travels with janne

The delicate and fine-boned dik-dik is a little cutey pie. It has eyelashes to die for – long, thick and enchanting – a long, mobile, touchy-feely nose and a charming little tuft of hair between its tiny, spiky horns. The hair is erectile and gets a rise in certain social situations (sounds a bit naughty, doesn’t it?). Weighing in at 5 kg it is the smallest of the antelopes.

Much larger (about 200 kg) is the stylish gemsbok (also known as oryx), one of the few large animals we saw until we were bombarded by wildlife viewing in Etosha. The gemsbok is a real cover girl. It has strikingly long and straight, ridged horns, alternating black, white and fawn patterns and a black horsey tail. Despite its sturdy build it has an elegant Coco Chanel-look about it.

The springbok and the black-faced impala have also chosen the fawn, black and white colour scheme. The springbok is the only gazelle in southern Africa and is distinguished by its dashing reddish brown side stripe between its white belly and fawn upper body. It also has a daring black stripe along the side of the face right through the eye. And donkey’s ears – they are so long! The black-faced impala, which is similar to the springbok, not only has a black eye stripe but also a black nose stripe.

With its disarming white upper lip, the greater kudu looks like it has just had a glass of milk. Or perhaps someone took a paintbrush and decorated it with a funny little white moustache, a white stripe connecting the inner corners of the eyes and six to ten fine white stripes on its body. The male has swirly, spiralled horns and a long fringe hanging along its throat.

Nature is my favourite stylist.

Some animals are experts at keeping a low profile with the aid of their colouring. Others, though, seem to raise the flag and say “Look at me!” Birds, in particular, are adept at psychedelic colour combinations and fanciful feather arrangements.

My all time favourite colour show is the lilac-breasted roller. This many-hued bird looks like someone who has had great difficulty deciding which outfit to buy so ends up buying the whole shebang. I can get into that. Indecision can be a real problem. Lilac, deep purple, turquoise, royal blue, emerald green, tan, and cream all rolled into one little bird’s suit. Wow!

Its cousin, the racket-tailed roller, maintains a more subdued colour combination with a light turquoise breast and a brown back. Instead, it has invested in a fancy tail embellishment.

Not to be outdone in the colour department is the little bee-eater. It has a dashing turquoise eyebrow, canary yellow throat, emerald green back and orange belly. Speaking of bellies, how about the crimson boubou? Very striking style! Red is also the in thing with the red-eyed bulbul.

Colour is not everything, though. Patterns, too, set the pace among some of the animal species. Zebras aim to confuse with their black and white stripes that never fail to amaze me. When the zebras in a herd move around, new and ever-changing patterns fall into place like in a toy kaleidoscope.

A quick movement makes us notice a lizard, but where did it go? Even staring right at it, it can be hard to spot it. With its brown and grey mottled skin it blends in perfectly with the surrounding rocks, pebbles and shadows. It sits still long enough for us to see that it looks like a mini-dinosaur, as old as the hills. I am impressed that our guide, Mike Scott, knows the name of this little guy and can tell us that the male and female look different from each other. We are, in fact, lucky to spot one of each sex, but I have not listened properly and have already forgotten what they are called. Spiny agama? Ground agama?

Many of the other animals we spot are also able to don a cloak of invisibility. Their colours are the perfect camouflage for the environment in which they live, whether it is sandy expanses, rocky hills, rustling savannah or shadowed woods.

The photos accompanying this article show the tiny, sandy-coloured dik-dik, a black-backed jackal in stalking mode, the elusive (agama?) lizard, a long-necked giraffe, a self-important kori bustard, a francolin with gangly yellow legs, and the elusive (agama?) lizard, all trying to keep invisible in each their way

After the sand and the sea and the rock paintings we drive northeast to the famous Etosha National Park, where wildlife abounds. On the way we get a foretaste of it and spot steenbok, springbok, warthogs and ostriches but once in the park the wildlife is overwhelming.

Zebra, elephant, giraffe, rhinoceros, gemsbok, springbok, hartebeest, dikdik, blue wildebeest, black-faced impala, yellow mongoose, greater kudu, bats, honey badger, black-backed jackal, double-banded sand grouse, golden-breasted bunting, helmeted guinea fowl, red-billed quelea, black-chested snake eagle, and much more, all in one day and night. So much life!

What I find so special about the Namibia is its landscapes. They are all about rock and sand served up in different ways. Sometimes there are huge, rounded boulders strewn about like a giant’s game of marbles. Sometimes we see striated rock faces with beautiful patterns, sometimes just flat, white or red sandscapes. Here and there a plant struggles to survive, battered by the hot winds, scorched by the blazing sun, and munched on by hungry grazers.

We take a closer look at a few of the weird Welwitschia, a type of plant that is just as hard to understand as it is to spell. It is a primitive plant classified as a gymnosperm and has a tiny family – it being the only member. It looks like a wilted lettuce with a huge tangle of leaves but actually only has two huge ones that tend to get messed about in the wind and weather and get mangled by animals. They grow very old. Apparently, average-sized specimens are 500-600 years old. Welwitschia are found nowhere else in the world but the Namib Desert.

Even older is the prehistoric rock art that we see at the White Lady site, which is reached by a pleasant one-hour walk among rocks and grasses. As we walk in the quiet heat we are lucky to spot a few brownish rock hyrax, furry little rabbit-gopher-squirrel kind of things that make a mad dash for a group breakfast for an hour in the morning and again in the afternoon for a rushed communal dinner. They do this to minimise getting gobbled by predators.

