Some background: Last year, my friend Joel pointed me to a group on Meetup.com that was organizing a flying safari in Namibia. The idea was to get 10-20 pilots to converge on Namibia, rent about 10 planes, and go fly around the country. I had been to Namibia in 2007 as an Earthwatch volunteer at Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) and fell in love with the country, but with the exception of one day at Etosha, I had spent the entire time in country at CCF. As a result, I was really excited about the idea of the flying safari. For a variety of reasons (including increased requirements to get checked out as a pilot in Namibia, and tight availability and high-costs due to the World Cup in South Africa), I was the only one on the Meetup group who was able to go. I coordinated with Henri, a licensed Namibian pilot with access to the planes in his father's flying club. Henri is a 21-year-old college student who had met the organizer of the Meetup group a few years earlier.
Here's a link to our overall route; sub-segments are shown in-line below. https://myflightbook.com/logbook/Public/MapRoute2.aspx?Airports=fywe+ccfhq+fytm+fyls+fbke+fyls+fytm+fyng+fyop+fyef+fyop+fycc+fysm+fylz+fyks+fysu+fywe
Note that you can click on any image to see it in high-resolution, and all of the maps are fully interactive. The blue line on the map is the straight-line (well, great-circle, actually) path between airports; the red-line is our GPS track over the ground. They mostly - but not always - coincide.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18577
I woke up this morning in Johannesburg at about 3am. I only had 6-7 hours of sleep (after having gone to bed at 8ish last night, local time, after flying for 24 hours from Seattle), but I was wide awake, so I showered and went to make sure there was someone awake to take me to the airport in time for my 6am flight.
The hotel I stayed at was a dive: no amenities, heat was not very good, no outlets, broken toilet seat, broken shower door, no trash can (all this for $250 on Orbitz – I’m speculating that they were charging World Cup prices). And they forgot to pick me up at Johannesburg airport last night despite my having confirmed a ride with them. But the room was clean and the bed was comfortable. It was cold though – we had to scrape frost off of the car in the morning. Winter has apparently reached southern Africa.
Despite the logistical failure in picking me up at the airport last night, the hotel did manage to get me to the airport on time today, and my flight to Windhoek was uneventful. Even though Windhoek is just north of the tropic of Capricorn, it was -4C when we landed - quite chilly, but things did warm up as the day progressed. We landed early, my baggage was waiting for me after I cleared immigration, as was Chris Weaver, who runs World Wildlife Fund’s Namibia operations. I'm on WWF's National Council, and I thought my coming to Namibia would be a great opportunity to meet Chris and learn more about what WWF is doing here. Chris was gracious enough to meet me at the airport and drive me into town.
I treated Chris to breakfast at a restaurant in Windhoek called Fresh 'n Wild (very good omelets!), and then we went to the WWF office for a tour and a meet-and-greet with the folks there. My visit here was incredibly informative – WWF is doing great stuff here, their people are strong, and I love the maturity and sophistication they are taking here with more of a focus on working with other NGOs (including CCF) rather than a “we’ll do everything ourselves” mentality. (If you want to learn more about Namibia's conservation model, there is a great TED talk that describes it.)
Henri met me at WWF and we drove to his dad’s office, where I loaded the latest version of my iPhone app onto his iPhone so we could beta test it on the flight. (Turns out that using the app with lots of no-service zones exposed a number of areas for improvement!) His dad then drove us to Eros airport (the main airport in Windhoek, but not the one used for international flights; the international airport is about 30 miles east of the city) and we loaded up our plane for the trip, V5-MVD, a Cessna 206.
Since my prior visit to Namibia, I've joined the board of trustees for CCF, so I couldn't very well come to Namibia and not stop in for a visit. We took off from Eros airport at around 11:30 and headed north to CCF, which is outside of Otjiworongo, arriving a bit before 1. Naturally, we did a low pass over the runway before landing to try to ensure an animal-free landing before turning around to land.
Bruce Brewer (the guy that runs a lot of the day to day around here) had heard us coming and come to the runway to pick us up. It turns out that Henri and I get to stay at the Babson Guest house here at CCF, which is a really nice home on the grounds. It’s usually reserved for major donors, but I suspect that the real reason we are in it simply because they are otherwise full with volunteers and visiting animal folks. Sadly, not so many tourists right now, due to the World Cup.
"Hilker's Cheetahdrome" - the CCF airfield
After a quick lunch we went on a drive through one of the cheetah pens to say hi to several of the cats. We rode in the back of a safari car (with raised seats and open seating), and the driver threw out pieces of meat to the cats.
Some of the folks at CCF have been wanting to get a count of some of CCFs other game, so we went back into the airplane with several of the CCF workers to try to find the rhinos that live in a part of the conservancy (up against the Waterberg Plateau) and to try to count giraffes and zebra in the nearby Bellebeno farm (which is also part of CCF's conservancy). We did a back-and-forth pattern (below) to try to scan for the animals. We never found the rhinos, but I did pretty well at finding the giraffes and zebras while flying the plane and not crashing in the process. (The circle in our flight path is where we found some giraffe and wanted to get a better count).
