Namibia 2013

On June 23, 2014 I began and adventure through Namibia with 18 juniors from ACS Cobham.  We were to begin in Windhoek and end in Livingston, Zambia. While I won't write up the whole month, I will give you some highlights from our trip. 

It started with an overnight flight through South Africa to Windhoek.  We landed around mid day and were picked up by a van as we were to meet up with our driver at the Cardboard Box.  We weren't even 5 minutes out of the airport before we got our first Baboon sighting.  Thus began my Namibia animal list!  After we settled into our rooms and sorted out where we were all staying, we got taxi's to Joe's Beerhouse.  Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area!

The next day we braved the mall for some shopping.  The mall was pretty standard as far as malls go.  I went with kids to get school supplies for our first school.  When we checked out the receipt was as tall as I am! We then had some time in the grocery to stock up on food for ourselves. One of the things that I love doing when I travel is stopping into a grocery to see what they are like. Making it back to our truck was a bit exciting and took the help of the mall security to get us past the taxi drivers who wanted to give us a lift back.

We had an early start the next day and headed down the main road

towards S. Africa in order to head towards our first school at Kutenhoas.  Coming into the village was amazing because everyone came to greet the bus.  The kids met us about 1/2 mile from the school and swarmed the bus.  The ACS kids all piled out and the Kutenhoas kids pounced on them.  Each ACS kid had 3 or 4 Kutenhoas kids handing off of them. 

Jennifer, in white, was my shadow for the 5 days.

We stayed in Kutenhoas for 5 days.  During that time we managed to paint two classrooms from floor to ceiling, paint murals on those two classrooms, build a chicken coop the size of a small apartment, teach some reading, math, science and IT lessons, plant some fruit trees in the garden and celebrate with the village the arrival of the new truck. I think that the kids would have stayed longer if we could have even though we hadn't had a bath in 5 days or had any water for anything other than drinking and washing dishes.

 

We left Kutenhoas and headed to the Naukluft Moutain range where we were going to do our trekking.  We were meant to trek the Fish River but there was no water as the year had been very dry, so we couldn't do that.  We did two hikes in Naukluft one was 10k on the Olive Trail and one was 17k on the Waterkloof trail.  My tent got broken into by Baboons while we were on the 17k hike.  They didn't much like the taste of dioralyte or tampons!  They broke into James's tent as well and didn't take to Tabasco either!

Tanzania - Part 3

Friday, April 18
We go up early for the Ferry. We got there and I thought I didn't have my passport. Tabitha and Adam weren't worried even though I volunteered to go back and get it and catch a later ferry. They said you can always bribe your way out of it on the Zanzibar side. The ferry was packed but uneventful. When we got over we were

one of the first off of it and we were able to walk though with Me holding Leon's hand and Tabitha going we're residents. We almost got stopped by one guy but he sort of gave up and let us pass. Then we had to wait for the others to get our taxi. When we arrived at our hotel the Mtoni Marine, I unpacked and guess what was in my carry on bag! So we are good to get out! 

I changed into my suit went and had lunch then went to sit by the pool. This place has a beautiful pool and a nice beach. Not the best but nice. Then I went down with Adam to the restaurant that they are playing at called 6degrees South. It is good but sort of fancy. I walked down to the park in Stone Town with the night fish market. I can understand what Matt liked about it. Fresh seafood grilled on the spot.

Saturday, April 19
I went into stone town today with Tabitha as she was meeting a friend. It is like wandering around the back streets of Venice or any tight town in Italy all kinds of shops along the way. You get use to ignoring the vendors wanting you to come inside and just smile and say thank you. 

The doors are amazing and I can see why they are talked about! I found two pieces of art which I will add pics of! I came back just before lunch. Then went and laid by the pool again but this time under the shade the whole time. I wasn't out for long yesterday but obviously long enough! I got just a bit too much on my chest, not painful but red.

We went back down to watch the band and have dinner. The sunset was wonderful again and I got some great pics of a couple of dowh boats on the water. 

