DFR Travels: A pregnant chameleon named Sally...

Friday, April 4. Still cool. [Day 90 of 113, 23 days to go.]

Today we two were on a tour from our travel agent out into the dunes by Walvis bay. The sand dunes actually start at the outskirts of this town that is a couple of kilometres wide and somewhat longer, dead flat, uninteresting architecture without a building higher than two or three stories tall. About the most plain looking town outside of some seen in the Australian countryside, except they may have interesting buildings.

Namibia has deep German roots that are still very, very ingrained even though the Germans were officially out of Namibia 100 years ago. Over 70% of the tourists that come here, come from Germany. The town and countryside here seems to be highly stratified, economically. On the outskirts of town we passed thousands of new well built tiny buildings that house people at the bottom end, [read that blacks], on the other side of the highway were hundreds of better built and bigger homes and lots, these are primarily for coloureds. In town there are homes that would not be out of place in Arizona, the better class, [whites & ?] live there. And on the very far end on the coast are vacation homes for very rich people who use them for several weeks a year only. Apparently there is no segregation except that which is dictated by 'an ability to pay'.

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The Namib Desert Tour that we went on was fantastic, really. I was expecting a bounce around the dunes and some interesting landscape shots. But as soon as we got out in the desert our guide stopped the truck, jumped out and started chasing a white snake through a bush and across the sand to another bush where he emerged with a White Whip Snake and came back and showed us and explained all about it and its life in the desert.

Shortly, he stopped the van again and leaped out and scrambled up a dune chasing beetles that were scurrying along in from of him. He came back with four and put them in a bottle. Soon he stopped again and started to dig in the sand and soon came up with a legless lizard called a skink, also into the bottle. Soon we stopped and all got out and he took us to a bush where a chameleon was lurking. He got out his beetle jar and soon the chameleon was slurping up beetles with his very long tongue.

Another stop and he wandered into the shrub and sparse bushes with his snake stick and came back with a side-wider snake. The whole four hours was filled with interesting information about life in the seemingly stark and empty desert. Some very interesting rides up the dunes and down the dunes and soon we were at the top of one very big dune overlooking the ocean and the pounding waves far below.

It was a real pleasure being with our guide in his desert today, he was so enthusiastic about it, and his country. He was an Afrikaner, a large man with a real passion for even the tiniest insect in the desert and so considerate of them, even offering shade from the hot sun to them when displaying them and placing back in the sand whence they came. He of course does this tour maybe twice daily so he knows the land intimately, even to naming the chameleons in their favourite hangout shrub. That is why he knew that one he showed us was a female and indeed, pregnant, he called her Sally. Our guides size is not to be discounted when it came to speed in the sand, that snake was travelling fast, but he got it!

Namibia is not a poor country, one can tell that from just looking at the place. The basis of their economy is mining: uranium, gold and diamonds. Tourism is up there as well, but cannot support mass tourism because of the limited water, and we tourists use copious amounts of it apparently. It only gets 10 to 15 mm of rain a year, hardly anything, but the sea fog along the coast is a source of moisture to plants, insects and vegetation, through millions of years of evolution they have adapted to the harsh conditions.

There are hundreds if not thousands of wrecked ships along this coast, known as The Skeleton Coast, because of so many wrecked ships along it. The cause: there is so much magnetite in the sand that some ship's compasses read wrong and many ships were driven ashore in the surf and dense fog.

Where does the sand come from? Well, according to our man, they get about 500,000 square meters of new sand every year compliments of Botswana. The sand is silt from a large river that flows into the Atlantic down south. The current then drifts it up north where it is washed into shore on the massive surf here and the silt/sand is deposited on the shores. The winds, that they are notorious here, then blow the sand up to the dunes and it gets deposited and adds to the pile of sand already here. In another 50,000,000 years all of this part of Namibia will be covered in sand. So the man said!

The above is the best that I can make out from information provided and some information in the back of my head.

Jim and gail went ashore, not on tour, and I do not yet know of their adventures.

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Nautical terms in everyday usage.

To know the ropes: There were miles of cordage on a square rigged ship. It took an experienced seaman to know the ropes.

Pics.

- Fellette and our ride for the day, with half inflated tires for the sand.

- Our guide coaxing out a chameleon for a beetle break.

- The chameleon.

- The white whip snake, slightly poisonous.

- The skink.

- Digging for a gecko.