Welcome to Namibia

To Grunau, Namibia

We seemed to have figured out the sleeping accommodations last night, and, as a result, all slept well, warm and snug in the super dark tents. As soon as breakfast was done, the kids ran off towards the light house to play in the sand -- with millipedes -- while Meg and I finished packing up.

Despite sleeping well in the ground tent, I've decided it's a total pain in the butt to set up. Hilariously, the tent bag claims set up in 30 seconds!  Yeah, right! By the time you unstrap and haul down the 30lb monstrosity, unpack, unroll, prop up, and stake down the tent, you've already spent 20 minutes. Then, throw on the rain fly, stake down the poles, unpack the cots, which, by the way, don't quite fit in the tent with all their pieces installed and… I know, I know... my life is very hard.

In any event, the morning was beautifully clear. We checked with a couple people in town to confirm that we could drive through the Namaqua park to get back to the paved road. As we went along through the dry Death-Valley-like landscape, the purple and yellow wild flowers became more and more abundant.

Soon into the drive, we came across our first wildlife, a cute, slow moving tortoise. He was soon followed by a dozen or so distant Oryx. How cool. I guess we really are in Africa.

It did end up taking a while at the border -- passports, birth certificates, paperwork -- but then, just like that, we were officially in Namibia!  There is no doubt about it, this is an incredibly dry, arid place, and, so far, with very few people to boot. We were told on numerous occasions to avoid driving at night, so, as usual, we were racing the sun to beat the 6:30 sunset. As a result, we abandoned the thought of taking the gravel road to Ai-Ais -- near Fish River Canyon -- and instead stuck to the paved road aiming for the first town on the map, Grunau.

Given our lack of cell phone service, we were definitely flying blind a little more than usual. A second after pulling up in front of the border gate, my phone dinged with a “Welcome to Namibia” text message from T-Mobile. We have, without fail, received a T-Mobile message announcing service every time we've entered a new country. In this case, though, normal T-Mobile service doesn't apply, so I actually called the toll free number to figure out what the data rate would be. The nice man from Texas informed us that the going rate would be $15 per megabyte. Hmm, that translates to $15,000 per gigabyte! As a result, we are permanently in Airplane Mode until we find Namibian SIM cards.

As we entered Grunau, we spotted a sign for camping so turned down the dirt road to the mostly empty Grunau Campground. It was an orderly place with a big dirt area for camping, a few trees, clean bathrooms, and a restaurant. The cute, tiny, camp dog was an added bonus for Dex and Kylie. We conveniently convinced ourselves that our food supplies would last a lot longer by eating in the restaurant. The mural on the restaurant wall read, “A true test of character isn't how you are on your best day, but how you act on your worst day.”  Hear, hear. I'll drink to that.