After dinner I went over to Laurie and Bruce's house (Laurie is the founder and executive director of CCF) and I got to pet Chewbaaka (CCF's "ambassador" cheetah, whom Laurie raised from a tiny cub) while he lay on his bed behind the porch door to Laurie & Bruces’ house. Chewbaaka is 15 years old (ancient for a cheetah), and has been showing his age of late. The bed is basically like a dog bed, and it's just outside the glass door because he wants to be with them (but of course, he’s a non-housebroken male cheetah, which means he’d mark the place), so he just lies there where he can see them. Very sweet, and he purrs very loudly, especially when Laurie is holding him.
We shared some wine and brainstormed about marketing ideas for CCF.
Laurie and I petting Chewbaaka (he's wide awake, just very content)
A few notes about flying here.
Henri is the legal PIC (Pilot In Command), because he has a Namibian pilot’s license and is insured. I could get certified here and thus be covered under his club’s insurance with my US license to fly a Namibian registered airplane, but the process is slow: I need a checkride (standard procedure), I need to take a written exam, and I need to get a Namibian radio license (also easy to do). But there are two real impediments to doing this. The first is that the materials for me to study are not available ahead of time, which is silly: if I could prepare in advance, I could arrive in country and take the written exam/radio exam in a couple of hours and be on my way, but alas this is not doable. The 2nd issue, which is a bigger deal, is that (not surprisingly), bureaucracy here works differently than in the US. In the US, when my checkride is over, the examiner – who is a designee of the FAA and thus authorized to act on the FAA’s behalf – decides whether or not I have passed. If I have passed, then as of that instant I exercise my new privileges. In the background, there is still paperwork to fill out, but the examiner can give me a sign-off and (if necessary) a temporary certificate while I wait for the paperwork without delaying my ability to fly. In Namibia (as I suspect in other countries), it doesn’t work that way: when the checkride is over, the paperwork can be submitted. And it is only after the paperwork is processed – which can take 4-8 days – that the privileges can be exercised. Which means that people coming to Namibia to fly Namibian aircraft have a minimum and undefined wait time of 4-8 days. This is one reason that I thought flying with Henri was a fine idea. And fortunately, he’s been terrific about letting me do a fair amount of the flying – including a lot of take-offs and landings from the right seat.
There are some differences in terminology compare to flying in the US. You "line up and wait" rather than "position and hold." Single-digit runways have a leading "0". Altimeter settings are in metric (1013hPa is standard), although altitudes are still in feet. They fly in the "flight levels" at low elevations, not just 18,000ft and higher - though I soon figured out the reason for this: lacking weather stations over most of the country, the standard procedure seems to be to use standard pressure on the altimeter when more than some height above the ground, just as we do here in the US when above 18,000ft. So "flight level 75" technically means not "I'm at 7,500ft", but rather "I'm at a pressure altitude 7,5 7,500ft". I had never really thought about this before - I had just thought that the use of "flight level" was a terminology convention rather than being associated with the use of a standard barometric pressure.
There is controlled airspace here (anything 7,500' or higher), but no radar to speak of: it's all reports, either to the controller or to other airplanes on what is essentially a common traffic advisory frequency of 124.80MHz. A typical report might be something like: "MVD on 124.8, enroute from Windhoek to CCF, at flight level 075, departed Windhoek at 10:03Z, estimate arrival CCF 11:05Z, currently 20nm north of Eros, any conflicting traffic please advise." (That last phrase strikes me as completely redundant and unnecessary, but everyone seems to do it). We also had to use the air-to-air frequency 123.45 fairly frequently to use other higher-flying aircraft to relay reports to/from the controllers when we were out of radio range of the controllers (also happened frequently). This is particularly important when crossing international boundaries, as we did going to/from the Caprivi strip.
It turns out that flying with Henri has other advantages. Besides knowing the territory and being more comfortable with the accents and can recognize place names that I would never recognize, he is fluent in the above terminology (not that it's hard to learn), in the radio procedures I described above, and in “African” techniques, such as doing a low pass over the runway prior to landing to ensure that there are no animals walking across it. We don't bother to turn on the transponder, nor to sync the gyroscopic heading indicator with the compass. Of course, there are 3 GPS’s in the plane (one built-in, Henri’s, and mine). But essentially all GA flying here (and certainly all of our flying) is daytime VFR bush flying. Heck, the only rain they get is thunderstorms, so they're perspective of IFR flying is "clouds will kill you; avoid them."
Something that certainly makes me appreciate flying in the states is the fact that every airport here that has anybody present during the day (i.e., fuel) has a landing fee. Some are pretty obscene – US$75 at Tsumeb (where we had to stop twice for fuel, for US$150 total just in landing fees!), most are so small (US$5-10) that it makes you wonder why they even bother going through the expense of paying somebody to collect it. Of course, the landing fee is collected by someone entirely separate from the fuel person, and it generally must be paid in cash. And there is a ton of paperwork to fill out – redundantly – for fuel and for landing fees. They need to know pilot information & address, where we are coming from, where we are going to, weight and type of aircraft, etc. All done by hand. It’s truly a crazy system. There is no such thing here as self-service fuel. And if it's a weekend, expect to pay a hefty fee for the privilege of filling on a weekend. Fuel, by and large, was expensive (about US$6-7/gallon), although at a few remote places it cost as much as $11-12/gallon. But we bought it: Henri pointed out that in Namibia, you never overfly an airport with fuel or fly with less fuel than you can carry. Airports with fuel are just too far apart, and if you haven't called ahead you may not even be able to get the fuel.