Sunday, April 20
So I was going to do a spice tour but I tweaked my back so I cancelled that and booked a massage instead! I also booked some Henna so after having breakfast I went to lay by the pool. I got in and swam for a bit as well which helped with my back as well a bit.The massage was alright but I did think it helped. I basically then spent the rest of the day by the pool! We had lunch and dinner at the hotel.

Monday, April 21
I remembered to keep my passport ready when we left this morning, so I was actually able to go through immigration this time! And I did get a stamp! The ferry was nice in the VIP section! The ride was only about 2 hours long. I sat next to the lower school PE teacher.

Tuesday, April 22  
I went with Tabitha to see here school today. While I was there I helped Tabitha teach her kids about timelines using Timetoast.  She got an email while we were at school saying that there was a Turtle hatching tomorrow, so guess what I am doing.


Wednesday, April 23
I went down to the corner but only one basket shop was open, probably good for me! I got three but am going to ask Tabitha to go back and get me one from another shop as they had them with the traditional wraps wound into them. Then I headed over to Slipway for lunch and to meet up with the guy for the turtle experience. I tell you one thing, food might not be cheap but the portions are huge.

So after lunch I went up to the bank and met Sevin! A German Tanzania! He was perfect for the job! Then up walks the Danish couple from the bike tour! Then we get into his 4 x 4 and head out to the ferry to go across the bay to south beach. While we are driving he tells us that the next is 55 km from the ferry! We stopped at a beach resort along the way to have a drink and a break because we got on the ferry so quickly. The guy there was telling Sevin bag out the roads and things. He said to look out for the 7 tower cranes because a Turkish company was building housing father down the road. 7000 houses in what is the equivalent Hudsonville! There is no village, no shops, no nothing and it is just before the pavement ends. We drive down a decent gravel road for the amount if rain that they had had. Sevin said that amount of rain is normal that the last 8 years have been what has been unusual.

We finally made it down to the beach after off roading through some Tanzania bush! Then we walked down the beach to the nest. They had been watching it, the turtles stay underground for about 4 days after they actually hatch. So they started digging them out and then sprinkling dry sand on top of them to get them moving. There can be up to a 100+ in a nest this seemed like a pretty big one. Once they start going they move pretty darn fast! At one point I turned around and they were just all bubbling along the beach. The guides stomped all the crab holes shut so that the crabs would have to redig themselves out. It was really cool to watch them head to the beach!

Tanzania - Part 2

Wednesday, April 16

I got up early and when to my bike ride it was cooler this morning and threatening to rain. I meet Meck at the millennium tower. The ride went through four neighborhoods in Dar from a low income to a middle class. It very much reminded me of Thailand. We stopped at several places along the way one to have chibati which is like thick Roti. From the lady who is famous for it. She has a container that has been converted into a cafe kind of thing, and she had spiced tea which has all of the spices of mulled wine. While we were stopped here there was a Danish couple who came on a tuk tuk tour that we ended up sort of following each other. So we chatted over breakfast. 

Before that we had stopped at a used clothing market and a place

where they were making coffee by roasting the beans over a fire and making a sort of soft peanut brittle. You eat the peanut brittle to make the coffee sweet.


 
 
We wondered through the neighborhood and were shown to a house that was built in 1961.The woman was born in the house. It was a traditional 6 bedroom house. There were 8 people living in the front room alone. The grandmother was still there with another older lady out in the back yard shooting the bull. The other lady made henna to sell. 

Then we went to the lowest area of Dar where it floods a lot. We crossed a bridge that the bike company had paid to install but some "good Samaritan" who was going to clean up the river brought in heavy equipment, knocked down some houses to widen the river broke the bridge and them buggered off without compensating anyone or fixing it. Then the resent rain (they had huge rains the 72 hours before I came) had washed out some of the foundations more. The bridge is not probably going to last much longer frankly. Then we started towards a middle class village, but it started to pour rain.

