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: photography
The King
Monday 22nd April 2023, 4.50pm (day 4,624)
I was about 20 feet away from this magnificent creature this afternoon. There was plenty I was thinking of saying in this commentary but, mostly, I’ll let the picture speak for itself. ‘Awesome’ is an overused word but here, it really had meaning.
Happy skink
Sunday 21st April 2024, 3.15pm (day 4,623)
This chap definitely looks happy, and I know why — because it has just wolfed down a huge dragonfly that was about the same size. The whole thing, apart from a discarded wing or two, went down in about ten seconds. Had I been quicker with the camera (which was a few yards from me at the time as I’d just got out of the swimming pool) you might have seen the feeding, but it was happy to hang around and wait for me to do its close-ups.
Biology note: the defining characteristic of the skink (as opposed to other types of lizard) is apparently their stumpy little front legs, obvious on this shot. This is the second skink to appear on here down the years, after the one I saw in Saigon in 2019.
The Hitcher
Saturday 20th April 2024, 4.50pm (day 4,622)
This is a hell of a place to be waiting for a ride — then again there is no public transport this far out. I did feel sorry that our tour vehicle didn’t stop, but we didn’t carry on very far past this point so at best would have taken him another two miles nearer his destination. In any case, he might have been Rutger Hauer.
Going monochrome here, as is often the case, conceals the colour balance sins: this was taken through the dark green sun filter at the top of the windscreen.
In the Pink (Walvis Bay lagoon)
Friday 19th April 2024, 8.35am (day 4,621)
The dominant theme of the last few days has been sand, so it’s about time we had some local fauna on here. This is not only the first time I have ever seen flamingos in the wild, but, I am fairly sure, anywhere. Apparently over 200,000 of them live on Walvis Bay’s lagoon. This place is where I came in with Namibia, on the flight out to St Helena some 16 months ago (see this shot): compared to that, today’s picture is certainly fuller of life and rather pinker. Flamingos are pink — it’s the way they are — and they definitely seem to like each others’ company.
The Swakopmund beach fog
Thursday 18th April 2024, 8.50am (day 4,620)
I was forewarned about the fogs that affect the coast of Namibia. The Benguela current sweeps cold water up from Antarctica, and as it passes the African coast it mixes with the warm air coming off the continent. But just because I understand the climatology doesn’t mean that the actual experience of the fog hasn’t come as a surprise because they really are bloody cold; the mornings and evenings here in Swakopmund have not at all been like one might imagine an African beach holiday, more like Morecambe in November. These two swimmers must be seriously hardy.
The dunes of Arrakis
Wednesday 17th April 2024, 12.30pm (day 4,619)
More desert, this time from above, the second of my internal Namibian flights, to Swakopmund on the coast (of which more tomorrow). The shapes here are just amazing, like the earth itself is crinkled, akin to the skin of a passion fruit, say. Quite probably, no one ever sets foot here from one century to the next.
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.
Roadside refreshments
Sunday 14th April 2024, 12.35pm (day 4,616)
Very little happens in Windhoek on a Sunday, except some football, which is where I went. But enough pictures of football get on here, so I will spare you that. The stadium was on the edge of town, and in anticipation of the long queues which formed for the single ticket booth (behind me as I took this), these guys were opportunistically setting up before the match — and why not, I bought a beer from them, certainly. The landscape seems typical of the surroundings of the capital.
Being 42 