louiseinlimbo

After a week to rest from my Botswana trip, I joined a tour group for a two-week tour of Namibia.   The Sossusvlei Dunes and the Skeleton Coast have been on my wish list for as long as I can remember, but this tour also included Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, the petroglyphs at Twyfelfontein, Epupa Falls, a visit to a Himba settlement, and a few days at Etosha National Park. & all of it was superb!  The Sossusvlei Dunes were probably the least exciting of the visits, although still worth seeing and the nearby DeadVlei (the photo above) was incredible; the information sign at the entrance explains that when the climate there dried up some 900 years ago, the trees died – but it was too dry for them to decompose, so they scorched black in the sun and still remain there, now more than one thousand years old.  I also enjoyed seeing a shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast.  & Twyfelfontein was very impressive, with a mixture of rock paintings and rock engravings believed to be ...

So I had a month of ‘down time’ before joining a tour group in Namibia, but had to leave Angola as the visa is only for 30 days.  Although, looking back, might my two remaining days have been enough for me to get to Kalandula Falls in the middle of the country?  The second highest falls in Africa, which I’d like to see.  But anyway, I missed that opportunity, and took one overnight bus from Luanda to the border, then another overnight bus from the border to Windhoek, before catching up on my sleep!  Sometimes I am happy to just hang around for a month – sleeping, washing clothes, labelling and backing up photos, and chatting with fellow hostel guests, as well as the odd day exploring  - but there is little to see in Windhoek, there is no cheap accommodation – and Botswana is just next-door… So I did some research and worked out how to get to Botswana (how can a country as wealthy, and relatively developed, as Namibia, have no public transport, and no private bus...

I’d booked back-to-back tours with the same company of both south and north Angola, and after enjoying the south so much, I was really looking forward to the northern tour.  Particularly as the Catalan speakers who’d dominated the tour group in the south were not on the northern tour!  A long-time friend was joining me, and I’d recently discovered that two other travellers who I’d met and got on well with in Niger some five years ago were also joining us, so my mood was very good. But it was going to be a difficult two weeks, and there was some hint of this on the very first day, when we arrived at our hotel in Dundo to find that it was full.  Our tour company had reserved the necessary rooms – and paid for them – but apparently the booking was cancelled because they did not ‘re-confirm’ it after paying!  Thankfully they found us another place to stay, but to the surprise of most of us we returned to our cancelled hotel to eat lunch in their restaurant.  Or at l...

I should have said ‘final photo from the tribal part of this visit’, as there was also some great scenery as well as the Tropical Modernist architecture of Luanda and Namibe. The southern half of Angola is pretty dry (at least it is during August) – most of it not quite desert, but still very dusty and sandy.  The downside was the dust thrown up by the vehicle in front (that car being reserved for the guide and her partner, and its front seat claimed by an older Spanish tour group member who said she got car sick if she travelled further back in a vehicle), but that was more than made up for by the rocks and canyons (such as Curoca Canyon above) and the occasional oasis (such as Arco Oasis below). There were also old rock paintings in a couple of caves, and engravings on the sides of a rocky outcrop on the way up to one of the caves.  Apparently they are amongst the oldest in southern Africa, estimated to be some 20,000 years old. We visi ted the animist cemetery at Virei...

But it was time to get back on the road – to another country I haven’t visited before: Angola. I’ve been on a couple of tours with a company that like to go deep into tribal stuff, and I signed up to their tour visiting various different tribes in southern Angola. & I have to say, there are some great tribes in southern Angola, for those of us who love seeing very different traditional dress!   Above you can see the ornate beaded ‘necklaces’ worn by the Muila tribes – which never come off, they sleep with their heads resting on a stool.    The lady on the left is from the Himba tribe, known especially for the reddish substance they smear on their hair and bodies: a paste made from butterfat, ground red ochre, and some kind of aromatic resin, which apparently protects them both from the sun and from mosquitoes.   The bits of goatskin sticking up from the middle of her head indicate that she is a mother (or has been married for at least a year). Unfortunatel...

Oh my goodness, life has been so busy that I haven’t had the time to write anything here for more than six weeks … but I don’t want to miss out the highlights from my trip back to the UK.   Firstly, a reunion of pupils from my school, marking 50 years since its opening.   I was in the very first intake, and knew that at least a couple of other people from my year would be there, so I made sure I was in the UK in time to attend.   Yes, those two friends and a few more were there, including one of two others that I had really hoped to see.   Every time I thought about the reunion, I thought “please let Nicolette and/or Helen be there”, so I was thrilled when not only was Nicolette there, but she expressed having made the same wish beforehand to see me there!   A couple of my teachers also attended, and a quick conversation with my old English History teacher revealed that we shared a love of Malian music, which was quite a surprise.   This teacher asked if he...