It was coming down buckets but what can you do, so we kept riding. Then we got to the last stop for a soft drink and it stopped. This was the last time I saw the Danish couple.Then just as we were going to start again. It started raining again, hard! We kept going, I think that there may have been another stop or two but we were too wet, we ended up biking through some pretty big streams and low spots! Wet shoes and wet everything really. Thankfully it looks like I was able to keep my camera dry. It had a rain cover but I also kept it close to my stomach so that I could block some of the rain. 

When we got back to the tower and I had to wait for the cab so my guide and the one with the Dutch couple went across the "suicide crossing" again and I bought them a drink and we chatted about loads of things! Then my taxi came. The traffic back was a bit ridiculous because of the rain and flooding. He finally ended up taking back roads instead of staying on the main one. I found out later that it took some of the maids from Tabitha's building 5 hours to get home that night.






Thursday, April 17
I went down to the ferry port again to buy tickets for the singer in

Unzoomed picture of the tower.  Look in the center for the sailboat then past it.

Zoomed in picture of the tower!  Love my camera.

the band. Before that we went to pick up Leon at day care. It was a nice centre. I just popped downtown and back. Then we went grocery shopping again. We went down to the Slipway to have dinner and watched the sun set. There is a tower across the bay that Rhal Dahl used as inspiration for Charlie and the chocolate factory, when he was stationed in Tanzania. I zoomed into it with my camera and man do I love my camera! It has an amazing zoom! Mr. Overcash did a great job suggesting it!

Tanzania - part 1 - April 2014

Saturday, April 14, 2014
So it started early at 3:15 am! Tabitha sent me a message last night that she is on a drip because they think that she has Denge fever! She has booked for me to go to Mikumi, and we are going to Zanzibar on Friday for the Easter Holidays. I managed to get to the airport almost before it opened. Course so did a lot of other people. I was checked in by a very nice guy who kept me talking because he said it was nice to talk to a nice person. I got a crappy bread loaf and tea for breakfast. On the flight to Dar which I found out stops in Kilimanjaro on the way I ended up sitting next to a young boy and his mom. They had evidently got up early as well, because mom fell asleep. So I showed him the drawing app with the light saber. He liked that!

Sunday, April13
Spent the day with Tabitha and the family. She is still struggling with Dengi and will be for a while. We went to the grocery which was nice and very much like the one in Livingston.

Monday, April14
I got myself ready to go to Mikumi in the morning but then we got a call at around 7am that the river is flooded and you can't

Slipway

get across. So I went down to the Slipway to check with a travel agent down there. They didn't open until 9:30 so I wondered around watched the fisherman a bit. Checked out a couple of the shops. The travel agent didn't have anything except for Ngorongoro crater which is over near the Serengeti, which I am ignoring on this trip since I don't have time to see it.

I then came back and booked my ferry to Zanzibar. While I was a booking it I noticed a card Tabitha had for pedicure. I asked if they did massages too and they did so I had one! Massage and pedicure! Half way through the massage the power went out. So the paint on my toes is a bit all over, but not too bad and everything else was great. I got Tabitha a pedicure as a gift especially since she gave me one of her pre-paid massages!

Tuesday, April 15  
I started the day by heading downtown to pay for the Ferry tickets. I took a bus down which was basically the type of van we had from Alice springs down in Oz. I managed to get the tickets after a bit of a issue as one lady wouldn't do it because I didn't have the boys paper work. Then I went to pay for mine and then I was going to go back to get the boys papers, but the lady helping me told me to go back and tell the first lady that they were small boys. Then the first lady let me do the tickets, but I still had to go back to get mine. s She said that their weren't any more business or VIP tickets. I said I really didn't care where I was sitting as long as I was on the boat, she could tie me to the roof or put me in a dingy! She thought that was funny.