Finally, a note about briefings: we have yet to make a call to find out about weather. The reason is that it is the dry season here (not that there’s ever truly a wet season in Namibia) and the weather forecast for the next several months is easy: blue skies, no chance of rain. The only weather we might encounter is fog along the coast (which in many years is actually the only moisture that the coast sees!), and we’d have to call someone on the coast to find that out. Fuel, on the other hand, requires phone calls to make sure that it is available to sell and to ensure that someone will be present to sell it to us.
Onward to the trip update
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18724
This morning I woke up at around 6am and took a shower and did some email. It is freezing (literally) in the morning: no moisture in the air or cloud cover to hold in heat. But the bed was incredibly warm & cozy, and the shower was hot (even though all of the hot water is from solar heat – it must be well insulated). Breakfast was at 7, and we watched a running of the cheetahs at 8.
To run the cheetahs, a rag is tied to a line which goes on a pulley system around a large field. A motor turns the pulley, which turns the line, pulling the rag across the ground, which the cats chase (think greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit). The fun part of this for me was watching Little C run. He had been 6 months old when I got to play with him in 2007, he’s fully grown now (and apparently not nearly so affectionate as he once was).
Henri took this picture of a cheetah chasing the rag.
From 8:30 to 9:30, we watched the first of the 4 cheetahs that were getting medical workups today. CCF currently has about 50 resident cheetahs, and they all get regular medical checks. If you're wondering why CCF has so many cheetahs, it's not because they want them. It's because these are cheetahs which cannot be returned to the wild, usually because they are orphaned. Cheetahs learn to hunt from their mothers and generally cannot hunt to survive before they are about a year old. The resident cheetahs do provide a great opportunity for research.
Obi-wan was the cat we watched. There was a fascinating procedure to get him sedated. He arrived in a wooden crate (I guess they’re shipped that way from the factory?) with one side that can be slid inwards. Two workers push the moveable side, squeezing the cat against the fixed side of the box, where there is a hole. Through the hole, a medical technician sedates the cat (now pushed against that wall) with a syringe. They restore the moveable wall and wait about 10 minutes for the cat to go to sleep. They then slap him a bit (seriously) and make loud noises to ensure that he is asleep, then open the crate to put him on a stretcher for weighing and carriage into the examination room. Once in the examination room, he is given gas to keep him asleep, his eyes (which are wide open) are kept moist, and they collect blood, sperm samples (from the males) and otherwise do a full workup on the cat.
Obi-wan gets a workup
We left for the airstrip around 9:30, took off and flew north to Tsumeb to refuel (and pay a US$70 landing fee!), then turned east towards the Caprivi Strip.
Tsumeb in foreground, Tsumeb Airport
Tsumeb Airport
The Caprivi strip is narrow for most of its length (see the map above), but opens up on the eastern portion; our destination was Lianshulu, which is on the western edge of the fatter part of the eastern portion of the strip. Thus it made more sense to fly over Botswana territory, so that is what we did. 2:40 of flying, over some of the most barren and dry and empty and flat landscape I have ever seen (although compared to much of Namibia, this area is positively lush). We flew over the Okavango river, just north of the delta, and could even spy some elephants and hippos from the air.
Okavango River from the air
Lianshulu airport (perhaps “Lianshulu empty dirt strip” is more accurate?) is perhaps a mile back into Namibia from Botswana, and Henri let me do the landing here (as he had also let me take off at Tsumeb.) We were met by some drivers from the lodge and, after a brief detour to check out a hippo, checked in. The lodge is right along the Kwando river, which comes south from Angola and defines the western edge of the fat eastern part of the Caprivi, before turning into the Linyanti and the Chobe rivers.
Lianshulu Airfield
The fire station at Lianshulu's airfield
Hippo by Lianshulu lodge
The lodge at Lianshulu.
The Kwando river as seen from the lodge. The trees on the other side are in
Botswana
At 4:30 we went on a river cruise on the river, which separates Namibia from Botswana. Lots of grassy reeds and papyrus on each side of the river (except where the elephants cross). We saw a bunch of elephants, hippos, vervet monkeys, baboons, and even a crocodile lazily swimming past. And of course, the best part, is when the sun set, the guide stopped the boat and pulled out snacks and drinks for sundowners. I have to say, the sundowner is an awesome tradition!
Elephant crossing from Namibia (right shore) to Botswana (left shore) without a
passport
Sunsets in Africa are consistently gorgeous
Dinner was kudu steaks – yummy. But the dining room was just about empty. As far as I can tell, there are 6 guests here. It’s not a large lodge – total capacity is 24 people, I’m told, but this seems low. It seems from talking not just to the managers here but at each lodge that we visited that the culprit is not the economy but rather the World Cup, especially since reservations pick back up starting later in July. Getting to anywhere in southern Africa generally means going through South Africa, and that’s just really hard to do (and prices are sky high if you do), which is hurting tourism badly across the whole region. It's kind of sad, because this is an absolutely lovely lodge, but it's good for us as the tourists. My room (which is its own small building) is huge – probably 1200 sq ft or more, with a deck at the edge of the river.
