Tuesday 23rd April 2024, 9.25am (day 4,625)
I do not know what you call black-and-white striped pedestrian crossings in your country, but hopefully this associative pun works very well for UK readers. Taken in the Etosha game reserve.
Zebra crossing
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: Africa
Dead Vlei
Tuesday 16th April 2024, 8.25am (day 4,618)
Sossusvlei is one of Namibia’s major tourist attractions and probably you have seen pictures of it before — sinuous, ruddy, massive sand dunes pictured at dawn etc. etc. And I did get such shots today. But I’ll go with this one. Dead Vlei (a ‘vlei’ is the Afrikaans word for a marsh or riverbed without open water in it) was once connected to Sossusvlei but a few hundred years ago, shifting sand dunes cut it off and since then it has dessicated to a hard clay pan with ancient, dead trees still left from that time.
What is behind them, and the seated woman, is not grey sky but a massive wall of sand: the dune known as ‘Big Daddy’, which is nearly 1,000 feet (324m) high. The Namibian tourist board would like you to believe it’s the world’s biggest but I checked it out and it’s not even close to the winner, which is a dune in Argentina that’s a staggering 4,000 feet high: Big Daddy is in the top 10, though. A marvellous and highly photogenic place, even if I did have to get up at 5.30 to reach it.
The Namib Outpost
Monday 15th April 2024, 11.35am (day 4,617)
This was a day on which I could have posted any one of several pictures, including many with cute fauna. Today I captured shots of ostrich, oryx, wildebeest, zebra (the most unexpected), and springbok. But this one makes it because of its nicely unexpected nature. On the flight from Windhoek to the airstrip at Geluk we passed over increasingly barren and arid landscapes, yet still, here and there, there were dwellings, astonishingly remote. A few minutes before we landed I caught sight of this place, nestled in the shade of the rock, for all the world like a Fremen sietch, sheltering from the sandworms on relatively solid ground (a reference from Dune: if you don’t know this great novel by now, then shame on you, and yes, the movies are decent too).
Then, about 90 minutes later, I discovered that this was my hotel for the next two nights. Right now I type this in the leftmost of the line of huts to the right: the two buildings at the end of the gravel road being the restaurant, reception and staff accommodation of the Namib Outpost Lodge. I’ve certainly never had the privilege of staying anywhere else like this in my life.
You’ll see wildlife. There’s plenty of time yet.
Crossing into Namibia
Friday 12th April 2024, 12.05pm (day, 4,614)
This is the fourth shot ever on this blog to definitely feature the territory of two different countries, and all the other three have included England (two where English land was seen together with Wales, and one with France). However, after departing Manchester on the plane shown yesterday, and changing in Addis Ababa, I am now nowhere near England nor will be for some weeks.
The left-hand two-thirds of this shot, including almost all the irrigated land, is Namibia, where I landed about an hour after this point to begin my fortnight’s holiday. On the right, Angola, with the Kavango river forming the boundary between the two. Google Maps makes it possible to identify the location quite precisely: the irrigated circles are the Ndonga Linena Greenscheme, if you want to check my navigation.
Anticipation of a place to come
Wednesday 28th February 2024, 1.05pm (day 4,570)
A day spent at home was enlivened by the arrival of a travel itinerary, map and other stuff from the very competent people I’ve been dealing with at Expert Africa regarding my upcoming travels — which will certainly get me out and about. As I may have already said on here more than once, I do like a good map. It was my flights over Namibia last year that prompted me to want to go there, and in April, I will.
The Namib Desert, revisited
Saturday 4th February 2023, 5.50pm (day 4,181)
Tried to resist the temptation to put up another shot taken while flying over Namibia, and failed. The Namib Desert is apparently the world’s oldest, and runs straight down to the sea, making it look like a gargantuan beach, stretching hundreds of miles in every direction. You wouldn’t want to come here for a holiday however. No water anywhere, and combined with thick sea fogs and strong currents which can make it impossible to launch again, this is probably the most dangerous coast in the world for seafarers. Little wonder it has been termed the ‘Skeleton Coast’. Personally I think it appears as Mars might. Perhaps contrarily (but I’m like that), I find myself now quite wanting to visit this country properly. Maybe next year.
