Driving on Dirt

In Namibia, there is a lot of dirt. It’s in the desert, so that’s understandable. Most of the roads are dirt, too. In our past travels here, we have been on the paved roads, and that allowed us to go quickly. Today, however, we drove on dirt.

I’m not sure if I wanted it, or even if I didn’t want it, but it still happened. We drove around on dirt roads for two hours this evening. It was a beautiful day, the sky was blue, the sun was bright, and the clouds were few. All of those things made it a good day. We had been waiting at the front building when Alex drove up in his white truck. He told us to get in the bed of the truck and to stand up so we could see all the animals. At first, we saw none, and even though we looked in every direction, we could not see a single animal. We saw lots of signs that animals had been there, like the bark scratched off the bottom of an acacia tree by a porcupine and several large warthog holes. But it was not to stay that way. The first animals that we say were some klipspringers, which are about the size of a jackrabbit. Then, after driving some more, we saw some hartebeest. Several minutes later, we saw some gemsbok, stopped, took some pictures, and when it left, moved on. Later we saw a rabbit.

Aside from birds, those were the only wildlife that we saw on our drive, though we drove around a lot more. When we got back, we had dinner and went back to our cabins to go to bed.