Knowing Namibia

In Nambia, there are only about 5 people per square mile. In Zambia there are 50, in the US, 84. Yet despite this relative emptiness, or likely because of it, it was one of the most fulfilling places I’d ever been.

Every night was a good night, each one a sturdy conclusion to a robust day. Usually we slept in the fold-out tents atop our rented truck, the pre-dawn glow our alarm clock. On nights when we slept in game parks, the deep staccato lion calls carried us in and out of sleep. One evening we showered on warm adobe earth, under open air with only a few sticks separating us from the brilliantly moon-lit sky. After dark, we cooked fish or meat, pasta or chili, washing it all down with deep red pinotage from Stellenbosch. We lit candles in beer bottles and watched the wax slowly trip and tumble over itself, memorializing its demise. In the mornings we welcomed sunrise with coffee and granola, or sometimes with the sizzling of eggs and bacon or French toast in the cast iron skillet. On those days when we were up well before dawn, a riotous symphony of stars welcomed us, audibly happy to be noticed after the setting of the moon.

One morning, a morning where you can feel the heat of the sun not long after it’s risen, we set off to hike the Olive Trail through the Naukluft mountains. Loose stones and steep slopes at first required slow, careful steps, but once we crested the green rise we were privy to the beauty of the rolling hills. We drank it in from the edge of a cliff, picking our way along game trails to get there. We were surrounded by magnificence: soft peaks sliced at intervals by sheer walls of exposed rock, carved by the slow violence of a long forgotten river. Descending into the evidence of its existence, we peeled away the layers of makeup adorning the hills. Down and down we went until we reached the rocky bottom. On the canyon walls we could see the pressed colored lines which describe eons in a matter of inches. Towering above us, this chronological cross-section constantly reminded us of our insignificance in matters of earth and time. Encased in this silent presence we sometimes scrambled, sometimes tripped or jumped our way along its winding channel.  Rocks of infinite size and hue were strewn from wall to wall, interrupted intermittently by politely sloping cacti or abrupt and rigid quiver trees. In the shade of a great ochre wall we sat on cool boulders and ate meat and cheese which filled our stomachs and apples that awoke and encouraged us. Among white rocks we bathed in spring water completely clear, and while it was cold, it was good and refreshed us. We emerged from these walls as infants from a bath; clean, new and glowing.

The Namibian landscape cannot be easily described. It is a country with a thousand faces and a million personalities. They flow into each other like water, though the transitions are often surprising. Rolling fields of downy white grain punctuated with red rock mountains give way to hundreds of tumbling hills and gorges. Thick red sand becomes green grazing pastures just over the next rise. Towering boulders, like pebbles kicked up by giants, are only a few hours from the flat fine sand of the coast. Through it all we drove, on lonely roads where our only company was the dust cloud trailing behind us.

(Spitzkoppe)

(The Namib Desert)

We explored the dunes of Sossusvlei, hiking to the top of one for sunrise. The sand was deeply red in the new dawn light, contrasting incredibly with the cloudless blue sky. Trekking over others, we found ancient forests of petrified trees spread like Medusa’s casualties across the cracked white clay. On other dunes in the north we hopped on planks of wood and rocketed down their sides, tracing their curves and hurdling their humps. At times hitting speeds of 70 km/hr, it was a quick way to get to know the land, while also getting very sandy. In Spitzkoppe we explored massive mounds of rock, from deep in the shade of their crevasses to their sun-burnt orange tops. In Twyfelfontein we read ancient messages in images carved into the soft stones and watched the sun set on an old and sacred place. We crawled over the land, challenging its vastness, peering into its secrets, listening to its silences and absorbing its beauty.

(Petrified trees at Deadvlei)

(Sand boarding in Swakopmund)

(Rock engravings at Twyfelfontein)

In this country we did what you cannot elsewhere. We raced ostrich and wildebeest and courted giraffe and steenbok in Etosha Park. We swam in the frigid Atlantic and sweltered under the desert sun in the same day. We saw the wreck of a ship not three years old washed up on the Skeleton Coast. Above all, we saw the earth and the light of the sun and the phases of the moon and the numbers of the stars like I never have before.