Namibia - A Bountiful Harvest Awaits the Adventure Traveler
Namibia - A Bountiful Harvest Awaits the Adventure Traveler
Namibia is a largely arid country of stark rough-hewn beauty.
The most vivid images are those of a haunting technicolor
landscape of swirling orange dunes, shimmering mirages and
treacherous dust devils. The apparent desolation is deceptive
and plant and animal life and even man has adapted to this
environment. The country is designed almost specially with the
active and adventure seeker in mind. Timeless deserts, thorn
bush savanna, desolate wind ravaged coastlines, majestic
canyons, and sun-baked saltpans are the bounty that awaits the
traveler.
Namibia’s top draw is the Etosha National Park, rated as one of
Africa’s finest game sanctuaries. The birding experience in the
country is truly superior. On a
activities you can indulge in the unsurpassable physical
environment is truly impressive. Ballooning over the desert,
skydiving over land and sea, paragliding, whitewater rafting and
sand skiing along coastal dunes are good activities for
starters. More fun games to pick from include abseiling - that
most spectacular of rock sports, coastal and fresh water
angling, desert camel riding, scuba diving, 4×4 desert runs,
hiking and mountaineering.
Namibia has four distinct geographical regions. In the north is
Etosha Pan, a great area for wildlife and heart of Etosha
National Park. The slender Caprivi Strip is nested between
Zambia and Botswana and is a wet area of woodland blessed with a
few rivers. Along the coast is the Namib Desert, which at the
age of 80 million years old, is said to be the world’s oldest
desert. At the coast, the icy cold Atlantic meets the blazing
African desert, resulting in dense fogs. The well-watered
central plateau runs north to south, and carries rugged
mountains, magnificent canyons, rocky outcrops and expansive
plains.
Namibia, one and half times the size of France, is very sparsely
inhabited and carries only 1.8 million souls. The people are as
unique as the land they live on. The most intriguing are the
San, otherwise known as Bushmen. These most hardy of people have
a highly advanced knowledge of their environment. It is a
marvelous thing how well they are adapted to their difficult
habitat. Just pause and think that these are the only people in
the world who live with no permanent access to water. In the
Kalahari Desert, one of their domiciles, surface water is not to
be found. Tubers, melons, and other water bearing plants as well
as underground sip wells supply their water requirements.
In Namibia today, Bushmen number about 50,000. Historians
estimate that they have lived, mostly as hunters and gatherers,
for at least 25,000 years in these parts of the world. Bushmen
speak in a peculiar click language and are very gifted in the
arts of storytelling, mimicry, and dance. Namibia’s other
people, who are indigenous to the continent, are mostly of Bantu
origin. They are thought to have arrived from western Africa
from about 2,400 years ago. The African groups include the
Owambo, Kavango, Caprivians, Herero, Himba, Damara, Nama and
Tswana.
The Africans aside, other groups comprise about 15% of the
population and have played an important role in the emergence of
the modern nation. White Namibians amount to about 120,00 and
are mainly of German and Afrikaner heritage. Germans arrived in
significant numbers after 1884 when Bismarck declared the
country a German Protectorate. Afrikaners, white farmers of
Dutch origin, moved north from their Cape settlements,
especially after the Dutch Cape Colony was ceded to the British
in 1806. This strongly independent people, whose ancestors had
lived in the Cape from 1652 resented British control.
Two other distinct groups complete the spectrum of Namibia’s
people - Basters and Coloureds. Coloured in Namibia and southern
Africa refers to people of mixed racial heritage, black- white
for example. They have a separate identity and culture. This
makes sense considering that Namibia was run by South Africa
after the First World War. Even in pre-Apartheid South Africa,
racial classification was a fine art. The Afrikaans-speaking
Basters, descended from Hottentot women and Dutch settlers of
the Cape. Alienated from both white and black communities, they
trekked northwards, finally founding their own town Rehoboth, in
1871. Baster is actually derived from “bastard”, but it is not
derogatory, and the Basters are indeed proud of it.
Namibia’s barren and unwelcoming coastlines served as a natural
deterrent to the ambitions of European explorers. That was until
1884 when the German merchant Adolf Luderitz established a
permanent settlement between the Namib Desert and the Atlantic
seaboard that afterwards took his name. Bismarck subsequently
declared the territory covered by Namibia a German colony and
named it S