Flying Safari - Namibia
Written by Amanda Jones
"I'm really relieved you're not enormous," my bush pilot said, by way of introduction.
"When I heard you were from the US, I was afraid you'd fill the plane by yourself."
I shrugged. I hear this the world over, witticisms on American physiognomy. Dwarfed by jets, we were sitting at the end of the runway at Windhoek International airport in a six-seater Cessna Centurion. My pilot was Stefan van Wyk, owner of Bush Pilots Namibia, a company that operates flying safaris all over southern Africa. He and I were to spend the next four days together while he showed me the lesser-known parts of Namibia.
Stefan was younger than I'd expected, with the fair coloring and sanguine complexion of the Dutch Afrikaans. He was the sort of man Hemingway called a White Hunter; tough guys who have no fear and could chop off their own leg if necessary. But now that shooting animals is no longer considered so sportsmanly, these men have turned to other vocations, like ecotourism.
"Hell, you're not a vegetarian are you?" Stefan said, as if he were asking if I carried the Ebola virus. These White Hunters are big carnivores, and I had already assumed the coolers in back would contain staggering quantities of sausage and steak. I hoped he'd remembered to pack the odd tomato.
"No. Good. Okay, let's go."
He radioed the tower and we took off, lifting into the cobalt sky, arching away from the white-hot African sun.
I'd traveled in Africa several times before, and somehow it had always involved arduous journeys by four-wheel-drive. This time, I'd wanted something that smacked of the adventurous spirit of Karen Blixen, Beryl Markham and Elspeth Huxley, and each of these women had concluded that light aircraft was the only sensible means of transport over Africa's vastness.
We flew southwest towards the immense Namib Desert, and within two hours we'd covered a distance that would have taken a torturous week overland. Skimming above the ground afforded total understanding of the country below, a different perspective from the piecemeal information gathered when traveling by road.
The Namib spread in front of us; a commanding, stark wilderness that changed form every hundred miles. I am always grateful see nature like this, overflowing and intact. There is nothing humans want from this desert, so it is left in peace to evolve, with only the howling ocean winds to shape it. Stefan dropped the plane to skim close to the molded dunes, our shadow running before us like a fleeing beast.
The dunes ended abruptly at the sea, and we banked north and flew 100 feet over the breaking waves. The coastline was spectacular, empty but for a sheath of mist.
"This is the Forbidden Area," Stefan explained. "You can't go in, it's a mine. They find diamonds just lying about on the sand."
As we flew over Sandwich Bay and towards Swakopmund, I asked Stefan about himself.
"I grew up on a farm bordering the Kalahari Desert. After the army (Namibia previously had mandatory military service), I went to live with the Bushmen in the wild for a year," (of Gods Must Be Crazy fame).
"You speak Ju/hoansi?" I asked.
"Barely." Stefan said.
Ju/hoansi, the Bushman language is said to be one of the world's most difficult tongues to learn and involves clicking inflections almost impossible for white man's tongue.
"You spent a year with people you couldn't speak to?"
"Well, we hunted in silence most of the time. There's a lot that can be said in silence."
Stefan was a true product of the veldt. I liked him. His smile was genuine and I realized the unvarnished image that he'd me with was actually purity. He said what he thought, did what he said, and expected others to do the same.
The conversation turned to Namibia's history. It is a relatively new country, having only achieved independence from South Africa in 1990 after twenty-five years of guerrilla war. It was previously known as South West Africa, and South Africa's reluctance to relinquish it probably had something to do with those diamonds that lay around on the sand. Namibia is the world's richest source of these gems.
The earliest inhabitants of Namibia were the nomadic San, or the Bushmen, followed by a variety of other tribes who were either displaced or integrated with each other. The first Europeans to reach its solitary shores were Portuguese mariners. The Dutch were next, and shortly on their heels came the German and British hunters and missionaries. In the 1880s, the Germans hastily made the country a German "Protectorate." They formed the deadly Deutsche Schutzruppe "peace keeping regiment" to quell the tribes, eventually annihilating 75% of the Herero and Nama peoples. Perhaps the most horrifying shame is that until the early 1900's, this government sold permits for the sport killing of Bushmen. Farmers considered them pests and hunters were paid when they surrendered a pair of ears as proof of death. The Germans held Namibia until the First World War, at which time South Africa, with the aid of the allies, picked up the colonial reins.