Tomorrow we need to fly to Botswana for gas for the airplane so that we have enough gas to get home.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18725
This morning we woke up at 6am for a 7am game drive. It is freezing cold again (and the lodge is open-air and unheated, including my room/building), but my bed was delightfully warm (the hot water bottles they put in the bed last night were still warm this morning) and there was hot water for a shower, which woke me up (although the cold air and cold floor woke me up even more). After a light breakfast of muffins and coffee while the baboons barked and hollered nearby, we went for a game drive at 7am. Not a ton of animals (it’s been a wet year so far so the animals do not need to come to the river for water, and with the cold weather many animals are not out and about), but we did see some roan antelope (which I don’t think I’ve ever previously seen), vervet monkeys, impala, kudu, and warthogs. We came back to camp at 10am and had a very nice breakfast.
Henri & I went to the airstrip at about 11am and flew to Kasane. Kasane is in Botswana, at the eastern tip of the Caprivi Strip, just a few miles from the only point in the world where 4 countries meet (Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana). We flew south along the Kwando river which defines the border between Botswana and Namibia here at the Lianshulu lodge (western end of the fat part of the Caprivi), then northeast along the Linyanti river to where it becomes the Chobe, and over into Kasane. We needed to go to Kasane – an hours’ flight in the wrong direction – in order to get enough fuel to get back to Tsumeb tomorrow for fuel to continue to Ongava. Even though Kasane is in Botswana, we were making a “technical” stop, which meant that we didn’t need to clear customs/immigration because we weren’t leaving the airport. (In fact, we didn’t have to pay taxes on the fuel we bought for the same reason). We did have to pay a landing fee, though: 25 Pula, which works out to a little more than $4. They couldn’t take credit cards, and neither Henri nor I had Botswanan money, but they took US so I gave them a $5 and told them to keep the change.
Paying for fuel was a similar challenge as they didn’t have any of the carbon paper sheets for the manual credit card machine they had, but we have a BP card in the plane so we used that instead.
Kasane Airfield - one of the few paved runways we visited
Elephants by the Chobe river, seen from the air. (Click to enlarge)
Henri seems to be an exceptionally conscientious pilot. His planning has been thorough, his takeoffs and landings terrific, and overall I have been quite comfortable flying with him. The best part is that he has allowed me to do a bunch of recent take-offs and landings, including Lianshulu and Kasane. I can now legitimately say that I have done take-offs and landings in both Namibia and Botswana. Don’t tell his insurance company, though.
We left Kasane and came back to Lianshulu. Henri and I spent the remainder of the afternoon on the upper deck of the lodge, overlooking the Kwando, reading and watching the 4 hippos about 100 yards away from us in the river who would surface every few minutes and bellow “Ho, ho, ho” like Santa. It was spectacular. And then sunset came, and I have to say that Africa wins any competition for gorgeous sunsets. And better still, sunsets mean sundowners.
There are now only 4 guests at the lodge (Henri and I and a South African couple that we chatted with last night, and whom apparently we will see again next week at the Canon lodge in the Namibian desert). We were invited to dine with the managers of the lodge (British expats who gained New Zealand citizenship and are now living here) and had a great conversation. During dinner, one of the workers came to inform us that there was a hippo in the camp, and sure enough when we went to the front of the lobby, there was a hippo no more than about 40ft away grazing happily on the grass. When I went to my room to gather some stuff, I took a guide as an escort (which is their rule for guests after dark), we kept an eye on the hippo (the most dangerous animal to humans in Africa, believe it or not), but the hippo (I think I’ll call him “Henri”) ignored us.
Tomorrow we head to Ongava, just outside the south-west entrance to Etosha.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18725
Today we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast by the water, listening to the hippos call and response with another group of hippos in the distance before heading out to the airstrip.
Henri again let me handle the takeoff (which I must say I performed with grace and style), and we headed north along the Caprivi’s border with Botswana (along the Kwando river) before turning left towards Tsumeb, some 330nm distant to the west. We saw elephants from the air as we were flying, which was quite exciting, but otherwise the flight was uneventful and smooth (and the tailwind that pushed us to 150kts was also quite welcome).
Henri again let me do the landing when we got to Tsumeb, but due to strong cross winds, my being in the right seat, my not being able to easily see the airspeed indicator from the right seat, and still getting used to the 206 sight picture, I did a very sloppy landing with a balloon; Henri helped me smooth it out nicely and didn't tease me too badly about it. It was Saturday, which meant we had to call ahead for fuel, but there was nobody waiting for us, so Henri called again. It took about 30 minutes for the guy to show up to pump fuel for us. In the meantime, we paid our landing fee (again!) and enjoyed the nice weather.
We soon took off for the short flight to Ongava, just south of the Anderson gate to Etosha National Park. We were met at the Ongava airstrip by Michael, who would be our guide for the next two days. Michael was born in Angola, but also grew up in Cuba and a few other African countries, speaks 8 languages fluently, and was exceptionally knowledgeable about every question we had, from the animals and their behavior to the geology of the area to the stars after sunset; he was a clear step above other guides I have had in Africa.
We arrived at the lodge, which is gorgeously set into the rocks on a hillside overlooking the Ongava private game reserve, and set out on our afternoon game drive with Michael and a very nice couple from Spain. When the sun went down, we had sundowners (naturally) and drove back with a spotlight looking for eye reflections to try to find additional animals. Despite trouble with a loose connection in the spotlight, we were not disappointed: we saw a pair of caracals (one had just died, unfortunately – we suspect a snake bite, given the lack of blood), a jackal, a pair of white rhinos, and bush babies (a tiny monkey), the latter of which were a true treat for me because I had never seen them before and they are not often seen (and then only at night). The only downside to the drive was that when the sun goes down it gets quite cold quite fast, and when riding in the back of the safari Land Cruiser, you have a strong breeze from the motion of the car, which makes the cold worse. When we’d pass by the side of a hill, it got noticeably warmer (heat retained by the rocks, I suspect), but we were quite cold by the time we got back to the lodge for dinner.
