London Airport

We arrived home on Friday and did a load laundry, spent the day on Saturday running around with final errands and then had dinner with our friends from WWF and IRDNC.  On Sunday my friend Ilana took us to the Windhoek Airport and we caught our flight to Jo-burg.  Several hours in Jo-burg, an overnight flight to London and here we are, waiting for our final flight to Denver. 

I can’t believe I’ll be back at work on Tuesday!  We are so grateful to the generosity of people in Namibia, both personal friends and work colleagues.  And, we are so thankful for our friends and family back in the United States.  Amazing thanks to Erin and Josh for keeping Finn, for Erica and Jay for helping us find a new look for a new place to live, to DGS and UC Denver for allowing Doug and I to take this time in Namibia, and of course to our families who are tireless cheerleaders for our adventures. 

Can’t wait to have happy hour and share our adventures when we get home. 

Kunene

Doug and I had the opportunity to take one final trip before leaving for home during the first week in June.  We travelled up to the North of the country to the Kunene region which is populated by the mainly Herrero and Himba people.  The landscape was somewhat similar to Moab, Utah and completely breathtaking. 

On Saturday we drove to Wederslend (which means “World’s End”) which is an old farm that is now the property of IRDNC (this is the nature conservation organization that Doug has worked in partnership with since he’s been in Namibia).  We were in for a treat as the founders of the organization Garth Smith Owens and Margie Jacobsen (who are now officially retired) were at the camp and we had the opportunity to spend some time with them.  In addition, on Sunday we hiked the Wederslend Mountain –we started out around 9AM and returned around 3PM.  The mountain was tough with lots of rocks and the last 45 minutes of the hike included many, many stingy nettles!  Nettles are brutal.  We eventually scrambled to the top and what a view---a pic here of the mountain:

We took off of Monday with an old land rover and the Wederslend mechanic—Alpheus—as our driver and then spent the next five days visiting the conservancies in the area so that Doug could give presentations on solar technology and camping at the conservancy campsites.  We visited five conservancies including Torrah, Annabeb, Puros, Orumpembe, and Sessfonetein and drove all the way up to Ontavi which is quite close to the Angolan border.  We saw incredible landscape, and were able to see many of the traditional Himba villages where communities still live in relative seclusion from the rest of the world.  They are really beautiful people.  We arrived on Thursday in Opuwa the capitol of the Himba community—imagine visiting the grocery store and standing in line with a Himba women smeared in Ochre and in traditional dress.  It was an eye opening experience and certainly left me wanting to understand more about this special community.

We drove back to Windhoek on Friday and were able to escape a flat tire (we got one on the way there).  A  VW Polo was not meant to drive on the majority of roads in Namibia.   We are happy to think about returning home on Sunday but certainly grateful for the time we spent here.

 Doug in Puros

 Alpheus between Puros and Ontavi fixing our brakes!

 Hiking up to Lodge in Ontavi

 View from the top of the lodge

 Himba woman pumping gas

Desert elephants, climbing the cliffs