At Swakopmund, a resort town, we refueled and ate lunch before heading north again, flying over beaches blackened with tens-of-thousands of sunning seals, on up the Skeleton Coast, named after the ill-fated ships whose carcasses rot on the beaches.
Two hours flying-time out of Swakopmund, we reached the dry Hoanib River and turned northeast into Kaokoland. The land changed instantly, transforming from ocean and desert into dramatic mountain ranges and purple-shaded valleys. Dry riverbeds veined the ancient land below and the earth looked beaten and hot. Desert zebra, springbok, oryx, giraffe and ostrich scattered under the plane like buckshot.
Further north, signs of water and then human life appeared. Kaokoland is Himba country, the statuesque tribe of nomads that still live as they have done since their arrival here in the 16th century. There are still Himba people living in these mountains who have never had contact with the white world.
There is a permanent camp in the Purros Valley where tourists can sleep in safari tents. But I had said I wanted adventure and Stefan had taken me at my word.
"We're going to a place I don't take most people, especially you lot."
"Americans," he said with certainty, "like to sleep in beds."
About thirty kilometers east of Purros, we landed in a remote valley ringed by jagged mountains and carpeted with loaf-sized rocks. There was an abandoned Himba village, a landing strip that Stefan and some Himba men had cleared, and a river that now flowed for only the second time in thirteen years. There was no shade on the valley floor and the temperature was in the mid-eighties. It was spectacular.
At sundown, Stefan spread a tablecloth over the wing of the plane, lit a fire, erected two stools and uncorked a bottle of good South African wine. Apparently there were some essentials he hadn't forgotten during his time with the Bushmen. The cooler spawned the expected poundage of red meat, but also salads and vegetables.
"This bush is my home," Stefan told me over dinner. "When I'm around more than fifty people, I get nervous."
Shortly after, he mentioned he had been invited to visit New York City and was seriously considering it. "Ever heard the expression ‘Baptism by fire'?" I asked.
While I was busy wondering at the image of Stefan in Times Square, fate saw fit to send me my own, Africa-style, baptism by fire. I glanced down and saw a long shape slither between my sandaled feet.
Nah, I thought, couldn't be, aware that false alarms of this nature don't go over big with the White Hunter set.
But the apparition slid towards the fire.
"That wouldn't be a snake would it?" I asked with the right mixture of nonchalance and bush savvy.
Stefan jumped up, grabbed a flashlight and followed the shadow.
"My God, it is. It's a bloody night adder."
"Really," I said, cool as a cucumber. "Deadly?"
"Well, just put it this way, if you'd gotten hit and you were alone, you'd find a shady tree so you're not too stinky when they finally find you. We'll have to kill it." He sounded truly sorry. "Wouldn't want him in your sleeping bag."
I guess we wouldn't now, would we.
With the soul of the murdered snake hovering over us, we spread our sleeping bags under the wing of the plane and slept until dawn pushed heat up the valley.
We took off early, flying high this time so not to stress the animals below. Ahead, fingers of desert overlapped gravel plains and pale grasslands, and remnants of red quartz sand curved into the base of towering mountains.
Reaching the Kunene River, Namibia's border with Angola, we headed east, flying low above it. Our destination was Epupa Falls, which, from the air, was a paradisiacal oasis. The water pooled and splayed before plunging into several rocky ravines. Tortured baobab trees grew right out of the rock and the river was fringed with shining grasses and fan palms.
As we landed on a grass airstrip, a truck pulled up to meet us.
"You're in luck," Stefan said, "you get a bed tonight."
Omarunga is a permanent guest camp at Epupa, built on the banks of the Kunene. The tents have beds and sheets, with a washbasin and hot shower suspended from a tree outside. It was private and comfortable without losing the wilderness feel.