This morning we had a wake-up call at 6am before 6:30 breakfast. By 7:15, we were on our way to Etosha (right next door) for the morning. We were joined by Todd, who is a South African employee of Wilderness Safaris (which owns/runs both Lianshulu lodge and Ongava lodge, among others).
Michael found some lion tracks near the boundary between Ongava and Etosha, and sure enough when we got to the first stop inside Etosha (a water hole), we saw two lions: a large female still stained with blood from a kill and a younger male lion.
Hyrax keeping us company at Ongava Lodge
Red Hartebeest
Alas, poor oryx, I knew him well. (Aka "gemsbok") Possibly
my favorite antelope, and quite tasty too!
Mom & 5 cubs watching the animals at the water hole
Springbok fighting
Lilac Breasted Roller
We had a great visit and saw pretty much every animal we would want to see with the exception (not surprisingly) of cheetah and leopards. Some highlights included a group of 7 lions (5 of which were young cubs) and another pair of lions, gorgeous birds such as the lilac breasted roller (which I was told is the national bird of Botswana, but have since learned that Botswana has no such thing), and bat-eared foxes.
After Etosha, we returned to the lodge where Henri, Todd, and I spent the afternoon engaged in conversation while watching the animals at the water hole a hundred yards or so down the hill from the open-air dining area. The water hole did not disappoint either: at one point we saw a group of 7 giraffe come to drink, who were shortly scared back by 3 black rhino (two adults and a juvenile). Black rhino are the more endangered of the rhinos, so this was a treat, especially when the two grown rhinos started to spar. It got even better a short while later after these three had left when a mother and a 1 ½ month old (named “Etosha”) came to drink. 5 black rhino! We made the right decision not going on the evening game drive (and staying relatively warm).
I also called my dad to wish him a happy father’s day, and received the same from Luann & Parker.
There are very few guests here as well (again, blame goes to the world cup), but there is an American family with whom I struck up a conversation. They’re touring Namibia clockwise (Henri & I are going counterclockwise), and they will be staying at Babson house at CCF in a few days. I identified myself as a trustee with CCF and we had a great conversation – the dad of the family is deeply involved with Encyclopedia of the Earth, which is sort of like Wikipedia for scholarly peer-reviewed expert-written articles about the earth and environment.
So these tourists are familiar with CCF. Michael knows Laurie and Bruce at CCF and Chris at WWF. Henri’s folks know Chris and Laurie (and just about everyone else). It seems that everyone I meet has a connection to one or the other. I'm convinced that Namibia is not a country at all: it’s a freaking extended family!
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18838
Another leisurely morning wake-up before heading out to the airstrip. We flew north over Etosha park for about 1hr to Opuwo for a fuel stop, where Henri executed a very nice landing with a strong 90-degree cross wind. We had called ahead for the fuel guy, who was there shortly after we landed. He doesn’t take credit cards, so I paid with cash (I’ve been carrying a fairly large wad of bills around for this, something I don’t like to do). At the airstrip we also encountered something that I have been surprisingly free from in Namibia so far: peddlers. First one woman came up to the airplane and showed me her cheap trinkets to buy (“good price for you!”), then about 6 others came. It was junky stuff, and I didn’t want to buy any (and importantly, didn’t feel like bargaining or showing that I had cash in my wallet). So I went through the motions of looking at some stuff, and then just said no thanks and ignored them. They weren’t too pushy (thankfully – this is unlike what I've previously encountered in Africa), and they gave up and left.
I paid for fuel and we were off on our way for the short flight to Epupa Falls. We’ll be back to Opuwo tomorrow for fuel on our way to Cape Cross (never overfly a fuel stop!).
The fuel station at Opuwo
Epupa Falls is on the Kunene river, which forms the border between Angola and Namibia here. We arrived at Epupa Falls about 40 minutes after leaving Opuwo, and Henri did a low pass over the falls, which were stunning from the air. And with all the water in the river, it forms a true oasis in an otherwise arid area. We circled around the surrounding hills and went to land at the fairly short dirt strip a few km away. Henri let me do the landing. Unlike my sloppy landing at Tsumeb, I greased it onto the runway and landed in half of its length, redeeming myself (in my eyes, anyhow).
Epupa falls airstrip
The driver was there waiting for us, and we drove the short distance to the lodge (a tented camp), past a fenced campsite filled with white South Africans (all car-camping) and a small village with flimsy small huts for houses. The camp is lovely, right along the river, and as I write this I am sitting on the veranda of my tent, not more than 2 feet from the edge of the fast-moving water, staring at Angola which begins on the island that is perhaps 80 yards away. The tents are nice, with two twin beds and full bathroom facilities. I locked my passport/cash/etc. into the safe and set the combination and when I went to test it, the combination didn’t work, so I had to get someone to help me unlock it. Oops!
