Nam

I am only a few kilometres from the spot where my mother lost her life 46 years ago when SA 228 crashed, seconds after takeoff, a life changing event for my family. Nonetheless I do not think about this too much, there has been too many gallons of water flowing under too many bridges since then. I'm alert and awake as the wheels of the Airbus A319 touch down at Windhoek's Hosea Kutako International Airport, despite the 37 hours elapsed time since boarding a plane at Pearson international. The last few hours have been spent chasing the setting sun as we flew directly west from Johannesburg, now darkness has finally descended. The heat of the day remains to greet me as I descend the aircraft on the stairs rolled up for us. We walk across the apron to the terminal building, no retractable walkway to ease you from the plane into a cool air-conditioned airport building. Actually as it turns out the building isn't air-conditioned at all, leaving your weary traveler gasping for breath. On the plus side there are no silly HSBC adverts making sage sounding, but generally stupid statements about the future, and the friendly smiling ground crew that line the route welcoming you to Namibia. All is good.   

Chasing the setting sun

It’s always exciting to arrive at your destination, especially when it’s a fairly ‘exotic’ one, but this is extra special for me. My daughter runs up and greets me in the immigration hall, I’m a little puzzled by this, but the emotion of the reunion pushes the question to one side, it's been nearly three years since I waved her goodbye as she left Canada to follow a life in South Africa. As it turns out I neglected to supply her with the address of the place we are booked into, so although her flight landed an hour before mine she has not been allowed through until I arrive and provide this piece of crucial info. This amazes me as a five minute internet search will yield up several thousand addresses of places to stay in Namibia – you only have to supply one, and no need to validate it. The idiotic questions employed by passport control seems to be standard across all nations. Not as idiotic as the so called airport security universally imposed since 911…all that searching, stripping, limits on gels, no nail files and so on is completely negated by the existence of restaurants and shops on the other side of the security checks. I am all for security and would be happier with more inconvenience, but actual meaningful security.  However, I digress and will leave this little rant for some other time. I’m embarking on a 17 day vacation in warm and sunny Namibia with my daughter and for some of the time, my sister. I am jet lagged, sleep-deprived and beyond grubby, but nonetheless as happy as a sand boy. I believe that sand boys are pretty happy creatures.

Perhaps I should answer a few questions that may be forming in a reader’s mind. Why Namibia and why is the Not-so-Easy-Rider blogging about this. The last time I visited Namibia, or ‘Nam’, as we called it in imitation of our US counterparts doing something similar in Vietnam, was almost exactly 36 years ago. I was nineteen and finally going home after two years as an unwilling, but obedient soldier, very small cog in the Apartheid military machine. Back then despite the misery of the existence I had led, I recognized the tremendous and extremely varied natural beauty of the country and promised myself that I would come back under more pleasant circumstances. I’m not entirely sure why, until now, I have not returned despite ample opportunity. When I decided to meet up with my daughter, Cape Town, where she lives, would have been a more logical choice, but ‘same old, same old’ came to mind and actually I loathe Cape Town during the Christmas holiday season, it heaves with people, everything is fully booked and the prices go through the roof. Then I thought of Nam and that old promise to come back. 

The idea of renting a motorcycle and doing some touring with her on the back did occur to me, but I knew that she wouldn’t enjoy that sort of trip, I didn’t get much further than Googling motorcycle rentals, there are a few places that offer rentals, but I could only find for road scrambler type bikes. Sorry to disappoint those that only want to read about motorcycling, this is not a motorcycle trip, for now, sadly, I’m the Easy–Driver.  But as this blog is also about my travels, I've decided to do a few posts on this trip…believe me it’s shaping up to be pretty damn interesting. I’m fast realizing that this is an awesome place to visit, on a motorcycle or off it.

We get a taxi to take us to the lodge we are booked into, the quote is N$400 (about CAD 40), it seems excessive, but then I discover that the airport is more than 40 km from the city and another 5 to the lodge, so I guess that it’s reasonable. I get my first experience of the Namibian interpretation of the gentle art of driving a car, but put it down to just this one crazy taxi driver, grit my teeth and buckle up. The 40 km drive passes awfully quickly, on a few occasions I swear I see episodes from my life flash before my eyes. We go through what looks like a very new suburb, big expensive looking houses with high walls, topped with electric fences. I am reminded of Pretoria.  We pass a large estate with a long fence of black and gold pickets with an odd looking coat of arms repeated every few yards. “The residence of Sam Nujoma?” I ask, displaying my general ignorance of the current politics of the country I am visiting. It turns out to be the residence of “His Excellency Hifikepunye Pohamba”, the current president. Our old adversary, Sam Nujoma has retired after what I believe, objectively, can be said to be a very decent go at running the country. In the short time since landing I sense a feeling of prosperity, pride and stability…crazy taxi driver notwithstanding.