"Up for a swim?" Stefan asked after lunch.
I couldn't tell if he was joking. The Kunene is infested with crocodiles-the man-eating variety, and the books warn against getting too close to its banks let alone submersion.
"Croc's can't swim through rapids," he scoffed, so I traipsed after him into a swimming hole above the falls.
At dinner, we met Pete, a Namibian helicopter pilot under contract for the United Nations. He flew de-mining teams through Angola in a heroic attempt to rid that country of its estimated 20-30 million remaining landmines. When I told him of our swim, his eyebrows arched.
"Love, you're damned lucky. I dunno which is more dangerous, a dip in the Kunene or huntin' mines."
The following day we climbed into the camp truck and four-wheeled it to a Himba village.
As nomads, the Himba live in extended family groups, with about five or six small huts. Their village consisted of the circular kraals we had seen from the air-fences made of sticks and dried leaves-and domed dwellings made of saplings plastered with a mixture of cow dung and mud. They move only once a year or so, following the rains, and will return to an abandoned village years later.
The Himba were welcoming, taking the bag of tobacco, maize-meal and sugar we had brought as gifts with a distinguished nod of gratitude. The men wore nothing but a softened sheepskin apron in the front and a thin piece of cloth slung low across their buttocks. The married men wore head wraps while the unmarried boys had shaven heads but for a long braid which sprouted from the crown. Around their necks were bulky collars, put on as children and never removed.
One man took my hand, turned to Stefan and asked if I was his wife. A boy from the camp translated into English.
"Yes," Stefan replied, before I could open my mouth.
"Pity," the young Himba man apparently said, "I'd like to try a white wife. She looks like a boiled chicken."
The men all had a hearty, cross-cultural belly laugh at this. I walked off to find the women.
I found some of them pounding roots with rocks and another spreading dung on a new hut. It should be noted that the men had been sitting in the shade of a tree staring at the ground when we arrived.
The women's long limbs shone red in the sunlight and they smelled of desert plants, smoke and mildly rancid fat. Himba women never wash, they cover their bodies with butterfat pigmented with oxidized rock and cleanse themselves by crouching over aromatic herb-fired smoke. Their torsos were bare; they wore only a sheepskin skirt and belt heavily encrusted with ostrich-egg beads and metal. On one arm they wore coils of copper reaching almost to the elbow, and their ankles were gripped in spirals of gunmetal. Between their breasts hung a large white shell, a prized possession, and their necks were weighted with heavy collars. The married women had clippings of their brothers' hair added to the end of their own to create dreadlocks. On top of these perched a narrow hat of dried goat fur. They were a magnificent and imposing sight.
We stayed with the Himba until the men actually rose to do their single task- herding the goats into kraals for the night. Considering a dinner of dried goat meat and soured milk sounded even less appealing than sausage, we took our leave and drove to a hilltop for sundowners, the colonial cocktail hour where you drive until you can see the horizon, pull out some chairs and a cooler, and stay there drinking until well after dark.
The following morning we flew southeast, towards Bushmanland in the Kalahari Desert, a vast, scrubby plain dotted with camelthorns and umbrella acacias. We were heading towards the Harnas Wild Animal Rehabilitation and Care Center, a farm that shelters animals that would otherwise be shot or left to die in the wild.
As we landed on the farm's airstrip, a striking young woman with a blond ponytail and sun-darkened skin jumped out of a jeep, a baby baboon clinging to her neck. Her eyes were a color I had never before seen in a human-auburn when the sun stuck them. This was Marlice, the 21-year-old daughter of the farm's owners, Nick and Mariet van der Merwe.
Harnas was started 18 years ago when the van der Merwe's traded a loaf of bread to rescue a vervet monkey. Unwittingly, this established them as the local orphanage for wounded and neglected wild animals. Today they house 22 species, including lion, leopard, cheetah, baboon, caracal, bat-eared fox, and crocodile.
