Mumbai

In typical Indian fashion we arrived late in the evening in Mumbai, and our one checked bag had not made our connecting flight from Paris (I guess a long connection is just as dangerous as a short connection for losing luggage). After some strange customs formalities regarding the missing bag, we were now in India. There was bumper to bumper traffic at 1am in Mumbai, perhaps partially due to Ramadan, but probably just generally the way things are. It was hot and humid all of the time in Mumbai.

We spent several nights there and were led around town by Rafique Baghdadhi, a Hindi film critic who writes for an Indian economic magazine in Mumbai. It was sort of a friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing. Rafique showed us all around town, and familiarized us with the joys of drinking at the Press Club, and eating Mughlai (muslim, non-veg) cuisine in the muslim quarter of Mumbai after dark during ramadan. We also tried some Paan, a sort of fibrous, chewy concoction made up of the narcotic beetelnut, which was sort of gross. After a few days we took the overnight train to Delhi and met up with Bernie's father John at the train station.

Mauritius

Sorry for the long delay in postings.

We left Cape Town around October 1 on our marathon journey to Mauritius via Amsterdam and Paris. Of course, this would not go smoothly as we only had a couple of hours for each layover and upon arrival at the airport in Cape Town we were informed that our flight from AMS to CDG had been cancelled. Not too big of a deal, we were put on the next flight to Paris which left us with a short one hour layover at one of the world's most absurd airports, Charles du Gaulle. Long story short, we missed our flight to Mauritius and spent several hours working with Air France to get us there on the next flight which was operated by Air Mauritius. Luckily, we got seats on that flight and were on our way to the Indian Ocean with only a 5 hour delay. We found the service onboard Air Mauritius to be superior to that of Air France.

After arrival, very little time was wasted with Stefan jumping into his open water scuba certification course. He did the entire course in three days (including reading several hundred pages of text) and his german instructor Larissa did a great job even though she was suffering from a cold. After Stefan finished his class we rented a car and drove around the island a little, visiting the central highlands and a Hindu holy lake with a gigantic statue of the god Shiva the destroyer.

We later went on a dive together (Bernie's first dive in nearly 10 years) and saw lots of beautiful coral and sponges.

We said goodbye to Mauritius after one short week on the beautiful island and flew back to Paris where we would spend the night before flying the next morning to Mumbai. As our 747 was about 150 meters above the runway at CDG, our jumbo jet aborted the landing in what was the most knucklebiting flying experience of our lives. For several seconds we weren't sure if our jet was going to be ripped in two or not. Apparently these are called "go-arounds" and are relatively common at large, busy airports when the runway hasn't been cleared fast enough of the prior aircraft. In my mind, that is a near-miss.

A touch of the Colic

One of our friends is about to have a baby, and I guess Stefan was feeling a mystical connection with her, because at 3 am in the morning he woke up in excruciating pain, He wasn't crying or screaming but he may as well have been, he had a sharp pain in his back or left side that didn't feel like an intestinal thing, he was inconsolable and nothing could make it stop. And Bernie had to watch and couldn't do anything to help, it was the middle of the night and we were at a national park campground in the middle of nowhere. Finally we found the manager's house and woke him up--he was quite helpful but told us that the nearest doctor was 150km away. He let us use our phone to call Stefan's emergency medical and evacuation insurance helpline, which wasn't much help at all (the first person wanted his email address to send us info, and we finally got to talk to a doctor, he just said to go see a doctor). Luckily we had some ibuprofen along with us, and we had made friends with a couple of South Africans who gave us another kind of pill. By 8 am we decided to head for the doctors office, which took about 2 hours. We weren't kidding when we said the nearest doctor was 150 km away--we didn't see a house or any kind of building until we had driven 60 km, and we didn't even see another car until we had gone another 10 km past that. The pain lessened and then came back during the drive, but by the time we were sitting in Dr. VonSchauroth's office Stefan was feeling much better. It was a little oasis of calm in a dusty and spartan grocery store building. Of course he had to wait an hour to get actually see the doctor, but after she heard his story and had him pee in a cup, she gave him the good? news that it was very likely a kidney stone that he might have already passed. Just as Bernie claims to have suspected right from the beginning! And the pill that the South Africans gave Stefan was exactly the right painkiller, and she gave him 12 more of these, and some anti-imflammatory pills too. All this for only 182 Namibian dollars, or about US$26!
What a terrible experience but oh how great that it's over and that it wasn't something worse. And by later that afternoon, we were recovered enough that we went all the way back and finally saw the Fish River Canyon--"second only to the Grand Canyon in Arizona"--you be the judge.

