Wednesday, June 8, 2011

8th June 2011 - Arriving Namibia

After a 24-hours journey, we arrived at our first hotel on our Namibia excursion.

The somewhat eventful journey helped taken our minds of the sadness of leaving our family in Sweden, created relatively harmless stressfulness and gave us some exciting previews.

Stressful situations included Namibian custom officer mentioning to send me back on the plane because she thought I needed a visa, driving a stick on the left side for the first time and turning into the wrong sides multiple times, and having exactly three hours to get to the resort before dark. Luckily, a higher rank officer figured out the difference between a regular Chinese passport and a Hong Kong passport and there were no cars when we turned into the wrong side. Here we are, safe and showered and fed. Did I mention that it is about -1C here and there is no heater?

But none of the minor stresses can take away the excitement. Two minutes on the road from the airport, our car slowed to wait for a family of baboon monkeys to cross the road. 10 minutes drive from the capital, erik spotted three giraffes hanging out not far from the road, too bad I was driving and missed it. Other animals we saw on the road included some African birds that we cannot name, one warthog, lots of cows and lots of antelopes, all just hanging out or crossing roads.

And then there is the view of the waterberg plateau in pink from the reflection of sunset sky. I hate myself for not stopping the car to steal a shot of it. It feels as amazing as the plateau in the movie Up. Waterberg plateau is where we are staying for the first three nights. The cold night sky is full of stars, maybe tomorrow night, we will brave the cold and count them for a while.