To begin, I took a shared taxi from Outapi to Oshakati, the major city in the north. From Oshakati it is possible to hitchhike for free, but that's more successful if you're a pretty female volunteer which, alas, I am not. The other way is to take a combi (a passenger van, usually made by VW, seating about 14-18) or small minibus (seating 20-30).
Finding a minibus or combi is easy, but getting the vehicle to leave the hike point is hard. When I arrived, about a dozen men surrounded me shouting, “Windhoek? Walvis? Tsumeb?” Each of these guys was working for a different minibus. You can haggle with these guys a little bit, but price is less important than getting a good look inside the van to see how full it is. See, the buses only leave when they are full. Once you are sitting in a combi, it might be an hour or three before it actually leaves. One friend got in a combi at 8:30am and didn’t leave until 12:30pm. Sometimes, the combi drivers even pay people to sit inside to make it look full!
In my case, I was pretty lucky. We drove around the hike point for awhile, collecting a few more passengers. One guy kept jumping out to buy things at the nearby open market. After only an hour, our driver decided it was time to go, and we were not overcrowded like usual. Then we headed south on the one tar road toward Windhoek. You can see the route on the map below.
Heading south, what I was surprised by how ‘big’ the towns of Tsumeb, Otavi, and Otjiwarongo were. When we first drove north after training, they seemed like small towns, the sort that make you slow down for two minutes when driving on a two-lane country road. Compared to the north, however, these towns were well-developed metropolitan areas with large stores, paved side streets, and irrigated crops in the surrounding countryside. Unlike the cement box houses of the north, there were a few buildings with interesting architectural elements, like curves or arches. Another thing that surprised me was how, between the towns, there was nothing. Nada. Shrubs, small trees, & fences. Once or twice, we drove for 30 or 40 minutes without passing any small villages. In the north, there are small clusters of cuca shops and houses dotting the landscape. During a 10 mile run, I can pass by four different villages.
From Windhoek, I caught a ride all the way to Cape Town with a Peace Corps friend and his colleague, Mr. Galand. Mr. Galand is a non-white South African who teaches with Jason. During our drive, he showed a characteristic African endurance of discomfort and hunger. On the second day of our drive, he drove for 12 hours straight on a packet of crackers.
The road south from Windhoek was nearly 1,000 miles straight to Cape Town. South of Windhoek, the landscape turned bleaker. Grasses and small trees gave way to sparse, scrubby bushes on a wide, flat plain. Sun-baked hills rose in the distance. The few towns were based around natural springs, because there is never enough rain to have permanent rivers. Physically, this area looked as desolate and arid as southern Utah or Nevada.
The towns were different than those in the north, because the southern part of Namibia more fully experienced the ravages of apartheid. Each city that we passed had both a “town” and a “location.” These euphemisms refer to white and non-white areas, respectively. Often, the main road divided the two. The towns were situated on the better land with more trees, and there were paved roads, many shops, and nice houses. The locations were just the opposite: few trees to provide shade from unrelenting sun, sand roads, and houses that were small boxes made from cement bricks or cobbled together with pieces of corrugated metal. Seeing the stark divisions between rich and poor in the areas affected by apartheid, I appreciated Ovamboland much more.
Once we crossed the border, the first several hundred miles of South Africa looked just Namibia: dry, mountainous, and desolate, with little human or animal habitation. Then, as we neared a perennial river in a mountain valley, suddenly there was green everywhere! Using irrigation, the Afrikaners have grown a wealth of fruits and other crops. This shock of green freshened our eyes and the air after 1000 miles of arid, scrubby pastureland. Officially, the southeastern edge of South Africa has what is called a “Mediterranean climate.” It’s not lush like a rain forest, but it has enough rainfall to create rivers and irrigate crops. As a result, citrus farming and wine cultivation are both huge industries. For me, however, just seeing all the green made me feel at ease!
2 comments:
Road trip, African style - depending a lot on others - subject to circumstances of all kinds - seems pretty differrent from getting in the car in the US for a road trip.
Your bus ride reminded me of the neverending, sometimes never-starting, rides I took in Sri Lanka. My favorite one was when the bus stopped at a farm and we waited while the enitre top of the bus was loaded with pineapples. Thousands of them. By hand. One by one.
Makes the Chinatown shuttle seem like first class. But they always make for interesting trips.
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