Anyway, back to the rock art. Fascinating and beautiful, the drawings depict hunters and their prey in earthy, African colours and style. The monochromatic bits are about 5,000 years old while the coloured drawings are estimated at 2,000 years.

It can be hard to see the details in each drawing clearly because they are so old and made with natural colours. But they have certainly held up well, all things considered.

At night I hunker down in my sleeping bag. I have fitted two sleeping bags into each other and lined the inner one with a fleece liner and a silk liner. I wear warm, long-legged pyjamas and an undershirt. Thick white socks add to the sexy look. It’s pretty chilly at night, sometimes plummeting to about 7° C. The days, though. Hot, hot, hot! Our drive to the Skeleton Coast is scorching. We are limp with heat and wet with sweat. Getting out of the car does not help. Instead it is like walking around in a convection oven.

The drive to the coast is flat and monotonous. The road is flat and endless; the sand is flat and endless. Both have almost the same colour and it is sometimes hard to tell one from the other. As we approach the coast we can see the Atlantic Ocean. It is a strange thought that just yesterday we sat and drank our morning tea on top of a huge dune in a sea of sand and now – only next evening – we are drinking our sundowners while listening to the pounding surf of the ocean at Walvis Bay. After sundowners by the beach we head to a fancy restaurant and eat oysters, springbok and freshly caught fish, the name of which I cannot remember but the tastiness of which is unforgettable.

Next day we visit the Cape Cross Seal Colony. This is a teeming mass of smelly, noisy, argumentative blobs of fat in various shades of tan and brown. There are thousands and thousands of them on land and in the water. Snoozing, scratching, suckling, bawling, brawling, waddling, swimming: Cape Fur Seal family life does not include privacy, peace and quiet .The animals excel in bubbly, liquid burps, gurgles and farts. Stinky and boorish though they may be, they are charming and irresistible to watch.

We leave the fun and drive northeast. Before leaving the coast we spot gulls, terns, flamingos and pelicans.

Dawn is a time of awakening. The sun warms but the desert is still cool. Desert animals are still sluggish while we people are still perky. As the sun rises, the sand and stones turn a glowing red as if the desert is on fire.

The warmth of day energizes the poikilotherms. (Don’t you just love that nerdy zoology word? It means cold-blooded animals). In the wink of an eye a shovel-nosed lizard burrows into the side of a dune leaving behind no trace of its presence. Tock tock beetles, endemic to the area, scurry about at top speed leaving nifty little abstract footprint artworks in the sand.

Another piece of nature’s artwork,a graceful gemsbok, grazes on the meagre desert growth against a background of dunes that rise like momentous sand tsunamis in the otherwise flat landscape.

We walk to Hidden Vlei, a surrealistic place. We have this still, strange, dry place all to ourselves. It is like a silent dream. Nothing moves, not even a breeze. The arid earth is cracked. Here and there solitary, parched, thousand-year-old trees bend and twist towards the sky like pointing arthritic fingers. They offer a sliver of shade to sit in and ancient branches for birds to perch on. It is a stark and simple beauty.

A black breasted snake eagle and, later, a pale chanting goshawk circle, hover and watch.

Back at camp we take a siesta. The temperature in my tent is 42° C. I lie on my mat in my underwear, legs and arms spread out like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man, panting like a hot, hot dog.

As the afternoon cools we come alive again and drive out to Sesriem Canyon. We walk along the narrow and wonderfully cool canyon floor, carved by the Tsachaub River. In some places the canyon is 30 m deep. In days of yore settlers drew water from the river, which is only wet a few months in the year, by tying six (ses) lengths (riems) of oxhide rope together – hence the name Sesriems.

Here are colours that ease your soul. Oranges, greys, beiges, yellows and greens. Colours of the earth, colours of organic things, colours of sandy and stony things. Tawny, taupe, amber, umber, ochre, fawn and fallow. Calming, soft, restful, earthy. And the endless, cloudless sky blushes with delicate nuances of rose, orange and blue.

So lovely is the desert nation Namibia which is the first of three countries on my itinerary for this 2010 trip to Africa.

In my mind’s eye the great red dunes in Sossusvlei have always held a special place. Wanting to see and be among them is my main reason for choosing Namibia as a destination. I want to breathe the hot and dusty desert, feel the grit of the sand and gaze on the graceful gemsbok.

With a couple of friends from Denmark, namely Birthe and Jørn, and my favourite guide in Africa, the incomparable Mike Scott of Khangela Safaris (http://www.khangela.com/), we head southwest from Windhoek towards Sossusvlei the day after we arrive in Namibia. On the way we see springbok, klipspringer, gemsbok, baboons and ostriches. We set up camp and listen in the darkness to the chirps of barking geckos and the yelps of black backed jackals. We gaze at the infinite night sky, a velvet blanket strewn with diamonds, and find the Southern Cross and Scorpio.

Next morning at 5:30 a.m. we head out for the highest dunes in the world – some reaching up to 325 m. The morning is chilly. We clamber up on the crest of the fine, soft, orange sand of Dune 54. With each struggling step forward I seem to slide backwards as much as I progress upwards. My friends are more fit than me and I pant and lag behind.

When we reach the top we drink our morning tea while watching the sunrise. We have a front row view of one of nature’s best movies. A simple pastime; a great joy. When I finish my tea, I find that the bottom of the metal mug is filled with what looks like the fine coffee grinds you typically find in the bottom of a cup of espresso coffee. This, however, is sand, and I’ve got it crunching between my teeth.

After the tea and the sunrise Mike and my friends make a mad dash down the dune, kicking up orange clouds of sand like frisky klipspringer. I make a more stately – or timid – descent back the way I came up.