September 2010
6 posts
4 tags
The Beginning of My Namibian Life
It has been a week since the last time I have been able to get on the internet and I feel like there has been a lifetime of things that have happened to me already! The school I am at is very nice and just outside a small suburb about 60 kilometers north of Windhoek. I am sitting in a courtyard right now with 4 peacocks all about ten feet away from me. The weather is warm during the day, around...
August 2010
12 posts
4 tags
Greetings From Above the Equator
I am writing to you from 35,000 feet from above the equator right now (6:35 PM Central time, August 17th) and we have just this second crossed the Equator and are rocketing along southwards towards Johannesburg. I have never been to the Southern Hemisphere until this moment. Pretty Exciting stuff even though when you read this I will have already landed.
(my first African sunrise)
Getting...
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Day One
So just a quick update on my first official day in the Peace Corps. We woke up at 6:30 and after a quick walk down the street to Starbucks for breakfast, had to be in the lobby of the hotel at 7:30. From there we walked a couple blocks to the Federal building where we filled out a couple forms and got a Yellow Fever vaccine. Then, sat there for 30 minutes so they could monitor us for any...
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Things to do in Namibia #8 – Exploring the...
Namibia’s extreme northwest is called the Skeleton Coast, with good reason. Its treacherous conditions have scuppered ships - the beach is littered with rusting iron and weathered timbers from long-abandoned wrecks - and whales, too have met their end here, their massive vertebrae bleaching on the shore, lapped by the tides.
As a visitor, you’ll need an eye for detail to appreciate the allure...
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Things to do in Namibia #7 – Tracking Rhino in...
Did you know that the footprint of a black rhino can measure a full from toe to hefty heel? Nor did I until I found myself standing in the middle of one in northern Namibia’s Damaraland, my size nines dwarfed by the dusty imprint. A big male had passed here in the night, maybe as little as two hours previously. Our guide finished inspecting the considerable pile of dung teetering on the trail...
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Things to do in Namibia #6 – Watching the Desert...
Spring in Namaqualand brings the kind of miracle for which time-lapse photography was invented. After the brief winter rains, mile after mile of barren-looking semi-desert is transformed, within days, into a sea of flowers – a dazzling display that sends butterflies, bees and long-tounged flies into a frenzy.
Namaqualand, a thirsty, rocky region encompassing South Africa’s northwestern corner...
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Things to do in Namibia #5 – Going Bush in Ongava...
Dinner in Ongava Tented Camp is always a memorable occasion: an open-air fireplace, a dozen or so guests, and, milling around the floodlit waterhole a few feet away, the evening’s entertainment - an aging bull elephant, maybe a rhino and her calf, or, on a lucky night, a pair of lionesses, returning from a hunt. Nestled at the foot of the tounge-twisting Ondundozonanandana Range, in Ongava Game...
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Things to do in Namibia #4 – Enjoying the Show in...
Just this morning, through the dust and glare, eighty nodding zebra had filed out of the thorn scrub, the leaders forced belly-deep into the waterhole by the jostling ranks behind. Now, darkness assembles a new cast.
The first player enters stage right: a black rhino, huffing from the shadows, calf at her heels. She pauses at the moan of a distant lion - radar ears rotating and nostrils...
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Things to do in Namibia #3 – Hiking Through the...
Africa’s biggest ravine and one of southern Africa’s great hiking trails, the Fish River Canton is a mega-rent in the earth’s crust more than half a kilometer deep, twenty kilometers long, snaking south the vent its river into the mighty Orange. Although the Grand Canyon is a good deal bigger, Fish River, ranked second in the world, is still unfathomably vast, the result of tens of millions of...
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Things to do in Namibia #2 – Cape Cross Colony:...
You’ll smell them before you hear them: a pungent oily aroma wafting off the Atlantic Ocean. You’ll hear them before you see them: a chorus of grunts and snorts carried on the breeze. And then you finally clap eyes on them – a writhing mass of spray-shrouded seals stretching far along the Skeleton Coast. The colony at Cape Cross is overcrowding in action, with up to 100,000 cap fur seals...
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New Feature: Comments!
I know several of you have asked for it, and now it is possible. You can now post comments on my blog posts. Just please, keep them clean, my family also reads this. Thank you for your support in this matter.
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Etsy for Education!
So I know this is a bit of shameless self-promotion, but I have started my very own Etsy shop called Images From Afar. For those of you who don’t know what Etsy is, it is a website where artists, photographers, crafters and the like can set up their own shops and sell their wares.
Since I have a small background in photography and I have been known to take the occasional good photo I have...