Then I walked around downtown a bit along the water front. I then went into the Hilton and thought about lunch but then just asked for them to get me a taxi. On the ride back I spotted a Nomad truck! Then I can back and had some lunch with Tabitha, Adam and the kids. Then I walked down to the end of the peninsula.There is a hotel and casino down there but they have a great beachfront cafe restaurant. I had some breaded shrimp and a Pepsi. Then I walked down to the best western I asked the about how much a room is, $135! I was thinking I could stay there Wednesday night before I fly out since I didn't want to wake up Tabitha's whole family at 3am. Oh well. 
 
On the way back to Tabitha's I saw a sign on a gate with a fierce dog saying beware of dog, then they opened the gate and there was a puppy the size of a chihuahua in the entrance. I busted laughing! I saw a strange tree along my walk which I am going to ask Tabitha's nanny about tomorrow it had huge fruit on it.

Ethiopian Tips

Addis Abeba:
Sishu for burgers.  Great food and awesome atmosphere.
 
Gusto is a wonderful Italian restaurant.  Has Jazz music on Saturday nights. 

http://gustoaddis.com/ 

 

Sabahar is a textile factory that has some amazing fabrics. Scarves for men and women alike, bed linens, table linens and decorative items.

http://sabahar.com/

Gondar:
Taye Belay Hotel-Good rooms, no elevator but the rooms with the balconies are worth the climb up the 4 floors.  The restaurant is reasonably priced and an the easy option.  The Hotel will book things for you and were very reliable.

http://www.tayebelayhotel.com/

Lalibela:
I would stay at Tukul Village in Lalibella.  They were full when we went but a friend has stayed there.  

http://www.tukulvillage.com/tukul_village/ 

There was a hotel near Ben Abeba that might be the Panoramic View Hotel. If it is the hotel that looked over the valley it would have had amazing views. 

Arrange for a tour guide and tuk tuk driver when you book your tickets to Lalibela, organize the price for the day for everything that you want to do when you book.  This can usually be done through your hotel.

Lalibela is worth spending 2 days at if you have the time.  You can see the main group of churches in a day, but there are monasteries and churches on the outskirts that sounded like they would have been amazing to see. 

Eat dinner at Ben Abeba

http://www.benabeba.com/lalibela/Home.html

Another suggestion is to bring easy to slip on and off shoes but that are also supportive.  You have to take your shoes off at each church to go inside, but also climb around on uneven ground throughout the complex.  

Weliso:
Negash Lodge is a great place for a day or weekend away.  There is a spa, but we didn't get to try it.  There are traditional style houses that have two bedrooms or rooms with amazing bathtubs near the restaurant. The Wenchi crater is nearby and tours can be arranged by the hotel. The monkeys hanging around were very cool and fun to just sit and watch.

http://negashlodge.com/ 

Ethiopian Adventure - Part 4

On Wednesday we flew back to Addis.  We decided on the flight back that we didn't want to do too much when we got back because we knew that we were traveling again on Thursday.  So when we got back we went out to a nice hamburger at Sishu.  This is a restaurant that has been built inside a warehouse.  It is very open which is nice.  The owner is in some way connected to the school.  There is an area with magazines and books that you can sit and read in.  Many of the tables and chairs have actually been made from recycled paper.  

We then went to Sabahar, which is a wonderful textile shop.  http://sabahar.com/ It has some absolutely beautiful fabrics.  I bought a scarf, bedspread and something that I haven't quite figured how I would use but I liked so I bought it!  I now wish I had purchased some more of the scarfs!



 
We had dinner that night at Dimma Cultural Restaurant to try some Ethiopia Food.  The presentation of the food was very interested.  The food itself was an experience.  The meat was good but I wouldn't order the other two dishes again. 

Our Bathtub!

We woke up Thursday morning and planned how we were going to make our way to Weliso for the night.  We used the school's driver again to take us there.  It is about an hour and 45 minutes or so out of Addis.  The drive was through beautiful grasslands that are mainly planted in small fields.  There were many traditional styled houses out along this stretch as well.  

Colobus Monkey

We stayed at Negash Lodge which is a lovely lodge with some local Colobus and Grivet monkeys.  After we got to the lodge we had lunch and then just had a relaxed afternoon hanging around the lodge.  

