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WorldWild Adventure’s 9 day safari exploring this vastly empty and beautiful country.
I was lucky enough to go one of these trips last June and cannot recommend it highly enough.
http://worldwildadventure.com/tours/namibia/
I have heard a rumble that they have been planning another and might have some places still. I meant to post these photos immediately after returning, but work got in the way and time passed.
We had a bit of an international mix of people on our trip. Jaimie, the expedition leader and co-founder, is based in British Columbia, Stuart, the second driver and medic/mechanic/logistician, is based in Wales, Stuart's dad was along on the trip, all the way from Brunei, we had a young lady from Cornwall, a French lady from Calgary, Canada, and an American couple from Seattle.
What follows are a bunch of my own photos. If you want to see better photos, I recommend Jamie's professional work in the WWA gallery:
http://worldwildadventure.com/galleries/namibia/
When I got back, remarkably, one of the first things people asked me was where is Namibia? Probably not a problem in this company! But just in case
the next country north of South Africa on the Atlantic side and is the second least populated country on earth, after Mongolia.
As a former German colony, it still seems to benefit from a certain Teutonic efficiency; for Africa things work very well, the road network is good with tarmac to get you across a lot of the country, violent crime isn’t a particular concern, and there is even remarkably good mobile phone coverage of the main routes and towns. So this is “Africa-lite”. The perfect place for a first (or second) visit to the continent.
A number of companies run bushcraft expeditions to Namibia, Bushcraft Expeditions, Wood Smoke and Woodlore are the ones I know off the top of my head.
Worldwild’s safari is different in that it is not primarily a bushcraft trip, this might make it seem less appealing for folk here, but don’t be hasty. This could (and should) make it much more appealing for non-bushcrafting partners who can otherwise veto plans for wild and woolly expeditions overseas. So not only is Namibia a gentle introduction to Africa, but the WorldWild trip is a gentle intro to bushcraft adventure. It went far enough into the wild that I thoroughly enjoyed it, but there were roof tents, camp chairs and tables, proper knives forks and plates, and most important of all, Jamie the expedition leader, was a fantastic cook. He even managed to produce a plate of Ferrero Roche to finish off a buffet lunch which had already included smoked mussels, miles from anywhere, in the shade of a baobab!
Our trip went up into Bushmanland by the Botswanan border, then west to tour Etosha. The following week the guides and remaining clients headed out to the big dunes, then up the coast into Himba country. While there wasn’t a lot of bushcraft instruction, there is no doubt that both weeks were adventures, way off the beaten path and out into real Africa.
Arrival:
Flying in to Windhoek via Johannesburg, we met up with Jamie and Stuart at the Roof of Africa hotel in Windhoek. First night was spent at the hotel with dinner just down the road at Joe’s Beer House. Visiting Joe’s is an event in itself! Over our Oryx Schnitzel, Kudu loins and mixed meat Bushman Sosaties, Stuart ran through a very thorough briefing on safety, proper hydration, navigation, camp routine, itinerary and the potential cultural and emotional aspects of spending time with the Bushmen.
Kick-Off:
An early but civilised start, packing gear into one of our two rented Hilux before setting off on the first 370 mile, 7.5hour leg of our safari.
En-route a brief stop at the local Spar shop. Who would believe that that little chain of local mini-marts is THE supermarket chain in Namibia. Not that you would really mistake this one for being in south Wales!
Stuart spoke the truth at the briefing when he said that all visitors go through the same pattern upon driving out from the city for the first time. Every creature standing by the side of the road, be it warthog, baboon or passing vulture is pointed at with great excitement amid calls to stop and scrambles for cameras; but by the time the trip is over it would take an elephant crossing the road to generate such excitement. Hard to imagine becoming blasé to African wildlife, but it happens
After a night at Roy's Rest Camp
Head east down an endless gravel track towards Grashoek Living History Village.
Bushmanland: - Grashoek
I could try to explain the set up of this special village, but it is better just to point to this site: http://www.lcfn.info/en/ju-hoansi/ju-hoansi-museum
We had the chance to follow some of the villagers on a short bush-walk. It was impossible not to notice how well suited to moving through the bush they were...
and how ill-suited us visitors were! LOL
We also had the chance to try our hands at making snare cord and bow strings from yucca leaf fibre, work on our own Bushman bows and then try our hand at archery.
There was also dancing, which we also joined in, much to the amusement of the villagers!
Bushmanland: Tsumkwe, Hunters Village, Nyae Nyae
From Grashoek its another 90 miles east to the little town of Tsumkwe, which is on a cross roads and boasts about 400m of tarmac in three directions. The petrol station/store protects its largely thorny and spiky ornamental planting from the freely roaming cattle with concertinaed razor wire...gotta love it!
One thing that the Bushmen of Grashoek can't do these days is go hunting, because although they might go with their traditional bows, there are, in their words, blacks who share the village, who would want the same rights but would hunt with dogs and guns, so hunting is prohibited for everyone. Our next destination was another but much more recently set up Living Culture Village, which being much more remote still allowed its villagers to hunt in the traditional manner.
The Living Hunters Village was a further 12 miles north from Tsumkwe up a deep sand road and we didn't get there till well after dark. Sadly I don't have any pictures of the site. Set up in similar lines to Grashoek it hd two chemical toilets, a couple of shower shelters (bring your own water and shower head) and a fire site.
The following day we went for a bush walk with three guides (whose names, to my shame, I cannot now recall.)
We got a bit of a trapping demo, got to sample one of the water bearing tubers and had a LOT of tracks pointed out. Well, one of them gave a demo of a leg trap while the younger guys gave a demo of lighting up a smoke with the hand-drill!
Under Stuart's instruction, the girls succeeded in lighting the evening's fire with the hand drill!!
The next day the plan was to drive right up to the edge of the Khaudom reserve, hike about 5km into the bush, see if we could avoid spoiling the Bushmen's hunting, then spend the night out under the stars. It didn't come as a surprise to me that we didn't see much in the way of wild life, African animals aren't stupid, and our caravan wasn't exactly stealthy. On the other hand the sandy ground and bush told quite a tale. There were so many tracks that our guides only pointed out and identified the largest and freshest; giraffe, kudu, roan, wildebeest, hyena, wild dog, leopard, and of course, elephant! Elephant tracks everywhere, and dung, and places they had dug, and smashed down trees.:yikes:.
When mid-day came around, the noise, clumsy white folks were all parked (not ungratefully
) under the shade of a small baobab while the hunters went out to see what they could find un-hindered!
When the guides came back though, it was with less than welcome news. Lion tracks, lots of them; crisscrossing the area. Not a good spot to camp out! So, we made a beeline back to the vehicles. This gave me a chance to marvel at the navigation of the guides. We had walked quite a way, meandering, before getting to our rest spot, but we took quite another, much shorter, route back to the trucks, and we hit them dead on.
I was lucky enough to go one of these trips last June and cannot recommend it highly enough.
http://worldwildadventure.com/tours/namibia/
I have heard a rumble that they have been planning another and might have some places still. I meant to post these photos immediately after returning, but work got in the way and time passed.
We had a bit of an international mix of people on our trip. Jaimie, the expedition leader and co-founder, is based in British Columbia, Stuart, the second driver and medic/mechanic/logistician, is based in Wales, Stuart's dad was along on the trip, all the way from Brunei, we had a young lady from Cornwall, a French lady from Calgary, Canada, and an American couple from Seattle.
What follows are a bunch of my own photos. If you want to see better photos, I recommend Jamie's professional work in the WWA gallery:
http://worldwildadventure.com/galleries/namibia/
When I got back, remarkably, one of the first things people asked me was where is Namibia? Probably not a problem in this company! But just in case


