Africa!

This is basically a copy and paste of what I've already written about Africa, but I was able to add pictures and do some editing. I just thought one of the more important trips of my life should be here.

In August of 2007 Seth, Raffi, their Dad, and I went on an amazing African adventure. We went to Namibia and rode motorcycles, under the guidance of Werner, for 6 days. Werner = Indiana Jones. He looks exactly like Harrison Ford, so it is as though Indiana has stopped being an archaeologist, aged appropriately from the 80s (when he was released) and started a business giving motorcycle tours of Namibia. It was awesome. A nice fellow named Claudio was on the tour with us. Claudio hails from Italy, but had an unnatural hatred towards all the other Italians we saw. (Somehow, every restaurant we went to during the entire trip had a group of Italians there while we were there. Claudio would look at me and whisper "Italians!" in a tone of disgust I have never heard applied to that word.) On the last day of riding, at the last roadside break we took, Claudio gave me a little flower and said, "You are amazing! You are superwoman!" If I had somewhere to put it during the final ride back into Windhoek, I probably would have smuggled it back into the US and kept it forever. I didn't, so I threw it by the side of the road, as discreetly as possible. Claudio is also the first one who vocalized what was on everyone's mind: Werner looked like Indiana Jones.

The first night we were there Werner took us to Joe's Bierhaus, where we had amazing steak, and beer. Werner was trying to figure out who wanted beer, and Seth asked what kind there was. "Draft" said Werner," it comes out of the wall." As he was saying this, and continuing to explain how a tap works, he was motioning with his hands as though he was getting beer out of the tap. "Yea," Seth said, "I know what a tap is, but what kind of beer is it?" "Draft," said Werner. We decided we would try whatever it was, and agreed to have some draft beer. "You too?!" Werner asked me. "Yes?" I replied. He looked at Seth: "She drinks beer. I like that." Seth ordered a "Knuckle of Kudu" for his meal. It was described on the menu as "For the Strong Man." Werner encouraged him to get it, and when it finally came, we were all impressed. It was basically an ENORMOUS chunk of meat with a bone sticking out one end. It looked like it was straight out of "The Flinstones."

The first day we rode along winding gravel roads through the hill country which surrounds Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. The views were amazing, and we were all wishing that we could take snapshots with our brain, or at least had a helmet cam! The gravel was thick, and Seth's Dad and I were quickly left in the dust by Raffi, Seth and Claudio. We went along at our own pace though, and always caught up to them before the support truck caught up to us!


The first day also brought my first experience of actually peeing in the bush. Sure, I have peed outside in the woods before, but in the woods, there are lots of bushes. In Namibia, there are a few bushes here and there, and they all have thorns. (80% of the trees of Namibia have thorns. When you come to a stop, it is not to be under a tree. Shade is good, but the bikes don't need it, and thorns are bad.)

That night we camped on the farm of a seemingly nice German family. This was by far the best campsite we stayed at. They have what looked to me like the fort of Kelly and my dreams, which was the toilet and shower for us campers. There was a fully enclosed toilet and shower, and another shower and sink outside with only stick walls surrounding it. The shower head came out of a tree (one of the few without thorns)! It was by far the coolest shower I have ever seen, and when Seth and I own a ridiculous amount of land, I think we are going to try to recreate it. The largest concern was trying to figure out if people were more likely to see me through the glass bottle windows of the enclosed shower, or the slits in the stick surrounding the outdoor shower. I still haven't figured it out. They even had hot water, as long as you made a fire in the little fireplace next to the outdoor shower! Werner cooked us dinner over the fire that night, using a rod iron structure that stands itself over embers and kind of acts like a skillet. I believe that night we had Kudu steak with mashed potatoes. It basically tasted like beef stroganoff, for anyone who knows. It was delicious. We also had lots of Awful Tafel, Tafel being the mysterious beer from the previous night. During the camping part of the trip, we had it in canned form. It is apparently the only kind of beer to drink in Namibia. (there are others available, but this is the one you drink)


The next day we went to the Omaruru Game lodge, where we got to ride around in an open-aired Land Rover and look at animals. It was good, mostly because I got to use their restrooms, which did not involve a bush.

Our campsite that night was at Brandburg, the tallest mountain in Namibia. When we got there, the owner of the campground came to tell us that we would have to walk to the next section's showers, because there was an elephant stampede the night before, and they knocked over the water tanks for our site. Werner told us to put our tents under the tree that night.


The next morning we took a hike up to see the "White Lady," which is a bushman painting up in the mountains. There are lots of theories, current and historical. The prevailing current theory is that this white figure is actually a male (it definitely is) and it represents a shaman of some sort. The painting was pretty cool, the hike to it was not so cool. It was bloody hot, with all of our motorcycle gear on. It tuckered me out (possible heat exhaustion), and after riding back into town for lunch, I decided to ride in the car the rest of that day. Which of course, I now regret, as I knew I would, but oh well. That night we stayed at Spitzkoppe, which is a huge orange granite rock that juts straight out of the ground. It was spectacular. Werner explained to me while we were driving there that it was formed by the heat of the earth when North America split from Africa.


