Wow, I'm back from Namibia. It was a fantastic trip, and of course, it's already starting to fade into the past. Feels like it was ages ago already. I suppose that could be partly jetlag, which of course is why I'm writing this at 1:00 am. I'm hoping I'll write enough that I'll bore myself to sleep. It was a fantastic trip, though.
I'll start with the short version, and if you want more details, you can continue reading after that. I ended up with a horrible itinerary on the way out - well both directions actually. To get to Namibia, I went from Darwin to Perth, had an 18 hour layover, then Perth to Johannesburg (11.5 hour flight), another 18 hour layover, then a short flight from Jo'burg to Windhoek. I met up with the rest of the crew (Al Muth, Mark Fisher, Wendy Hodges, Scott Messec, Masa Nakamura, and Violet Nakamura) in the Jo'burg airport, and we all had the same flight. We spent a day in Windhoek, and then took the day long drive to Gobabeb, the station where we stayed and did the research.
Once we got to Gobabeb, we got to work. That involved twice daily censuses of a little dune ("Helga's dune") for the lizard
Meroles anchietae - variously called the shovel snouted lizard, sand-diving lizard, fringe-footed lizard, and a few other choice names. We did that in 5-day stints, then a day off to go to Swakopmund, the nearest town. We did two 5-day surveys, and we had such good success at catching the lizards that we decided that was enough to get a complete estimation of the population. The last 5-day bout was spent surveying a nearby dune for migration between the dunes (lots more on this in the detailed part below).
After that, Mark and I went our own way, and toured around central Namibia for 5 days. We went to Spitzkoppe, a big (700m) pile of granite in the middle of the Namib that was used by ancient bushmen. We hiked around there for most of a day, looking at rock art, lizards, fat plants, and some entirely too aggressive wasps. Then we went up through the southern part of the Skeleton coast, and on to a place called Palmwag, which has a big concession, a lodge (and camping) and game tours. We went on our own, "self-guided" (we got hopelessly lost for a while) game drive (much more on this below), and saw a fair bit of wildlife for that area: desert elephants, giraffes, springbok herds, oryx herds, zebra herds, kudu, ostriches, and lots of guinea fowl (and lizards of course). There were signs posted all around the campground saying that the elephants had a tendency to wander into the grounds, and that anyone using flash photography or otherwise annoying the elephants would be asked to leave. Actually, the sign was much more colorful than that - I'll have to post the photo once I get it downloaded and processed. After Palmwag, we worked our way back to Windhoek via the smallest roads we could find, in anticipation of seeing more interesting things, though they never materialized.
From Windhoek, I flew back to Jo'burg, where I had a 30 hour layover. I stayed with a friend, Andrew McKechnie, who took me up to the caves at Sterkfontein, a very major anthropological site. These caves have lots of fossils of early hominids, including
Australopithecus africanus, and
Paranthropus robustus, as well as a lot of other animals. They call Sterkfontein the Olduvai gorge of southern Africa because of it's importance to anthropology. Very cool. Then we went to the newer, 'visitor center' for the Cradle of Mankind World Heritage site. Very new, modern, interactive, probably expensive, but not nearly as impressive as the old cave tour at Sterkfontein. It seemed more geared to kids, where the cave was definitely more adult oriented.
Then back on the plane for the 12 hour flight to Sydney, a few hours in the Sydney airport and back to Darwin (4.5 hours), in a jetlagged heap.
Okay, seems that jetlag is giving way to actual tiredness, so I may hold off on the more detailed bits until later posts. Don't worry, I've got a whole host of stories to fill up the next few posts.