On the descent into Walvis Bay
Saturday 21st January 2023, 10.05am (day 4,167)
Random African country, 2/2, although unlike Ethiopia, this one — Namibia — was on the original schedule. Walvis Bay is where the Johannesburg to St Helena flight stops to refuel. On the approach, over miles of utterly barren desert, it is inconceivable that there could, or should, be a town of over 60,000 people here, but it seems that Walvis Bay is the one natural harbour for hundreds of miles in either direction, and so is the principal port for the whole country, not to mention handling traffic for landlocked Botswana and Zimbabwe as well. What the construction visible on this shot is, I have no idea for sure, but it might be the top of an artesian well, as almost all the water supply for the town comes from underground.
That’s it for my 3-day perambulation around two continents, and six airports (Manchester, Geneva, Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, Walvis Bay and St Helena). Two weeks on St Helena will now follow.
Addis Ababa (unexpectedly)
Friday 20th January 2023, 7.05am (day 4,166)
Until late morning yesterday, if you’d have suggested this blog might feature the capital of Ethiopia at some point in the near future, I would not have treated you seriously, but it’s amazing where one ends up (at 7 in the morning) when airlines are obliged to work out alternative routes of travel for passengers let down by non-optimal handling of local weather conditions (see yesterday). In fact I have always quite wanted to go to Ethiopia, it’s definitely on the bucket list — but a 90-minute stopover in Addis Ababa airport won’t really count when I come to sum up the itinerary of my life at some future date. It looked good from the plane, though, and one day I might come back. I like the flash of sunlight off the building to the right. Always get a window seat — always.
Slavery Museum, Liverpool
Saturday 11th January 2020, 11.00am (day 3,061)
A day out in Liverpool with Joe. The day as a whole was a good one, but let’s not talk about the football match later on. More agreeable was the Slavery Museum on Albert Dock, which while rather (understandably) depressing in places was certainly interesting — if not very big. These are Igbo carvings, I believe. The message in the back is pertinent. But yes, the black line, separating the panes of glass in the display cabinet, does bother me.
This pic was taken on my phone, as something happened today which has always been a possibility — I didn’t charge the camera battery properly and after the first picture of the day, when we were already on our journey, it died. Phone cameras these days do just as good a job of course, so act well as a backup. But one of these days a technical fail may well lead to a day with no photo: the most likely one I can think of being that my SD card breaks when I try to upload pictures the morning after, and thus too late to grab any emergency replacement. I hope that never happens of course, but I do wonder what my reaction would be. After (so far) 3,061 consecutive days of photography it would be something of a blow, to be sure.
The roof of Africa
Sunday 2nd August 2015, 6.40am (day 1,438)
So here it is, the culmination of this walk, the highest point in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world, Uhuru Peak, the summit of Kilimanjaro (5,895m or 19,341 feet above sea level).
You were getting a photo of it for today even if it had been as flat and featureless as a bowling green, but in all honesty this was the most beautiful, spectacular summit of any mountain I have ever visited. Believe me though, the effort it took to get here was intense. I don’t mean the five days of walking which had proceeded it which — if one can avoid altitude sickness (and I did) was not all that difficult — but the final climb up the ash slopes of Kibo, done between about 11.30pm and 6am, because during the hours of daylight it would be a) too hot and sunny and b) next-to-impossible anyway because one needs the ash to be semi-frozen in order to have a chance of ascending it. I had heard reports of people saying that one took about three steps up and then had to rest for about twenty seconds before having a chance of moving on, and dismissed them as exaggeration, but I can assure you they are not. That is really what it was like.
But once up there… time it right and one is there at sunrise. The light gradually reveals a wondrous landscape of delights, all over three-and-a-half miles up in the air. Here, the summit itself is on the far right of the picture, just caught by the sun which has also (I love this) projected a shadow of the whole summit cone onto the far horizon, neatly laid over Mount Meru, Tanzania’s second-highest peak, which at 4,565m or nearly 15,000 feet is no dwarf but from here is quite overshadowed (literally) by Kili. On the left is one of the mountain’s remaining glaciers, although don’t expect it to be around for much longer as within ten to fifteen years the ‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’ reported by Hemingway will most likely be gone — maps and pictures that show the whole summit area as covered in ice are now obsolete. Still, it’s a landform I’ve never been so close to before, and added an unearthly, or at least an un-African, element to the scene. The full moon above, which had illuminated our climb, is just the final touch.
What a place. Will I be back? Who knows, perhaps. I probably would do it again. If you do get the chance, and fancy putting in the work, I highly recommend it.
Being 42 