapped up her legs on the rocks as we scrabbled up and down.  I put pictures of this on the previous blog where I got stuck in a rock pipe on the same mountain.
Our next adventure was when we got up at 4:00 to go and climb a sand dune to watch the sunrise.  To our Pinery friends, these dunes are huge and we will never complain about climbing the sands dunes on Lake Huron.  The dunes are just over 300 m tall.  We were thinking we would hold back the group of younger travelers but we keep pace.  Lisa fell back in near the end when her asthma kicked in but we finished.  Running down the dune was wicked fun. Then we had breakfast at the base of the dunes.  These are not mountains of rock but mountains of a lot of sand.  Some of the younger boys tried to run up but only got about 100 m before they realized there was no way they could do it.  We also were fooled as we climbed the first slope only to realize that we were only half way.  The picture below shows the first slope with the second just visible to the left.

Breakfast at the base of the dunes.

Lisa watching the sunrise from the top

The group enjoying the view

Lisa walking down

From here we drover down the skeleton coast where the clouds roll in and the area has numerous ship wrecks even today.  Below is a photo of one of the recent victims.

In Swakopmund we did a village tour, more on that in the people edition of the next blog.  We had the opportunity to eat butterfly larvae.  They boil them and then fry them in oil and spices.  Even Lisa tried them.  Below are the photos.  You judge whether or not she liked them.

Butterfly larvae

Lisa eating butterfly larvae

Also in Swakopmund Lisa and I went quad biking in the sand dunes.  It was a blast.  We got to go up as high as we could on the dune before coming down.  I have video but it takes too long to upload so there are only pictures.  The quads were fun but without incident. On the very first dune the guide mislead Lisa and she tried to follow him across the upper slope of one of the dunes.  I was following only to see Lisa and the quad bike rolling together down the slope.  Myself and the other two guys were like OMG what just happened.  Thankfully she got up.  She has some rib issues and some really big and deep bruises but other than that seems fine.   Sleep on the ground for the first few nights was not pleasant for her.

Quad biking in the dunes

Our group overlooking the Atlantic

Lisa's bruises (at least the ones that she is willing to show)

Typical road side lunch stop and toilet break.  We will just stop under a tree, open up the side of the truck, prepare some food and then eat.  There are no bathrooms on the truck so the boys go to the right side of the truck and the girls go to the right.  There is no shyness here.

Typical road side stop

We are in the rainy season here and the first night of rain all of our brand new tents leaked.  Hopefully we don't get too much more rain at night. But with the rains special things happen. For example, the Etosha pan which is a large dry clay lake bed has water in some of the areas.  We stopped to slide, slop and walk around in the shallows.  Some of the group, after a few suggestions, decided that it would be fun to throw clay and then two of them decided to tackle each other.  It was so much fun.

Lisa on the Etosha Pan

The optical illusions on the pan

Two of  our group wrestling

In Waterburg we climbed the plateau.  At least I did as Lisa is still not up to steep climbs yet.  The plateau is 500 m tall with the last 100 m nearly straight up.  Below are the photos.

Dan at the top of the Waterburg Plateau

The Waterburg Plateau

 We are now in Windhoek getting ready to cross the Kalahari Desert tomorrow and head into Botswana.  Once there we will be heading into the bush for a few days as we take a small pack of the bare essentials and head off in canoes to the Okavongo Delta.  It should be very interesting as there are no showers, no toilets, no electricity and basically nothing.  We may even sleep under the stars weather permitting (if not the tents will have to do).  I am unsure of when we will be in contact again but will try and re-post once we have WiFi again.

Namibian Family Robinson