Namibia_World of inspiration!

Two weeks ago I joined my boyfriend and his family on an amazing adventure to Namibia for 10 days. This trip consisted of many many long hours of driving, however the destinations made it all worth while. This was my first experience of Namibia and I thoroughly enjoyed it! We visited a number of places and if I have to tell you about all of them in this one blog, it will be never ending. Therefore, I am going to split my trip experience over the next few weeks of blogging... I hope you enjoy :)

Seven hours after we had departed from Paarl, we arrived at the South African and then Namibian boarder post. Just a little bit of info for you, if you thought South African service delivery was bad, Namibia is slightly worse... South Africa's boarder post was fast and efficient, where we spent approximately 10 minutes... Namibia's side took approximately 1 hour... Once we passed the Namibian boarder, I was left with no cellphone reception. At first I was slightly anxious at the thought of not having any connection to the technological world for 10 days, but let me tell you, it made the world of difference and I now hate my phone. :) 

We continued our drive to our first destination which was 6 hours of looong gravel roads. One of our stops along the way was in Keetmanshoop, where we decided to fill up on fuel and find some bread to buy. This was the start of my heartache for this part of the country... We, in South Africa are so lucky to have bread and fresh fruit and veggies available to us. The one shop in Keetmanshoop that was open only had frozen bread and fruit and veggies which looked like they had been in a food fight. I found that a lot of the small towns in Namibia had this problem. At the garage, I saw a stray dog, who had already given birth to pups, sniffing around for food. Tears filled my eyes, and I immediately ran to the garage store and bought her a russian sausage (which was all they had). My boyfriend and his parents just smiled and laughed at me. (It did look kind of strange I suppose :) ) 

 My heartache...

The long and dusty road, beautiful isn't it :)

After the long and bumpy drive, we arrived at the Khalahari Lodge. It is a farm just outside of Mata Mata. There we spent two nights camping. The bathroom facilities were really good and we had a good time there. The only thing that troubled me, were all the insects who thoroughly enjoyed camping with us. :) The spiders form webs across trees and are massive! On our first night, we had just finished braa'ing when the rain came pouring down... We had no choice but to rush to the bathroom and kitchen facilities room, where we enjoyed our meal. It was quite a laugh. The rain then stopped and we headed for our tents to call it a night...

 Spot the spiders :/

Massive Centipede

The following day, we headed 18km from our campsite to the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. Here I had my first encounter with a number of cute ground squirrels and a very strange and large insect called the "Vetgat kriek". I'll get to them later though... We went on a game drive and saw a wide variety of animals. It was stunning. We then returned to our campsite and spent the evening braai'ing and chatting to the owners of the farm over a couple of drinks.

 Adorable ground squirrels!

Springboks so close to the car...

The next morning the owner of the farm took us on a drive around his farm. It amazed me how much land he had which consisted of hectares and hectares of open field. He told us about a Namibian vegetable which is found in the cracks of the soil, usually underneath the grass plants. It's called a 'Naba'. I have tried researching it, but there is no record of it online. It is round and grows as big as your hand. It looks similar to a potato, but tastes like a mushroom. There, we spent an hour or two on a 'Naba-hunt' (seeing as it was Easter Sunday ;) ). We only found 3, as the jackals had gotten to them before we could.

"Naba-hunt"

"Naba's"

On return to our campsite, we packed up, said our goodbyes and headed to our next destination... Windhoek. More about that next week! :)