We had a very nice lunch overlooking the river, then Henri and I went for a walk since we haven’t done much physical activity over the past week. We walked about half a mile to the campsite and the first part of the falls, and then up on a trail where we could get a better view of them. They are as stunning from the ground opposite (and above) the falls as they are from the air, moreso because you can sit still. And the falls are probably half a mile wide, with numerous separate falls going left, right, and center down huge peninsulas that jut out into the abyss. It’s quite possibly one of the most breathtaking natural sights I’ve seen.
Epupa Falls, Angola is on the far side of the river from me
We walked back to the camp (past the Himba women who were trying to sell cheap trinkets), had tea-time and then went for sundowners on the hill above where we had hiked. The extra elevation afforded different and more striking views of the falls. We were there well before sundown, but no matter, we just hung out.
My tented room along the Kunene river, complete with plumbing
Dinner is served by the river shortly, and tomorrow we will try to get an early start, going to Opuwo to fill up before heading out to the Skeleton Coast and down to Cape Cross. Should be fun!
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18839
Sleeping in the tent by the rushing water was terrific – although the river is loud, it is also soothing. I slept soundly and woke up around 6:30. We had breakfast by the river and got into the Land Cruiser to go back to the airport. The other guests in the hotel (all 5 of them) joined us because they were going to visit the Himba village, which is on the way to the village. As interesting as I’m sure I’d find the visit, there’s something weird about going to somebody’s home and taking pictures of them and how they live. I’ve done that at the Maasai villages in Kenya/Tanzania. The Himba are certainly photogenic with the red coloring applied to their skin, the hair styles and yes, the fact that everyone is all but naked, but it felt voyeuristic so I decided to pass on the visit. Henri didn’t mind – nothing new to him.
We got into the airplane, I did the takeoff, and we had a short flight to Opuwo for refueling. I did the landing and if I may say so it was a beautiful short cross-wind landing. The Himba women (clothed) who had tried to get me to buy their cheap junk yesterday were upon us quickly again today, but I told them I wasn’t interested. They were put off, but after a few minutes left. I showed Henri how to do a soft-field take-off (he’s done plenty of short-field take-offs, but even though he’s on unpaved runways quite frequently he had never learned soft-field technique), and we had a nice flight to Cape Cross that took a little less than 2 hrs. The terrain got a lot more dry as we headed south-west towards the coast, with large stretches not having any visible vegetation whatsoever. There are some incredibly cool mountains with sedimentary layers that are on their side (more on those below). We flew to the coast and then along the coast for the last 10 miles or so at about 500 ft above the sand. This is the Skeleton Coast, and there is simply nothing here for miles, although there is a salt road and a few people fishing along the beach.
Sideways sediment mountains
Skeleton coast
Cape Cross, Namibia. Yes, that's all of it.
Salt road along the Skeleton coast, surrounded by the lush vegetation typical of
the area
We landed at Cape Cross and were met by Max, an associate of Henri’s father, who drove us the short distance to Henri’s family vacation house in Cape Cross. I should point out that the bustling town of cape cross consists of an unpaved airstrip, a small lodge, and a cluster of maybe half a dozen vacation homes. That’s it. But it’s also home to a huge cape fur seal colony, and it is a great place to surf.
Supplies were waiting for us at the house, so we loaded the car and the 3 of us (Max, Henri, and I) drove about 70 miles north/northeast into the mountains to find a campsite. We could go about 70mph on the salt road (basically a dirt road that compacts into something quite solid, almost like pavement) through completely empty landscape (except for a few welwitschia plants – the first I’ve seen), then turned off and drove along a jeep-path up a dry river bed for 20 miles or so across some incredibly difficult terrain (thank-goodness for 4-wheel drive) until we found a nice campsite in a riverbed (dry, like all of them here this time of year) in a steep canyon. There is almost no vegetation here, although we were able to find some firewood (which we had forgotten to bring), and the rocks are stunning.
We went for a walk and built a campfire; dinner consisted of wildebeest steaks and potato salad. The moon here at night is bright enough that a flashlight is unnecessary, and the stars are out and brilliant. I’m getting good at finding the southern cross.
Camping
We slept under the stars (unbelievable view with no light pollution or clouds) and woke up around dawn today and had a light breakfast. Henri was sick again last night – the 2nd time in as many nights, but he was feeling better again this morning, but he skipped breakfast just to be safe.
We packed up and drove out of the canyons, then back in on a different network of dry river beds through the Black Rhino camp (the last remaining area of truly free-roaming black rhinos) towards the Messum crater, in the shadow of the Brandberg mountain (the highest mountain in Namibia). This area is completely desolate, with only a few welwitschia plants and the occasional tuft of dry grass. We broke down twice in an hour: once for a completely shot shock absorber (which we simply removed; I’m not surprised it died given the terrain we’ve been driving over), and once for a flat tire, but we were able to continue onward to a rock formation with ancient bushman drawings in it. We stopped there for lunch and then drove back to Cape Cross.
Welwitschia plant. Yes, it's quite alive.
Bushman drawing in Messum Crater
Henri surfs and Cape Cross is a prime surfing spot, but the big tourist attraction here is the cape fur seal colony, so we drove to that and got out to take pictures of the seals. I would not be surprised if the colony right now doesn’t number at least 100,000 seals – and apparently this time of year that’s just females and pups! The place stinks like you wouldn’t believe, but it doesn’t matter; the seals are playful (and feisty), noisy, and a lot of fun to watch.