The long drop we had been promised turned out to be full (Andre, Werner's assistant, was in disbelief) which meant more bushes for me. The area around the Spitzkoppe is quite sandy. It was difficult to secure our tents into the ground. That night, the wind picked up and Seth and I could feel the tent floor coming up all around us. We got out and put the anchors back into the sand, which was also flying around in the wind, as best we could. We got back in the tent and slept rather unsoundly for the next few hours, 'til the floor started coming up again. We got out again, and apparently made a lot more noise this time, because Seth's dad poked his head out of his tent (which did not seem to be phased by the wind) and asked if we needed some help. We had to do this once more before morning finally came.


That was the last night of camping, and the next day we rode towards Swakupmund, the awesome coastal town. After lunch we got off the road and rode down a dried up river bed the rest of the way to town. After we got from the road to the river bed, we were in a canyon. Rock walls shot up on either side of us, with sand in the middle. We were getting closer and closer to the desert, and it was getting hotter and hotter. It was quite sandy, which I must admit, I did not care for. It was really fun however, and I'm glad I had the guts to go with the guys instead of following the car, which Indiana tried to talk me into doing. As we reached the end of the river bed, we came across a huge party going on at a camper parked just off the "road" in the sand. There were tons of people there and they were dancing and grilling and drinking. It sounded, looked, and smelled quite festive. The owner of the camper came over and gave us all a swig of his rum and coke. We didn't know it was rum and coke, or that we should even be accepting drinks from strangers, but Werner said it was fine, so we did. Being almost dehydrated and overheated (and still having a ways to drive), it was not really the drink we had in mind, but we were almost out of water in our camelpacks, so we accepted it. I have never slept better than I did that night, in the hotel we stayed at after the hardest day of riding, dinner at the best restaurant, in a real bed.

We stayed in Swakupmund for the next few days, which was great. It was so insane as we were riding in to the town on the first night. The fog was rolling in from the ocean, and it was as if we were riding towards a grey wall. It also got cooler almost instantaneously as we left the riverbed and headed towards the ocean. As we got into town, we were riding next to a brick wall. I stood up and looked over it, and saw the desert for the first time in my life. It was awesome. I'm surprised I didn't run into something. Sand. Flat sandy ground turning abruptly into dunes, and then the bright blue sky.


The next day we went out and rode in the dunes, which was incredible. Seth is in love with the desert now. He says he would rather ride in sand than mud any day. I am a little more hesitant. Mud definitely sucks, but sand, sand is horrifying.


Seth's dad and I stopped a bit early that day, and went back to the hotel. This gave the boys some time to really explore the desert with Werner and show off their mad skillz. We met Seth, Raffi, Werner, and Claudio later at a bar. Raffi said, "They all want to marry you." Seth said that Claudio and Werner had told him that if it doesn't work out between us, to send me over, because they would love to have a girl that rides motorcycles and drinks beer.


The last day of riding was bittersweet. I was pretty excited about the thought of not putting knee pads on ever again, but we were all sad that our sweet adventure was coming to an end. The scenery on the last day was absolutely spectacular. On the way out of Swakupmund it was definitely still desert, but being on the coast and still in the fog, it was quite cold. Then, all of a sudden, we hit a wall of heat. Seriously. I was frozen and then I was thawed. I savored the heat for approximately 5 seconds and then I was hot. At the next stopping point, everyone exchanged their shock at the sudden and drastic temperature change. It was insane! Anyway, as we climbed into the mountains again, the road became twisty and the air cooled down. We stopped for lunch at the top of a mountain pass where there was a little pull off area and a hut.




Then we kept going til we got back to Windhoek, and after another great dinner and a good night's sleep, we flew out the next day to Cape Town, South Africa. My goal in Cape Town had been to recuperate. When we got there and found the apartment we had rented, Seth and I both fell asleep almost immediately! Our apartment was right on the ocean, and our room had one wall that was just a huge window looking out to the ocean. AWESOME! I could have stayed in that room for the whole three days of Cape Town.


But alas, that was not anyone else's idea of a good time. We went to Table Mountain the first day, and then hung out down in the town for a while, visiting a sweet car dealership that had all sorts of custom high end vehicles, old and new, for RIDICULOUSLY low prices. I'm talking like, $30,000 including import to the US. They also had a few really cool motorcycles.


The next day we went on a wine tasting tour in a little town outside of Cape Town. It was pretty funny. I had never been on one before, and the sheets they gave us with descriptions of how the wine tasted and smelled included "barnyard," "pencil shavings," and "body odor." None of it tasted like that to me, but Seth and Raffi got a pretty good kick out of the "scratch-n-sniff" style wine tasting.


That pretty much wraps it up! It was hard to leave Africa, especially knowing that it would take a 16 hour plane ride to get from Johannesburg to Atlanta. The trip was amazing though, and I would go back at the drop of a hat. I feel it is important to point out that the first time we were hassled by customs was coming back into the United States. It made Seth angry that his own country didn't want him, and he seriously considered moving back to Namibia. Andre told us we could by a hectare for about $100 US.