Orange River and Fishhikers

In case you can't tell from the pictures, southern Namibia is a lot like the Mojave desert in California, especially around Death Valley. Except maybe not quite as vast...but very impressive. We took the less travelled way out of Luderitz to the Fish River Canyon National Park, driving on a newly paved road as far as the town of Rosh Pinah where there is a thriving zinc mine (the mine's original prospector was Jewish and he named the town).
Next we followed the Orange River which has its headwaters in Lesotho and is one of the major rivers of South Africa flowing west across much of the country before forming the border between South Africa and Namibia and emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. It was so beautiful and green and remote, with just a few fishermen visible on its banks from time to time. We never stopped for hitchhikers in the rest of the country, and maybe felt a little guilty about it, but these two guys looked so desperate and there was almost no one else driving on the road, so we agreed to take them as far as the turnoff to the national park. So far so good, but then they said--wait, we need to get our fish! and they ran off into the bushes and returned with two huge bundles of dried fish. Except it wasn't completely dry--and they got a little fish water in the back of the trunk! Just a little, but it sure does stink, even 3 days and several shampooings later. Now we know why there are big signs saying "No Fish Cleaning" in every campground and parking lot on the Namibian coast.

Like San Francisco in 1850

Lüderitz (glad that we've resolved the spelling issue!) is probably our favorite town in Namibia: it's on the coast but isn't routinely covered by a thick marine layer of fog like Swakopmund and the northern coast. We had enough of fog in Santa Barbara!!
It's like a boom town that fizzled out. It's supposedly the oldest German settlement in Namibia, and it's named after a Herr Luderitz, but it's one of the few places in the country where you _can't_ tune in the German-language radio station. (Speaking of which, Stefan just loves that station. There is a woman named Uli who must work 15 hours a day preparing and hosting her radio shows. She intersperses festive German "Schlagermusik" with interesting tidbits about lemurs in Madagascar and how to make your onions taste milder. But the best part of the day is "Hallo Kinder!" where she plays happy songs about brushing your teeth and hosts a call-in for small children to talk about subjects like their allowances, their diaries, or if they ever make a "Liverwurst Lip" when they don't get their way!)
Luederitz, and the nearby town of Kolmanskop, both got their wealth from diamonds which were just sitting on the thin gravel soil waiting to be picked up! They say that on a full moon, the diamonds would shine the brighest, and the mine workers would have to collect them by crawling on their hands and knees with a can tied around their neck.
Summertimes are supposed to get very windy in Luderitz, and although our time there was calm and mild, our tour guide was certainly dressed for extreme weather!

Hi from Luederitz

Just like home

We left Northern Namibia after spending 3 nights in Etosha Nat'l Park, where we saw Black Rhinos, tons of Elephants and Giraffes, DikDiks, Steinboks, Springboks, Impala, Gemsboks (Oryx), Kudu, Red Hartebeests, Wildebeests, Warthogs, Banded Mongoose, Lions, Black-backed Jackals, Spotted Hyena, Scrub Hares, Ground Squirrels, Pearl-spotted owl, Bataleur, Tawny Eagle, Helmeted Gunea Fowl, Ostrich, Bustards, tortoise, and more that we can't remember. At one of the night-lit waterholes we watched a Jackal examining a Python that was waiting in the water on two seperate nights.

After Etosha, we went back to Tsumeb to spend one last evening with Stefan's 87+ year old Tante Dorle, and her son Klaus and his family. It was great to see Dorle in relatively good health, and Stefan believes she could live to 100 if she wanted to.

Klaus and his wife Wendy were very gracious arranging accomodation for us in Etosha and for the rest of our time in Namibia. If anyone decides to visit Southern Africa anytime soon, they should be sure to check out their travel reservation website at http://resafrica.net/.

After leaving Tsumeb yesterday morning, we drove across southern Damaraland and then across the desert to the Skeleton Coast town of Hentiesbai. We spent the night in a chalet with good facilities, and spent a short while on the beach yesterday afternoon. It's just like California with it's cold current offshore causing unswimmably cold conditions and cool fog. The only difference is that the beach doesn't really end right at the coast, instead the beach merges with the expanse of the Namib desert for at least 100+ km inland.

We have spent this morning in an internet cafe in the coastal city of Swakopmund, which almost everyone in Namibia has told us we should be sure to visit. Grease is playing over the radio and we are drinking coffee, a small bit of home for us. Speaking of home, Stefan has enjoyed missing 4 months of the eternal US presidential race, and the lack of 24 hour cable news is quite refreshing (although we do occaisionally get to watch BBC world, Deutsche Welle, or CNN international). Stefan thinks for profit cable news in the U.S. is a big downer and does as much harm to American society as good.

Anyway, tonight we stay just south of Swakopmund in the former South African enclave of Walvis Bay, then tomorrow we drive back into the interior bush of Namibia spending the night in a place called Solitaire, then the next day to the largest sand dunes in the world at Sossusvlei, then another night in the bush near Helmeringhausen, then a night on the southern Namib desert coast town of Luederitz, then a night at Ai Ais. After that, a few more nights in South Africa before heading to Mauritius!

Thanks to everyone for reading and posting comments!