Namibia 2009—Introduction
We just came back from a wonderful trip to Namibia. It is our second trip to Africa. There were fewer animals on this trip, but in places the landscape was more stunning (rolling hills, mountains and sand dunes). Namibia is in Southern Africa on the west coast.
We had a nice size group, 12 including the guides. It didn’t take long for everyone to get to know each other. We all seemed to have the same love of nature, open space and learning. Sanjayan and David Banks were our trip leaders from The Nature Conservancy (they are in the front row). Chris Bakkes was our expedition leader. He works for Natural Habitat Adventures and guides all kinds of trips and has traveled all over Africa (he’s in the top row, left side).
The trip was put together by The Nature Conservancy. They wanted to show off some of the conservation work that is being done in Africa and spread the word about what they still have left to do (a lot). If you are interested in learning more about the programs there are links in the left sidebar to the various sites we visited and the organizations that are doing the work.
A Closer Look
Central to this trip was the chance to visit one of TNC’s first projects in Africa – aiding the creation and management of a “People’s Park” in the Kunene region. Home to the world’s last remaining wild black rhinos, the park would secure protection for the rhinos and form a wildlife corridor between the vast sand dunes of the Skeleton Coast and the massive salt flats of the Etosha Game Reserve. The resulting 15 million acre protected area would be one of the largest complexes in the world.
After thirty-five hours of travelling from California, you can be forgiven for thinking you’ve been dropped into Utah or Arizona – black basalt cliffs and iron oxide-stained cliffs – until the elephant pulling leaves from the Mopani jolts you halfway around the world. The Kunene conservancy in particular, with its endless vistas of golden grass and sculpted buttes, registers somewhere deep in our brain as home – the place we all came from – out of Africa.
More than any TNC project I’ve visited, this one shows why the US model – buy land, install conservation easement, sell land, repeat – doesn’t work in places like Africa. You couldn’t buy the land even if you wanted to. The Namibian government has instituted a conservancy program where traditional peoples can manage the wildlife and land use. The boundaries, usage model, management and income sharing must be determined by the local stakeholders – the Herero, Himba and Damara in the Kunene region. The hope is that the Kunene Conservancy, which is currently being managed as an exclusive concession by Wilderness Safaris, will be permanently protected through a park designation. This is by no means an easy sell.
My belief has always been that we have an a priori obligation to leave at least some of the planet’s great places unadulterated. That said, I understand that not everyone feels this way, so I always hope to find other arguments for protecting these remarkable spots. Any analysis, of course, must start by understanding the arguments against the park. For a thousand years(?), nomadic people have used this land for grazing their cattle and goats, following the desultory path of the rains to keep them fed. While they will sporadically use wildlife as food, the wildlife eats grass that could otherwise be used for grazing. Wild black rhinos are solitary and tremendously skittish – startle them and they will run, and run, and run. Goats, cattle or people startle the rhinos, so within a given area you can either have wild rhinos or people. So what good are rhinos to the Himba? Clearly this is the right place to insert an ecotourism argument. Tourists can come to see the black rhinos in Kunene, or the rhinos can be “exported” to other conservancies to support their ecotourism safaris . The problem with this argument, for me, is that you can’t get close to a wild black rhino without sending it racing towards the horizon – this is in contrast to (black and white) rhinos in Etosha and other parks that are habituated to humans and Land Rovers, allowing you the up-close-and-personal experience. Are there enough people that want to see the black rhino in its “true” setting? I don’t know; I hope so. First, you have to realize that seeing wildlife in game parks is just a step up the zoo hierarchy: San Diego Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Etosha Game Park, the wild. While I’m not a rhino nut, I am a dolphin nut, and it’s been important to me to see wild dolphins – captive dolphins just don’t cut it for me. Maybe we have to think about places like the Kunene the same way we think about the deep blue, the ocean away from the coast. Few of us visit, but the shoreline fish, birds and dolphins that we see every day can’t exist without it. Is this true about the Kunene? I’m not sure, but is it worth the gamble?—Scott
We started our adventure on Wednesady, July 22 in San Diego. We flew to Atlanta and then to Johannesburg. The flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg is about 16 hours. We spent Thursday night in Johannesburg at a hotel right across the street from the airport and flew out Friday morning to Windhoek (the capital of Namibia). We arrived a day early so that we could try to work out the travel kinks, straighten out our backs, and try to get onto the local time in a relaxed fashion.
We saw baboons along the road on the drive in from the airport. They were a much darker color than the baboons that we saw in South Africa. Some of the females had young babies clinging to them. After we got settled at the Elegant Guest House we were thrilled to run into Sanjayan and David. We joined them for dinner that night and met some people that work for Save the Rhino Trust. Our first official stop on the trip was to go to see their program at Rhino Desert Camp, so it was fun to hear about the place before we saw anything.
On Saturday we got in some walking and checked out some of the galleries in Windhoek before the rest of the group arrived. We met up with everyone at an orientation dinner at Joe’s Bar in Windhoek. It is a local restaurant that served local game like kudu and zebra. I don’t think anyone tried the zebra. Scott and I had the kingklip fish – it was excellent.
We are all eager to get started on what promises to be a great adventure!
The map below shows our route starting in Wyndhoek. Our first stop was Rhino Desert Camp. Then we flew to Ongava Tented Camp and Etosha. Last stop was Serra Cafema Camp on the border of Namibia and Angola. It took two flights to Wyndhoek, one to Johannesburg, one to Atlanta, and a final flight to get back to San Diego!
