Yah, Velcome to our Vunderpal Afrikan Home of zee Beer

In Namibia, this is referred to as "technical difficulties." I was laughins SO hard.
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A large part of any good story in Africa has to deal with how you got to wherever you're going. Travel here is not like travel anywhere else. It's even worse than Eastern Europe (I know--I'm scared too).

The best part of our trip was therefore the 20 hour bus ride that soon became 23 hours. As you can see of the map of my travels, Windhoek is a long ways from Johannesburg. Our bus ride took us straight through the heart of South Africa to the capital of Namibia, with plenty of stops in the middle of nowhere along the way. It might have been because we kept dosing off, but it seemed like we were stopping for something random every 2 hours. Probably the funniest thing that we stopped for was this first picture. In a town in the middle of nowhere we were kindly asked to exit the bus due to some "technical difficulties." In this case, "technical difficulties" actually meant "a wheel and the front axel of our bus' trailer snapping off." It was pretty impressive. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time (though strangely, Matt and I were the only ones laughing).

Why is everything in German?!

Just another look....
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We spent over an hour watching the driver pull the bus off to the side of the road, the broken axel screaming and spitting sparks the entire way, unloading the luggage from the trailer, and reloading it back into the bus. It was good fun.

The countryside was strangely beautiful as we drove by--all scraggly bushes and low trees over a dry landscape. It looks a lot like Eastern Washington. The roads are flat and endless, like a pitch black brushstroke over a yellow, red, and green landscape. There are never any paved shoulders.

Yep. That's where a wheel used to be.
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We arrived in Windhoek early the next morning, the 17th, kind of rested, and had no problems finding our hostel. The Cardboard Box Backpackers is a nice oasis on the edge of a surprisingly modern city. Like most budget hostels, the best part about it was it's bar area which included a small pool and lots of places for lying out, and was easy to meet people in.

After we checked in we spent the rest of the morning on a big walking tour of Windhoek. It was at least 85 degrees and sunny by the time we finished, but it was a good time anyway. Windhoek is by far the largest city in Namibia, but it's still not that big. There's a decent downtown area that feels a bit like South Africa--a foreign place trying to be western. It's very developed, and has a fun corridor called the post street mall that's a pedestrian street which runs into a spotless shopping mall. The city itself doesn't have a whole lot to see, but the parliament building is very pretty, as are its gardens. Don't bother with the museums though.

A South African Pep Boys, I guess. Check out the look on the guy's face. Creepy.
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One of the strangest parts about Namibia is that it was once a German colony, and its influence still remains. All the streets are called "Strasse," (which is "street" in German) and, of course, they are excellently proud of their Windhoek Lager beer (which is pretty good). One of the weirdest parts of their streets, though, is the names: at one point, Matt and I found ourselves on the corner of Robert Mugabe Avenue and Fidel Castro Strasse. Dictator's corner, anyone? A lot of people there still speak German (though the official language is English), and the German tourists flock there during their holidays.

We just found this at a rest stop. Cool stuff.
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2 more things about Windhoek. Matt and I spent the next day out at the Daan Viljoen game park which is just outside the city. It was a really hot hike through more Namibian bush land, but it was pretty. We went out there with Antonia, a German girl who we met at the hostel. She was fun. She had spent a couple months working in the Namibian bush way up in the north, and was in Windhoek to work at a day care for children. For the first half of the day, we only saw a herd of wildebeests--the ugliest animal in Africa. But then in the second half we saw baboons, Oryx, Springbok, and a herd of Giraffes. It was pretty cool.

Our Hostel. Nice, huh? Very good for living like a true traveling bum.
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After a whole lot of planning and talking, Matt and I convinced a British girl named Emily to come out with us to the Namibian coast, and got Antonia to quit her job and come along too. That's definitely a first for me. After talking about it, we agreed that the best way to do it would be an 11 hour overnight train ride which covered a 3 hour car ride. Sketchy? You bet. But we had first class tickets...Well anyway, I'll tell you about it later.