Namibia ENG pt 3

Journey Notes

Arriving at Opuwo offers us the occasion for making some refuelling and food supply, and buying sugar, rice, commodities and other “presents” to bring to a Himba village: it is a population with ancestral customs, among the most ancient in the African continent. Closing your eyes, you feel to be carried back in the past: tribal dances, songs and colours unchanged along the centuries. In the middle of the night, the fire in he centre gives a magic touch to everything. Villages have few houses, mostly built with branches and dry mud, and having the goat pen in the middle.
Anyway colours are what strikes most in these people. A brown mixture covers skin and hair.
We are told that it is a preparation made of goat butter and a particular kind of soil, useful to keep parasites and insects away. It seems that they do not like washing themselves, maybe because of the lack of water in this region: particularly their hair never touch water all over their life!

Another very amusing occasion has been doing rafting across the rapids of Kunene river, at the northern border with Angola. Thanks to our guides’ smartness, we cross the frontier for a while before going back to our camping. We finis hour tour completely wet, but happy for the experience.

Etosha is a large nature park, well known all over the world for its faunistic variety. It is reported as one of the most beautiful African parks in the most famous guidebooks and it certainly does not fail! We have been lucky to see, even in the night, Zebras, elephants, giraffes, oryxes, kudues, gnues, rhinoceroes, ostrices, springboks, jackals, hyenas watering in a puddle at the moonlight.

It’s no use telling how stunning is looking at the Milky Way in these dark and cloudless barren lands. You should only… pay attention to the jackals! One evening, just outside my tent, I felt under observation and I suddenly turned my head aside, lighting up with the frontal torch: I realized that one jackal was only a couple of metres far from me and was staring at me with its wide-open eyes. In the fraction of a second when I looked away, it left with three raid fellows. It is a matter of fact that the animal was the most scared.
How striking is finding yourself swallowed by the most wild nature, among stars, animals and… a pleasant loneliness.
This is Namibia.

See you at the next story!

The First Part of this Travel
The Second Part of this Travel
Italian Namibia notes