Crazy Taxi driver dude (at least got us there) 

  

I have booked us in at a place called Arebbusch Travel Lodge, It looked nice on the website, was reasonably priced and the online booking was easy and logical to work with. The lodge itself does not disappoint in most departments, our chalet is clean, reasonably furnished, with a new and properly functioning air-conditioning unit (an absolute must in this part of the world). The only negative is that the place is not really as “in the bush” as I had been led to believe, it looks like it was just that not very long ago, but the city has grown towards it and  shortly it will be just an enclave. Nonetheless once inside the lodge enclosure you certainly get the feel of being out in the bush, the units are spaced reasonably far apart, with quite thick thorn bush between them. There is tranquility, African night sounds and the heat has subsided enough to sit on the verandah and enjoy at least some of my first African evening for six-and-a-half years. It’s wonderful and we have lots to catch up, but I struggle to keep my attention from wavering, I am exhausted and soon have no choice but to shower and bed.  

I’m awake before dawn, my internal time mechanism is completely screwed up, but I’m not grumpy about being up, sitting on the verandah and experiencing an African dawn is one of the things I’m here for. Despite the proximity to the city, I hear a hyena in the distance, I guess its concluding business for the night before settling down to sleep the day away, a sensible strategy here where the weather report is predicting 37 degrees Celsius. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to some of that, had enough of sub-zero stuff for now. The sky turns from black to purple and then to pink and the birdsong rises to a crescendo. The growing traffic noise from a main road about 500 meters away reminds me that I’m not actually deep in the bush, but the mood holds, it’s good to be back in Africa.

Sunrise in Windhoek

I boil some bottled water for coffee, there are no warnings that the tap water isn’t drinkable, but it has a funny smell and tastes a little unpleasant. Windhoek is a very dry place and I know that a fair percentage of water is reclaimed, Fremen style, if you get my drift. Gives the term ‘eau de toilette’ a whole new meaning. Of course I know that it has been purified, still I think I’ll stick to drinking bottled water and beer. The beer, I recall, is worth drinking, this country has a strong German heritage despite the hundred years that have passed since the end of German rule, and that heritage is stamped strongly on the brewing standards – an excellent place for a bit of Teutonic rigor in my humble opinion. The coffee I made is pretty horrid with the lodge supplied sachets of instant coffee and chicory blend (yuk) and non-dairy creamer, despite my serious coffee dependency I don’t manage much more than a few sips.

Breakfast (included in the rate) is a reasonable affair, the usual fest of eggs, bacon, sausages, fruit, muesli, Kellogg’s poisons, baked goods, toast, juice and yogurt set out for the customers to serve themselves. I stick to eggs, bacon and sausage and try the brewed coffee, only slightly too weak. We take a table outside that we share with a praying mantis and watch the antics of the weaver birds in the tree next to the verandah, the males desperately showing off the nests they have built to attract a female. Bit like the male of the human species, only we use Ferraris, Platinum Amex cards or whatever the income can stretch to. Of course the tactic doesn’t work as well since the equality between the sexes has improved, unless it really is a Ferrari and a holiday home on the French Rivera that you can flash around. The male weavers are having as little success as far as I can tell, at least ten of them are trying to impress two ladies that do no more than view the nests on offer in a decidedly disinterested manner.

 Weaver nests at Breakfast

Sharing the table with a Praying Mantis 

After breakfast I phone a taxi to take us to the Avis location, which turns out to be only 3 Km from the lodge, I could have walked, but then the sun is already shining with a ferocity that I’m not exactly acclimatized to.  The group B vehicle I booked is a VW Polo Vivo 1.4, known elsewhere in the world as the Polo MK4. I note with some amusement that the car has a slightly smaller engine displacement than my Suzuki Boulevard motorcycle and produces slightly less horsepower, 74 versus 77.8. Nonetheless it feels reasonably gutzy, handles well, has enough space inside for three adults and luggage and is air-conditioned… and the rate Avis charge (CAD 670 for 16 days) is definitely not over the top.  I am a little nervous of driving, not sure how I’ll manage a stick shift again since I have mostly driven automatics for the past 6 years, but more concerned about driving on the right hand side of the road again. No problem it seems, it’s as though I have a switch in my brain and the transition to driving on the right is almost seamless, it feels perfectly natural, ditto the stick shift. Not ditto the Namibian drivers. I soon discover that the taxi driver is not an aberration, Namibians are a nation of god awful, super dangerous, terrible drivers. I swear I have never seen anything so bad, and I have driven in Greece before.

