Day 23
We arrived in Walvis Bay on Friday and went through the same customs chaos as Brazil. The diplomats were much more interesting at the diplomatic briefing, though. One of them told us a story of how he got stabbed the night before in a B&B. Crime rate is at the crisis level apparently.
I finally got off the boat with Josie at about 1000. We grabbed a taxi at the gangway and paid 50 Namibian dollars (NAD) to go approximately 5 miles, maybe. The diplomats said it shouldn't cost more than N$ 5 within the city of Walvis Bay. But we've been gipped several times since then too. Anyway, we went to a bank to get some cash, then we wandered the city until we found a post office.
Both of us had to be back at the boat at 1330 because our stargazing/camping trip was leaving then. Everyone clambered into vans on the dock. The vans drove us out past dune 7, the moon landscape and down into a valley. Our driver was pretty cool. His name was Robert. He was basically the only one who knew what he was doing. After we got down into the valley, we had to drive across some farms through the sand. One van got stuck in an old creek bed. He was enraged. So another van pulled them out, and we took the lead.
Our campsite was amazing. We had tents set up with cots and blankets for two people in between huge rock formations, like cliffs. There were fire pits and a huge canopy tent set up for us to eat under as well. The set up looked very similar to a wedding, actually. It wasn't something you could take a picture of and get the whole picture; you had to be sitting there. Think Lion King. That's where we were: Pride Rock.
There were a few hours of free time before dinner and activities began, so Josie, Cassidy and two new friends named Tori and Kristin wandered around with me. Everyone was climbing up the huge rock formations. We walked back along the road to where you could see the different layers of rock. The views were spectacular. We climbed up the formations and took pictures, singing Lion King the whole time. We looked for different images in the rocks, for example, one looked like George Washington or an Inca looking up towards the sky.
We also discovered a new delightful activity: crunching dried earth. The patches of cracked dirt and sand where water had once been were so much fun to step on. I wish I could describe the satisfaction of smushing these pieces of dirt. The closest thing to it would be popping the bubbles on bubble wrap. We spent probably about 10-15 minutes in this first patch walking around, smashing all the...plates, for lack of a better word. And we were super excited when we found another and then another to crunch as well. It was so fun, it felt a little wrong.
Eventually, we tore ourselves away from our new activity to climb some big rocks. We just couldn't believe that we are in Africa. Namibia! It's freaking sweet. I love Africa.
After a while we started to head back in the other direction. There were some people who had climbed up higher, and we couldn't let them have all the fun. However, on our way back to and through the campsite, we noticed how tired we were...and how available the lawn chairs were. So, we got a little side-tracked and sat down. After sitting down, we noticed that we were starving, so we decided to wait around for dinner. We waited quite a while for the dinner to be ready. The sun went down, it got cool and they lit the bonfires, but still no dinner. Finally it was ready and everyone rushed over to the tent.
Dinner was delicious. The ability to eat the fruits and veggies in Namibia made it even better. They had a huge greek salad, papaya, steamed vegetables, rice, roasted beef and baked chicken. Josie, Hillary and I shared a bottle of South African Shiraz with our meal. For dessert, they served a cinnamon-roll type thing, but it had an orange topping instead of cinnamon.
By the time I had stuffed my face, the stargazers had arrived. We were the fastest table to put together a small group, so we got to go first. They made us walk out of the campsite, away from the fire, in the darkness to where the pros had set up. There were so many stars to see. Jupiter was visible too; it was the brightest. We could clearly make out the milky way, which looks almost like a strip of thin clouds across the sky. They pointed out a few constellations and showed us a few things through the telescope. They had this awesome laser that they used to point out certain stars and constellations. It went 6.4 km and required a government permit to own because it will blind you. The thing looked like a green light saber.
After about 20 minutes the second group came out, so we headed back to sit around the fire. Everyone was sitting in a big circle, talking. We stayed out there until about 0100 we were enjoying each other so much. People would leave a couple at a time every half-hour or so to go to bed. When there were only about 15 left, I thought I would go too. But as I got up, Geoff walked up from out of the desert. I was shocked that he had gone out there all alone, and he missed the stargazers entirely. He said how amazing it was, and that he would go with me if I wanted to go back out. Hillary, Mandy, Tess and I had to take him up on that one.
Walking out there this time was easy because the moon was so bright. As it had rose behind the rocks, I thought there was a big city on the other side. Up above us it lit the campsite like stadium lights. I've never seen that before.
The view from the desert was still spectacular. It was amazing to just look up at the stars. We tried to get pictures, but my camera is not fancy enough. I did get some decent pictures of the moon and outline of the distant rocks against the sky.
After about an hour we got pretty cold and decided to head back to bed. There were other people out and about, though. The LLC Shalina wandered out to us just before we decided to go to bed, and we could hear people climbing the rocks. That was a stupid thing to be doing, and it was obvious because we could hear the loose rocks falling down every few minutes. It was dark and they were probably drunk. Stupid people.
Soon I was in my incredibly, surprisingly comfortable bed with a super soft comforter. Too bad I didn't realize there was another blankt folded at the foot of the bed because I was freezing all night. But that's okay. I went back to sleep after breakfast, and by that time the sun had made my tent nice and cozy.
Overall, it was one of the best nights of my life. I met and had great conversations and experiences with new people. Even though we didn't see any animals, I experienced Africa, Namibia specifically, in a way that not everyone gets to do. Oh, and we did see a bug, which our driver told us is called a hohu.
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