As a former German colony, it still seems to benefit from a certain Teutonic efficiency; for Africa things work very well, the road network is good with tarmac to get you across a lot of the country, violent crime isn’t a particular concern, and there is even remarkably good mobile phone coverage of the main routes and towns. So this is “Africa-lite”. The perfect place for a first (or second) visit to the continent.
A number of companies run bushcraft expeditions to Namibia, Bushcraft Expeditions, Wood Smoke and Woodlore are the ones I know off the top of my head.
Worldwild’s safari is different in that it is not primarily a bushcraft trip, this might make it seem less appealing for folk here, but don’t be hasty. This could (and should) make it much more appealing for non-bushcrafting partners who can otherwise veto plans for wild and woolly expeditions overseas. So not only is Namibia a gentle introduction to Africa, but the WorldWild trip is a gentle intro to bushcraft adventure. It went far enough into the wild that I thoroughly enjoyed it, but there were roof tents, camp chairs and tables, proper knives forks and plates, and most important of all, Jamie the expedition leader, was a fantastic cook. He even managed to produce a plate of Ferrero Roche to finish off a buffet lunch which had already included smoked mussels, miles from anywhere, in the shade of a baobab!
Our trip went up into Bushmanland by the Botswanan border, then west to tour Etosha. The following week the guides and remaining clients headed out to the big dunes, then up the coast into Himba country. While there wasn’t a lot of bushcraft instruction, there is no doubt that both weeks were adventures, way off the beaten path and out into real Africa.