I decided to walk the 7km back to the house from the seal colony, so Henri drove back. The seals are funny - they don't mind me one bit when I'm on the walkway, and they are right up to (and under) the walkway. But when I step off of the end of the walkway and continue on the beach (still separated from the seals by a fence), they freak out and huge waves of hundreds of seals back away from me towards the water.
I can see why they call this the Skeleton Coast. It’s not just from the shipwrecks: the beach is littered with gobs of empty clamshells, and (more to the point of the name) with a fair number of dead baby seals (pretty well dried up) and seal skeletons. I’m told that hyenas and jackals are the primary predators for seal pups, and I’m guessing they like neither the fur nor the bones because that’s all that was left of most of these.
Cape fur seal colony, Cape Cross
Sunset at Cape Cross
I’m writing today's update on the deck of Henri’s family’s house, right on the beach, and Henri just came out with cheese and crackers and white wine, so I think I’ll put the laptop away for the day.
Update: I just took a shower and while I was drying off and getting dressed I looked out my window and sure enough there was a jackal along the beach. It was dusk so I was not able to get a good picture, unfortunately.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18840
We woke up this morning at the beach house, packed up the plane and were airborne by 9am. We had a quick fuel stop in Swakopmund, where Henri did a gorgeous landing in what we are estimating was a 30kt direct cross-wind (no independent measurement available, unfortunately). Either way, the wind was absolutely howling, and I was impressed with the landing. After filling up and paying the landing fees, we climbed back in and I did the cross-wind takeoff (full deflection of the ailerons) for the 2hr flight to Luderitz. As we were overflying Walvis Bay (20nm or so south of Swakopmund, where we had refueled, and 10nm or so south of where Brad & Angelina holed up for 3 months to have their baby) we heard radio chatter about clearing the aprons for V5-NAM, and radio communications with V5-NAM. V5 is the prefix for Namibian airplanes, and “NAM”, short for “Namibia”, is the call sign for the president’s plane, which was coming in to Walvis bay. Pretty neat!
Landing in Swakopmund - check out the palm trees to get a sense of the wind.
We’ve left the Skeleton coast at this point and were in the dunes areas, with huge sand dunes that made their way all the way to the sea. We had planned to fly most of the way at about 1,000ft to enjoy the scenery, but we climbed to 6,000ft to get above a layer of dusty haze (and we got smoother air and better winds there). We saw a number of shipwrecks on the way, some of which have become inland due to the sand’s encroachment on the sea.
Dunes along the coast
Shipwreck
Dunes along the coast
When we landed in Luderitz (much calmer winds than Swakopmund, thankfully), there was a line up of about 5 or 6 small planes from South Africa waiting for fuel. (Turns out the generator for the fuel pump was broken, so things were going very slowly.) They were part of a larger group from South Africa which was doing a self-fly safari exactly like what Henri and I are doing, and even visiting many of the same places. They had started out with about 30 people in 11 planes a few weeks ago; a few planes needed to head home for various reasons, so now they’re 21 people in 8 planes. Last year they did East Africa, flying all the way up to Tanzania; this year they’re doing Namibia/Botswana, and next year they’re going to head up more easterly through Malawi. Very cool, and Henri was practically salivating at the thought of joining them next year. But there’s actually something nice about being just me and Henri – such as more flexibility, and (significantly for me) Henri is kind enough to speak English around me (his first language is Afrikaans.) The South African guys speak Afrikaans almost exclusively. The leader of the group flies mostly helicopters in Johannesburg and invited Henri to come fly with him there. Henri is fascinated by helicopters and wants to go.
We checked into our hotel and walked into town for a delicious seafood lunch overlooking the bay before walking back. Luderitz is an old German town and is a quite picturesque mixture of desert and German architecture.
Before dinner Henri & I walked along the rocks by the hotel, taking lots of pictures with the setting sun, and then returned to the hotel for a sundowner beer while we chatted with the organizer of the South African self-fly safari, and then had dinner.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18841
After breakfast we had to arrange a driver to take us to Kolmannskuppe, the ghost town near Luderitz that was abandoned when the diamond mining dried up. The driver we had yesterday who drove us to the hotel from the airport would have taken us, but he was now booked by the South Africans, so he had proposed taking them and then coming back to get us. We suggested to him that he could still make money if he paid another driver for gas plus a little extra, and we’d pay him what we would have paid him anyhow, and he agreed. So we got into the car with a friend of his and went to Kolmannskuppe.
Namibia has (had?) a big diamond industry, but I’m told it has no true source of diamonds. That is, most of the diamonds in Namibia came out of the Orange River area (which separates Namibia from South Africa) and washed out to sea, where the currents brought them to Namibia and over time were spread both on the ocean floor and in the desert sands. So there’s a big ship in the Luderitz harbor which is apparently sucking up gobs of sand from the bottom of the bay and putting it all through fancy sieves and other detection equipment to find diamonds. And Kolmannskuppe was an old German town about 5km outside of Luderitz that was founded a hundred years ago, give or take, to basically sift through the desert sand for diamonds. It was something of a boom town, but was abandoned rather abruptly when the diamonds got scarce; it is now being taken over by the desert, with piles of sand filling several of the buildings.