The chalet and Polo Vivo 1.4. 

 Mouse Birds in Windhoek

Arebbusch Travel Lodge

I head towards the city centre to buy some essential provisions, such as water and liquor, it is Christmas Eve, and we will be on the road most of the day, driving to Walvis Bay. I notice that there are not many motorcycles about, actually that’s an understatement, I realize that I have actually not seen a single one, not even a Vespa. I guess that anyone brave enough to ride a motorcycle around here will likely not have a long life expectancy. All motorcycle riders know that a large percentage of motorists are assholes when it comes to us, we have got used to riding defensively, but with these guys, I have no idea how I would manage. In the few miles I have driven here I have witnessed the following:

• ·         Without signalling, a car did a U-turn across four lanes of busy traffic, two coming and two going. When the driver saw me looking at him with what must have been an incredulous, jaw-dropped expression on my face, he shrugged and laughed in a slightly embarrassed way.
• ·         At least three cases of overtaking on a blind curve, crossing double lines.
• ·         A fancy Mercedes driven by a young guy with no shirt on doing no less than 130 Km/h in a 60 zone.
• ·         Turning left from the go straight only lane, right in front on me causing me to slam on brakes and nearly requiring an underwear change. I realise that the insurance package that I took with the vehicle (the lightest on offer) was probably a serious mistake.
• ·         Everyone is in a wild rush, and the slightest delay between traffic lights (they call traffic lights ‘robots’ in this part of the world) turning green and pulling away earns you a hooting.

Once on foot inside the mall, however, a very different perception of Namibians is evident. This is a friendly place. The mall is as busy as hell, but there is a good-natured atmosphere, people chat while waiting very patiently in long lines to get through a check-out. It seems to be a relatively prosperous place, the shelves are bulging with stock and there is variety with no shortage of luxury items. The shoppers appear to be healthy and well dressed, indeed the only real difference between this mall and a mall in Toronto is that most of the people here are a shade of brown, and there are many shades of brown as Namibia has a very diverse indigenous population. I am amused to see that a bottle of Crown Royal Canadian rye whiskey sells for about two thirds of what I would pay for it in Canada. The shops are mostly the same shops that I am familiar with from South Africa, even the banks are the same high street banks. The Namibian dollar is pinned to the South African Rand at a one to one and it seems that South African Rands circulate as legal tender just as common as the Namibian Dollar notes.

Service is somewhat laidback, but on the whole fairly good, except for one instance that was so spectacularly bad that feel I must write about. We have a couple of hours to kill before we need to drive to the airport and fetch my sister who is flying in from Johannesburg to spend a week with us. We had spotted a Mugg and Bean coffee shop, which is a South African franchise that serves cold and hot beverages, light meals, cakes, sandwiches and so on, sort of a restaurant-cum-coffee shop. I was never a huge fan as I found that indigestion was often the result of eating there.  Nonetheless we decide to have an early light lunch before heading out to the airport, having already booked out of the lodge. Strike one, the maître d'hôtel type person leads us to a table and hands us menus and assures us that a wait person will be with us in a few minutes. This turns out to be 20 minutes. Strike two, during the wait I decided to visit the ‘washroom’ (to use the Canadian euphemism), the lights are not working which renders the facility so dark that I cannot not see my hand held an inch from my nose, only my cell phone illuminates the place enough to facilitate a pee into the appropriate receptacle. Strike three, I order a waffle with maple (flavoured) syrup and ice-cream, and my daughter orders a chicken wrap. The waffle arrives after 15 minutes with ice-cream, but no syrup, the waitress says that the syrup will be brought shortly. Forty-five minutes later the syrup arrives, by which time I had given up and eaten the waffle (which is not terribly good and the indigestion is already starting) with the melted ice-cream – still no chicken wrap for my daughter. Strike four, an hour after ordering the waitress comes to the table, opens a notebook, pages through it and announces that the chicken wraps are not available today and would we like something else instead?  We decline and request the bill. Strike five (there is a strike five?), the waitress brings a chicken salad to the table, announcing that instead of the wrap, the chef has prepared this dish for my daughter. She looks hurt when we refuse the offering and insisted on the bill. Strike six, the bill includes the chicken wrap and the chicken salad and charges me for the maple syrup as well as bacon to accompany the waffle, which I had not ordered nor received. Really, I don’t understand the aggrieved look on her face when I don’t leave a tip.

We arrive at the airport, me guzzling antacids and my daughter a bit on the hungry side, to meet my sister. It’s been nearly seven years since I have seen her, but she seems to have not changed, we’re older, none the wiser and thrilled to be together. This is destined to be a great holiday!