African memories
Categories: places
Date: 14 September 2006 20:14:24
Watching the Africam (see yesterday's entry) brought back lots of memories of my holiday to Namibia in 2000, so in the absence of anything interesting at all to blog about today (well, they opened a new Matalan in the city centre today, but I suspect that's not of interest to anyone except me. And the huge crowds of other people who also thought they'd check it out at the same time as me, what were they thinking?) I thought I'd scan some of my photos from Namibia and share them for your delectation. Click on any of them for a more detailed explanation.
I decided to go to Namibia on a bit of a whim really. I'd qualified as a nurse the autumn before, and had decided that after 3 years of poverty I was going to have the holiday of a lifetime. I didn't know where, but I wanted to go somewhere that nobody I knew had been to before. And, corny though it sounds, I chose Namibia after seeing it on the "Holiday Programme" (IIRC it was Jeremy Clarkson who went there). I used the same company they recommended, worked several thousand extra bank shifts on my ward to pay for it, and between me and the holiday company we tailored a programme which meant that I saw nearly all of the country (apart from the north) in 3 weeks. It's 2.5 times the size of France, so that meant a lot of driving, particularly as I was doing it by myself. It really is the most amazing country - as well as being so big it's also one of the least densely populated countries on earth (population of less than 2 million), so I could be driving for a couple of hours on the main highway and only see a couple of other cars the whole time. What I liked was it was so varied - Windhoek (the capital) was compact and friendly, down south towards Fish River Canyon it looked exactly how I'd imagine Arizona looks, then it has the amazing Namib Desert with its huge orange sand-dunes, the Naukluft Mountains with incredible geology, some really Germanic towns such as Swakopmund on the coast, and amazing Etosha National Park which I vaguely remember being told is the size of Holland. And that's not all - I didn't get to see the Skeleton Coast or the north or the Caprivi Strip. God it was amazing.