Arrival:
Flying in to Windhoek via Johannesburg, we met up with Jamie and Stuart at the Roof of Africa hotel in Windhoek. First night was spent at the hotel with dinner just down the road at Joe’s Beer House. Visiting Joe’s is an event in itself! Over our Oryx Schnitzel, Kudu loins and mixed meat Bushman Sosaties, Stuart ran through a very thorough briefing on safety, proper hydration, navigation, camp routine, itinerary and the potential cultural and emotional aspects of spending time with the Bushmen.
Kick-Off:
An early but civilised start, packing gear into one of our two rented Hilux before setting off on the first 370 mile, 7.5hour leg of our safari.

En-route a brief stop at the local Spar shop. Who would believe that that little chain of local mini-marts is THE supermarket chain in Namibia. Not that you would really mistake this one for being in south Wales!

Stuart spoke the truth at the briefing when he said that all visitors go through the same pattern upon driving out from the city for the first time. Every creature standing by the side of the road, be it warthog, baboon or passing vulture is pointed at with great excitement amid calls to stop and scrambles for cameras; but by the time the trip is over it would take an elephant crossing the road to generate such excitement. Hard to imagine becoming blasé to African wildlife, but it happens

After a night at Roy's Rest Camp

Head east down an endless gravel track towards Grashoek Living History Village.

Bushmanland: - Grashoek
I could try to explain the set up of this special village, but it is better just to point to this site: http://www.lcfn.info/en/ju-hoansi/ju-hoansi-museum

We had the chance to follow some of the villagers on a short bush-walk. It was impossible not to notice how well suited to moving through the bush they were...

and how ill-suited us visitors were! LOL

We also had the chance to try our hands at making snare cord and bow strings from yucca leaf fibre, work on our own Bushman bows and then try our hand at archery.


There was also dancing, which we also joined in, much to the amusement of the villagers!

Bushmanland: Tsumkwe, Hunters Village, Nyae Nyae
From Grashoek its another 90 miles east to the little town of Tsumkwe, which is on a cross roads and boasts about 400m of tarmac in three directions. The petrol station/store protects its largely thorny and spiky ornamental planting from the freely roaming cattle with concertinaed razor wire...gotta love it!

One thing that the Bushmen of Grashoek can't do these days is go hunting, because although they might go with their traditional bows, there are, in their words, blacks who share the village, who would want the same rights but would hunt with dogs and guns, so hunting is prohibited for everyone. Our next destination was another but much more recently set up Living Culture Village, which being much more remote still allowed its villagers to hunt in the traditional manner.
The Living Hunters Village was a further 12 miles north from Tsumkwe up a deep sand road and we didn't get there till well after dark. Sadly I don't have any pictures of the site. Set up in similar lines to Grashoek it hd two chemical toilets, a couple of shower shelters (bring your own water and shower head) and a fire site.
The following day we went for a bush walk with three guides (whose names, to my shame, I cannot now recall.)

We got a bit of a trapping demo, got to sample one of the water bearing tubers and had a LOT of tracks pointed out. Well, one of them gave a demo of a leg trap while the younger guys gave a demo of lighting up a smoke with the hand-drill!



Under Stuart's instruction, the girls succeeded in lighting the evening's fire with the hand drill!!


The next day the plan was to drive right up to the edge of the Khaudom reserve, hike about 5km into the bush, see if we could avoid spoiling the Bushmen's hunting, then spend the night out under the stars. It didn't come as a surprise to me that we didn't see much in the way of wild life, African animals aren't stupid, and our caravan wasn't exactly stealthy. On the other hand the sandy ground and bush told quite a tale. There were so many tracks that our guides only pointed out and identified the largest and freshest; giraffe, kudu, roan, wildebeest, hyena, wild dog, leopard, and of course, elephant! Elephant tracks everywhere, and dung, and places they had dug, and smashed down trees.:yikes:.
When mid-day came around, the noise, clumsy white folks were all parked (not ungratefully



When the guides came back though, it was with less than welcome news. Lion tracks, lots of them; crisscrossing the area. Not a good spot to camp out! So, we made a beeline back to the vehicles. This gave me a chance to marvel at the navigation of the guides. We had walked quite a way, meandering, before getting to our rest spot, but we took quite another, much shorter, route back to the trucks, and we hit them dead on.
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