Astonishing, alien landscapes. A scam artist with a busload of Zimbabwean migrants. The most magical skies my eyes have beheld. The ghastliest tour operators ever. Animal friends for days and days. And perhaps the worst place on the planet to be plant-based. My time in Namibia was a tale of maddeningly wild contrasts – though it’s funny how the negatives had been entirely exiled from my memories until I began reviewing these old pics this week.
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This was country seven in my multinational African adventure of 2018 (also featured here), and by this stage of the trip I was sun-baked – legitimately the darkest I’ve ever been – and just a tad fatigued. The sights and people and experiences had generally been wonderful as expected, but criss-crossing vast distances + international borders at breakneck speed in rickety old vehicles was starting to take its toll. And Namibia’s border crossing was the most stressful of all.
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The journey began at 4:30am in Botswana, when I awoke to catch a bus that took me 285km from Maun (gateway to the Okavango Delta) to Ghanzi, the nearest town to the border. Ghanzi is still some 200km from Namibia, and I was somewhat foolishly hoping that there’d be a connecting bus to take me across. Locals advised me that there’d be nothing departing for hours, and given the absence of anything to do in such a sleepy town (not to mention its status as a cattle-farming hub which was hardly ideal for someone like me), I was told that I’d be best off hitchhiking. Which is what I did.
that cursed highway! genuinely wondered if I’d die here.
that cursed highway!
genuinely wondered if I’d die here.
First, I flagged down a bus heading to the Botswanan capital, Gaborone, and asked the driver to deposit me at the junction that intersects with the highway to Namibia. I then waited on the barren, parched roadside for over an hour in the scorching heat with limited water supplies (my own fault). Prior experiences in Africa had led me to believe I’d have no issues hailing a passing car, but I’d misjudged poorly here: Botswana and Namibia are two of the most sparsely-populated nations on Earth, and vehicles that trundle along this route are few and far between.
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There were two older Botswanan ladies with about fifty bags of shopping between them, as well as another younger dude waiting in this exposed wasteland alongside me, and they all seemed unfazed when a truck would emerge and inevitably ignore us before disappearing in the distance, so I tried to remain calm as well. But trust that in my head, I was increasingly demoralised and convinced that I was going to roast to death on this blasted road!
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After what felt like an eternity, I successfully stopped a passing minivan. It was full of thoroughly charming Zimbabwean women and their not-so-charming driver who was escorting them from Johannesburg to Windhoek, supposedly for work opportunities. He agreed to squeeze me in for a small fee (which, naturally, he later quadrupled), and despite my concerns about his sketchiness, by this point the choice was between the bustling minivan or death by heatstroke so – as is all too often the case in life – I hopped aboard and prayed that it’d all be over with quickly.
Namibia’s incomparable beauty easily made up for the dramas I experienced
Namibia’s incomparable beauty easily made
up for the dramas I experienced
To no-one’s surprise, sketchy driver managed to aggravate the customs officials with his backchat when we finally reached the Namibian border, thus leading to another three-hour delay as they decided to unpack and rummage through everything in the van. Except my belongings, for some reason. Indeed, they seemed to have no issue at all with the irritable, sun-dried Brown guy accompanying these migrant workers, which was a saddening reminder of my privilege in even the unlikeliest of settings. One (Black, female) Namibian customs official went so far as to attempt friendly conversation during this extended lull, although her opening line of “I can hear you’re a n****r with an accent, which is why I want to know where you’re from!” left the prude in me mortally offended. Anyway, this exasperating illustration of #africatime meant that instead of arriving in the capital, Windhoek, by early afternoon as I’d hoped, I actually got in well after dark – so after bidding a fond farewell to the lovely ladies and good riddance to the fucktard driver, I beelined straight for my tour operator.
A few words on that: I’m highly-resistant to group tours, as most of you will already be aware. But public transport doesn’t really exist in Namibia – at least not to tourist attractions. Most independent travellers hire either their own vehicle or a driver – but I don’t drive and lacked the budget to have myself chauffeured, so I’d long resigned myself to joining a dreaded group for this leg of my adventure. I quickly found a low-cost company hitting up most of my points of interest, so my main concern thereafter was highlighting the necessity of vegetarian meals. I’d been in regular contact with the tour operator in the 24hrs prior to my arrival in Windhoek, and had sought reassurances about the meals four times within that span. So you can well imagine my face when, upon finally reaching their office after a draining fifteen hours on the road, I’m met with: “Do you eat chicken?”
Etosha National Park: my second full-scale safari in Africa,Â
and an amazing one despite the moronic guide!
Etosha National Park: my second full-scaleÂ
safari in Africa, and an amazing one despiteÂ
the moronic guide!
Etosha National Park: my second full-scale safari in Africa, and an amazing one despite the moronic guide!
Namibians eat meat. A lot of meat. Like, nothing but meat. It seems that many cannot compute a diet that doesn’t somehow incorporate animal flesh. Alongside Central Asia, this is probably the worst place in the world to be vegetarian. I spent most of my time subsisting on pasta and whatever tinned vegetables I could get my hands on.
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This would’ve been more tolerable had it not been for the guide that we’d been assigned for the first leg of our tour. Now, I’m well aware that I’m a stereotypical bleeding-heart liberal who loves to get offended by all sorts of inanity while strutting around with haughty and superior airs – but this guy was genuinely vile. A local Afrikaner who, within an hour of our meeting, had proclaimed that the well-documented Namibian genocide was pure fiction, that Europeans would always occupy the top of the world’s racial hierarchy, and that White Africans had suffered considerably more than their Black counterparts during the 20th century (this is not to erase or negate the hardships of White Africans by any means, but really?). Dude also had a disconcerting preoccupation with death, gore, and animal slaughter, which tainted the innate joy of our later safari. Even if we allow for his nonsense and quack theories (there were many, many more…), espousing all the above to a dark-skinned vegetarian is socially inept at best. Fortunately, I swiftly befriended the two German girls who were the other members of our group and we made a pact to reply only in monosyllables and to ignore him as much as possible. Also fortunately, his preoccupation with meat-eating meant that he was overweight and incredibly unfit, so whenever anything required being on foot he’d invariably get left far behind, affording us much-needed respites from his troubling monologues.
the final third of the trip: wandering along a magnificent stretch of coast
Why so many words wasted on all the negativity up to this point? Because only images, not my words, can even hope to do justice to the sights I took in here. As I’ve already stated, what’s etched in the mind is not any of the above, but the awe-inspiring scenery, the likes of which can’t be found anywhere else on the planet. There were moments in Namibia that I’ll never replicate again. Gazing at jawdropping sunsets while perched atop a rocky outcrop in the middle of nowhere. Sauntering across landscapes that mirror surrealist fantasies more than any plausible reality. Sleeping under the most perfect, starlit skies in wildernesses inhabited by distant predators. Battling the highest dunes in the world in deserts criminally picturesque. Namibia is probably the most photogenic nation that exists, and these images – these memories – relegate all the trials and tribulations that I experienced to a dusty old backseat. Entertaining to revisit, yes, but a mere hors d’oeuvre for the gallery that follows. There are further details about the trip within its captions. Enjoy!
quite possibly the craziest post-sunset sky I’ve ever seen
quite possibly the craziest post-sunset
sky I’ve ever seen
Click here for a comprehensive gallery of my time in Namibia.
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