DikDik

Colobus Monkey

Grivet Monkey

Hyrax

The next morning we got up for a great breakfast at the lodge.  We had decided to use the lodge's van and driver to go up to Mt. Wenchi to see the crater.  The road up was pretty rough, not horrible but dirt and because it was very dry it was pretty dusty! We stopped at the lodge to pay our entrance fee then headed up to the viewpoint. 

The picture at the top of the blog was from the crater as well.  If we had more time in Ethiopia I think that it would have been a great place to go for a few days and then go down into the crater.  

After we went to the creator we drove back to the hotel to have a bit of lunch before heading back to Addis Ababa.  We made it back in the afternoon to discover that the power was out at Sarah's.  We quickly packed up our things for our flight while there was still light then hung out of a few hours before having another pizza at Efoy.  We caught our flight back to the UK with little issue!

Overall it was a great trip and seeing the churches of Lalibela was one of the items on my things to do list! So I was very happy to have that done! It was also good to see Sarah again.

Ethiopian Adventure - Part 3 - Lalibela

We woke up, ate breakfast, checked out and then got into one of the dodgiest taxis ever!  The seats were just springs with a cover over them.  Sue kept saying don't push too hard on the floor board or we might go through! We made it back to the airport and had to go through the 'get your engine and passports checked at the gates" check to even get onto the grounds!

The flight was only 30 minutes and we had arranged for airport pickup again.  This time it was a bunch of vans that are obviously run by the same company because they picked us up on the way out as well.  We were in with lots of different people all heading the same way. The town again is something like 38km from the airport so we had another great drive through the countryside.

We checked into the hotel and arranged for a tuk tuk driver for the day to take use to the churches.  We were going to skip having a guide and just explore the churches on our own but we were followed around by Muchaw who was trying to get us to hire him.  Sue bargained hard with him and managed to get him to come down from $35 to $20.  You could definitely do the churches without a guide but I think that you would want to at least have a guide book with you.  Also I think that you wouldn't realize that all of the little "side" buildings are actually individual churches as well. 

Bet Maryam had the most amazing paintings on the inside that would have been painted partially by King Lalibela. The whole site at Lalibela is said to be because the pilgrimage to the holy land was so long and dangerous, King Lalibela received a vision to recreate the holy sites in Lalibela. So each of the holy sites in the holy land has a church to represent it in Lalibela. 


This is the 10meter deep fertility pool at Bet Maryam that people still use to help with fertility problems. 





 





This is the inside of the Bet Maryam church.  

The churches were all carved down into the stone of the mountains.  They would start by carving down the sides until they got to the door, then they would dig up to the height of the ceiling then start gutting the inside. The system starts at the top of the mountain and has tunnels and passageways that lead down to the lower churches.  There is a massive drainage system around the whole complex to keep them from filling up with water. 







This is the back of the second church we went to.  The three windows at the top are the father, son and holy spirit.  The three at the bottom represent the three crosses with the one in the middle being Jesus as known because of the cross above it.  The one on the right being the the thief that repented and was sent to heaven as know because of the cross above him. The one to the left being the thief who did not hence the symbol below stating that he went to hell. 

Priests of the churches. Notice that the crosses on top of their staffs are different.  Each church has its own cross style.

This is Bet Giyorgis one of the most famous churches.  It was the last of the churches in Lalibela to be built. It is the only church with drainage to remove water from the roof.

Monolithic Cross in middle of Drainage Ditch

Tomb of Adam-Main entrance to churches.

Traditional Tukul House

Door with nails representing the nails of the cross

We spent day exploring and climbing all over the mountains of Lalibela which is at 2,600 meters.  So not only was it tough because of all of the steps but the altitude was a killer! After all of that we went to eat at Ben Abeba.  Imagine if Dr. Seuss designed a restaurant and you can imagine what it is like.  But the views were amazing and we arrived in time to see the sunset, which was great.  Then we moved down to the bonfire to have our dinner.