As we entered the farmhouse gate, childhood memories of Born Free came back. There on the manicured lawn were five lion cubs tumbling around with a pack of tiny dogs.
And when we entered the house, Marlice darted for the living room chiding, "Oh Goeters, naughty boy. Out!" A fully-grown cheetah slid sheepishly off the leather couch and stalked toward the door, brushing my hip as he passed.
"He ruins the cushions," she lamented.
"Imagine," I said, nodding sympathetically.
Marlice grew up with this cheetah sleeping in her bed, and instead of playing with dolls, she bathed and bottle-fed countless lion cubs, leopards and baboons.
"They're here because their mothers abandoned them or humans made them orphans," she said, "They just wouldn't make it in the wild."
Although they now have 38 big cats which consume hundreds of dollars of meat a day, the center won't refuse an animal, aware that it would likely end up moth-eaten and glass-eyed in some trophy hunter's den. To help feed their menagerie, the van der Merwe's have built overnight bungalows for paying guests.
Marlice disappeared into the back, returning with twin baboons clutching her calves and a baby leopard over each shoulder. She held one out for me. It lay in my arms, raking soft claws through my hair. It had sea-gray eyes, golden fur and miniature spots.
Leopards are intelligent animals. So intelligent that they make themselves scarce around humans, and it's rare to see them in the wild. But because they prey on cattle, African leopards are frequently hunted and killed by farmers. The van der Merwe's will take these animals if the farmers agree to capture instead of slaughter them. However, male leopards will kill young born in captivity, and so the babies must be taken from the mother soon after birth.
After lunch, I walked out to face the lion cubs, having been warned that they are cute, sure, but they are predators-in-training. Three of them were eight months old and their teeth and claws were well on the way to maturity. They galloped up, launched a flying tackle and brought me to my knees. One pinned me to the ground and began chewing on my thigh while another had my bicep in his mouth. For them, this is gentle play. For us, well, imagine a medium-sized Labrador, attach ice-pick-sharp claws to paws the size of a bread plate. Add teeth that are about twice as long as the labs and a mouth that opens twice the width. But who could resist those honeyed eyes?
At five o'clock, I accompanied the team to feed the animals. Her hands covered in blood, Marlice walked inside a compound containing a fully-grown male lion and his companion, a large Rottweiler dog.
"Mufasa," she crooned as if she was talking to a kitten.
"Come on baby, it's dinner time."
Mufasa, the lion, bounded up to her and nuzzled her waist with his enormous head, chucking a giant paw towards the bucket of meat.
"Do you want to come in?" Marlice asked as I struggled to take photos of Mufasa through the fence.
"He may try and have a go at you," she warned after I was locked inside, "he doesn't really like strangers."
"I see," I paused. "And what does having a go entail?"
She laughed, "Don't worry, a lion usually warns before it attacks. But never run. Back off and stand your ground. You run, you're dead."
Fortunately Mufasa was occupied ripping hunks off his kudu hindquarter, and noticed me distractedly.
In theory, Marlice is risking her life every time she plays with her "baby." Lions raised by hand are actually more dangerous than those in the wild, having lost their natural fear of humans. They don't know our frailty, and there are many stories of besotted owners anthropomorphizing their "pets" to such a degree that they forget their power. Just the week before, a man had been killed near my camp in South Africa. Insanely, he had tried to step between his two "tame" adolescent male lions to stop them fighting.
Over the next few days, I bottle-fed a baby leopard, cradled a tiny baboon, played chicken with a cheetah cub, wrestled with Goeters, got mauled by enchanting lion cubs and watched how Jack Russell Terriers avoided the same fate. Early on my final morning, I left reluctantly and took my last flight in the Cessna, landing in Windhoek just in time to catch my plane home.
After my return, I went to a genteel dinner party in Manhattan and was seated beside a woman of gigantic proportions who, I also noticed, was a vegetarian.
"What happened to you?" she asked, pointing to the oozing scratches that raked across the back of my hand.
"Oh those," I replied, staring at her milky white, manicured digits. "A lion, actually."