Confused in Windhoek

One change in my traveling style from the first MariesWorldTour.com is this:

When faced with a choice between favoring my cheap side and favoring my lazy side, I've started to act in favor of the latter.

And that is why I took the Town Hoppers shuttle bus from Swakopmund to Windhoek instead of the Intercape bus. Which is fine, but less frequent and involved me hiking over to the bus stop, then getting a taxi once I got to Windhoek.

I had $10.38 left in my checking account until payday—I actually do get paid for all that comic book work I was doing in hotel rooms at night. But that didn't stop me from spending more for door-to-door service. But the fact that I am still working while taking this trip has made me more likely to spend a bit here and there. Of course, I am spending more than I earn. I was running at a loss before I even left the States, having rented out my apartment for less than cost since it's hard to rent a place out in February. And I'm still paying my US health insurance, car insurance, property taxes on my garage...last time I made a clean break. But what I learned from that is that re-entry is toughest when you have nothing to go home to.

Living Desert Photos

Here are some more photos of the Living Desert Tour I went on in Swakopmund.

And here's a little something extra.

Sand and Tongues in Swakop

My last day in Swakopmund.

Before I left, I had one last thing to do in town. I wanted to go on a desert tour. These are popular as people come back with tales of madmen digging for exploding chameleons. Okay, not really exploding. But sun-sensitive.

There are two outfitters in town, and using a careful scientific method, I went with the one that Tourist Information booked for me, Tommy's Living Desert Tour.

Desert tours are popular for a reason—a saucy host (a kind-of regional Crocodile Hunter) drives you around, stops when he sees the "bush newspaper" (meaning nearly invisible evidence that a lizard, snake, or spider is nearby), then he screeches to a half, finds the creature, and shows it to you, explaining all about its habits and characteristics while making off-color jokes.

You also get out into the dunes near Swakopmund with a expert, which is excellent. And I finally got my question answered about if quad-biking is bad for the environment or not. The answer is sure, it is. But the outfitters in Swakopmund are generally responsible and involved in conservation. The problem is the independent quad-bikers, the weekenders who come to town and have no awareness of the eco-system they're destroying when the run rampant off the set tracks. Nature is losing its battle even as the outfitters try to raise awareness among their sympathetic clients.

We saw snakes, chameleons, spiders...everything we'd been promised. And after the trip, I went back to the coffee shop that had once been "Out of Africa," and now...I never even looked at the sign. I read the life-affirming quotation on my sugar packet as the sun went down.

Would I ever be back to Swakopmund? I'd thought that each time I'd come here. I hope so. I love the funny combination of cultures here.

I hope the chameleons are still there when I get back.

Visiting an Old Friend

Swakopmund is familiar to me, a place that I can stop to catch my breath, and one of several places I've called home for short periods of time over the years. It's also a key place in Marie-mythology, having been the location for an early chapter of my book, Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik, and the site of a life-changing moment for me in 2005, at the beginning of my then-No Hurry In Africa blogging. Three or four of you have been along for the virtual ride since then, and I thank you for that.

I hadn't stayed at many hotels or eaten at many restaurants in Swakopmund before, because when I was here in 2005, I stayed in a rental apartment and enjoyed cooking for myself. I'd chosen Dunedin Star (named after a shipwreck) based on its price. But I was surprised when, late in the week, I learned it wasn't pronounced Dunedin like the New Zealand city.

Dunedin is pronounced "Done-eatin'." No wonder people had been looking at me funny when they asked me where I was staying.

Flying Over Sossusvlei

I was back at the Bushbird office at two, where I joined two older Australian couples in a minibus for the ride out to the edge of Swakopmund, to the tiny airport.

"Try not to get your cameras too close to the windows," the pilot pointed out. "See, they're just plexiglass and they scratch real easy."

Even with that warning, I bumped a few times.

We all put on headphones to both cancel out some of the loudness of the plane's engine and so we could hear the pilot's instructions.

"Do you think the haze will burn off?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, it's just hazy over Swakopmund." Which is frequently how it is in Swakopmund. Lots of mist and haze.

"Where are you from?" One of the Australians wanted to know who was piloting us.

"Hungary."

You Call That Working?

"I will work today," I thought with determination when I  awoke in my cute room at Dunedin Star Guest Lodge on the morning of my first full day in Swakopmund, Namibia.

And that lasted until I tried to find the "Out of Africa" coffee shop that I'd last been to in 2005. Gone...how long? A new coffee shop had replaced it, but more importantly, the flight-seeing outfitter on the corner had a sandwich board outside.

Ohhhh...there's a seat on a flight-seeing trip over Sossusvlei this afternoon.

I'd hunted for an elusive last-remaining (thus, discounted) seat for the entire month I'd last been in Swakopmund, some five years back. I'd been to Sossusvlei—which is an otherworldly, undulating mass of giant dunes that is really called Namib-Naukluft National Park—in 2001 with Shawn and the Crazy Kudu group, but I'd always wanted to see it from the sky.

Now was my chance, and on my first full day in town. This might not even happen again while I'm here, I thought. I went into the Bush Bird store, booked, and paid.

The German man behind the counter handed me a ticket, told me to come back at 2, and reminded me that mum was the word on the last-minute discounted tickets. Which, given that I'd been actively in the market for one, is kind of an open secret.

I was going over the dunes in a plane.

On Familiar Ground

"Hey, mzungu!"

I grinned at the man pointing me in the direction of the overnight bus to Namibia. It was nice to be back in this part of the world. The word "mzungu" is slightly rude, like if you said "Hey, foreign tourist," to random sightseers on the streets of Manhattan, but in the current context, it was just a reminder that I was back in a part of Africa that is familiar and comfortable for me.

And that's it for me and Zambia, I thought, as I found the Intercape stop in the center of Livingstone. It was where I'd caught the CR Holdings bus twice before during other journeys, on a corner by what looked like a little shack, but was actually a ticket booth.

The noon bus had started in Vic Falls, Zimbabwe. This route is relatively new—the bus used to transit Botswana before the new road and bridge were built on the Zambian side. I was delighted as it meant I didn't have to find my way to an Intercape stop in Namibia or Zimbabwe, but one older German traveler who'd boarded in Vic Falls was pissed.