African Excursion Week 1:

Now we have begun my most anticipated portion of our trip, which is traveling from Cape Town, South Africa up the continent towards Kenya. Because my expectations for Africa were so high, I thought that it would be disappointed with most of the places, but my expectations have been exceeded at every stage.

We are traveling with an organized group during this portion, but our trip consists of 42 days of camping, cooking all of our meals, and riding in the back of a large, non-air-conditioned truck, which I think is probably the best way to see Africa. There are about twenty-five other people on the trip, and they are mostly people in their twenties. However, there are two older Aussie couples that are willing to put up with us as well.

Outside of the beautiful sights, the trip has also been exciting. In one week, we have blown a tire, had windows fall out, gotten stuck in the sand, had one person break his arm, and experienced a sandstorm and a torrential downpour in the same day in the middle of the desert, which flooded all of our tents and our gear. Aside from the experiences of the trip, the landscape and wildlife has been amazing.

South Africa consisted of a lot of bush land and rock formations. They also have a large wine industry, so we passed by several expansive vineyards. As you move north the land becomes more like a desert until you reach the border of South Africa and Namibia, which is the Orange River. We had a little delay at the border because four people had overstayed their South African visas, but they paid a lot of money and were then fine to pass.

The southern portion of Namibia is mostly desert, but the terrain changes from rocky outcrops with small, dry vegetation to vast expanses of flat open ground, to great sand deserts with enormous sand dunes. Our first stop in Namibia was the Fish River Canyon, which is second in size only to the Grand Canyon. Next, we traveled on to Sesriem and Sossusvlei. Sossusvlei is an enormous sand desert with the tallest dunes in the world reaching 480 meters. Here we climbed the dunes and got caught in a desert sandstorm while we were at the top. The experience was incredible because the wind would rush the sand up the front side of the dune and then it would shoot off the back causing a swirling cloud of red sand. It also made one of the most dramatic sunsets that I have seen with the varying colors of the dunes, the distortion of the sun's color from the sand storm, and the blues, reds, and purples reflected from the clouds.

After Sossusvlei, we traveled north again to the small beach town of Swakopmund, where we went four-wheeling over the enormous dunes and sandboarding. Both sports gave quite the adrenalin rush, but I am still cleaning sand out of all parts of my body after sandboarding. The four-wheeling trip allowed us to do jumps over the dunes, and we would ride straight up 200-300 foot sand dunes before turning and flying down the face at nearly 60-70 mph and rushing back up the next (I would fly to Namibia just to go four-wheeling again!).

Anyway, we have also seen a lot of animals in the wild: giraffes, zebras, baboons, ostriches, jackals, oryx, giant tortoises, springboks, and a multitude of lizards and enormous bugs. From here we move on to Etosha, Namibia, which is supposed to be one of the most wildlife-rich places in Africa. Till then, Cheers!