Kolmannskuppe ghost town
Henri let me do the take-off out of Luderitz for the 1hr flight to Canon Lodge, by the Fish River Canyon. We flew over some stunning desert scenery, with cool mesas and rock formations, then flew over the Fish River Canyon, which is the 2nd largest canyon in the world (behind the Grand Canyon in Arizona); it was breathtaking. I did the landing at Canon Lodge’s airstrip, and while we were looking for the number for the lodge to call them for a pick-up, the driver pulled up for us.
The lodge is centered around an old German farmhouse, and it consists of a bunch of bungalows built directly into the rocks; it’s quite beautiful, and there’s a gorgeous pool privately nestled in the rocks as well. Henri and I lazed about for a while, then had lunch, then went to the canyon for a short hike, pictures, and sundowners. The canyon is simply stunning, and the evening light made for good pictures.
The pool at Canon Lodge, near Fish River Canyon
Sitting on the edge of the Fish River Canyon
Holding the moon in my fingers at Fish River Canyon
The South African couple (Chris and Anne Marie) whom I mentioned that we had met in Lianshulu and who were going to be here coincidentally with us are indeed here, so we found their bungalow at dinner time and invited them to join us for dinner, which they did. We had a lot to talk about over dinner regarding what we’ve seen and done over the past week or so.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18842
I woke up a bit before sunrise this morning to a fabulous view of a full moon out my window. Unfortunately, my pictures of it didn’t come out so great.
After breakfast, Henri and I went to the airplane and took off (he did all the flying today) for Sossusvlei, by the sand dunes. When we flew south along the cost to Luderitz a few days ago, we were probably 50nm west of Sossusvlei. We had fun in the flight, though: first, we flew over the edge of the Fish River Canyon at low altitude to get the sensation of flying off the cliff, descending as we crossed the edge to go below the rim of the canyon. We then flew north over the Namibrand park, and then instead of going straight to the Sossusvlei lodge, we flew over the vlei itself (basically, a river or lake that dries up before it reaches anything), about 30nm to the west of the lodge and then turned east to fly over the dunes towards the lodge, which is just outside the eastern border of the park. (You can see our path and the vlei in the map above).
Dead Vlei near Sossusvlei. The white stuff is basically dry mud
Pumping avgas by hand at Sossusvlei airstrip
Sossusvlei airstrip
Sossusvlei lodge is quite nice. We had a lazy afternoon, then went to see the nearby Sesriem canyon near sunset. Stunning deep and narrow box canyon.
Sesriem Canyon
Dinner was on the patio, overlooking the waterhole, where we saw jackals and springbok at the waterhole behind the dining area.
Last night I heard warthogs snorting outside my room and jackals howling. It was quite impressive.
We woke up early today to drive out to the dunes for some hiking around sunrise. We were driving up the river bed which is surrounded by dunes towards Sossusvlei. A “vlei” in Afrikaans is a lake or pond, these of course are dry most of the year. We stopped for some pictures and had our first hike up Dune 45, so named because it is 45km from the camp. We climbed up the steep spine of the dune, which was difficult simply because the sand is soft. And it is indeed all sand – very fine, very soft, and blowing in the wind. Henri went barefoot, I wore hiking boots, he probably had the better idea. We climbed to the top, which was over 300ft high. These are the tallest dunes in the world, some reaching over 1,000ft.
Dune 45. Note the people climbing at the bottom for a sense of scale
On Dune 45
We continued another 15km to the end of the road, then along a soft sand road (we passed another guide vehicle which had gotten stuck in the soft sand) to a picnic spot where our guide laid out a tablecloth and a breakfast that would have filled 10 people, but it was just Henri and I along with the guide. We ate breakfast, then Henri and I walked up to Dead Vlei, again ascending a tall and soft dune before descending (which is a blast, although I filled my boots with sand) down the steep sides into the vlei itself, which is dried mud and a lot of dead trees.
We had lunch and a lazy afternoon downloading our pictures to our computers and reading, and then we had beers as the sun set (of course) and dinner. A treat during dinner was that a jackal came and lay down not 10 ft from us, I assume hoping for some scraps. I ran back to my room to get a camera and was actually able to get a few decent shots off in the dark.
The jackal that visited us at dinner
Tomorrow we head back to Windhoek, and my journey home begins. I need to pay for about 21 hours in the 206 (N$1,500/hr dry, which works out to about US$200/hr - not cheap!!) and do some shopping. Henri and his family head off to Angola for a few weeks tomorrow night/Tuesday morning, so I am supposed to wake up alone at the house Tuesday morning; we’ll arrange a ride for me to get to the airport for my flight to Johannesburg. I’ll then have a day to spend there before flying home on Wed.
Flight: https://myflightbook.com/logbook/public/ViewPublicFlight.aspx?id=18843
Our final day on flying safari. Henri & I departed Sossusvlei shortly after breakfast for the 1hr flight back to Eros airport in Windhoek. The GPS says that we've flown 3,221 miles over the past 12 days. We spent the day shopping, I settled the flying expenses, and we had dinner with Henri's family. They left for Angola early the next morning, but Max came by to take me to the international airport for my flight back to Johannesburg, where I will have a day for sightseeing before flying home to Seattle.
Fairy
circles seen from the air on the flight back to Windhoek
I feel like I have now actually seen and experienced Namibia. It's a huge country (bigger than California and Montana combined) with very few paved roads, so flying is truly the best way to see it.