Vacation Memory About Namibia - Essay Example

Vacation Memory About NamibiaThe favorite vacation memory is when my family and I travelled the southern African country of Namibia several years ago. This was a long road trip starting from the capital of a neighboring country, Botswana all the way to the Atlantic coast in southwestern Namibia. It was a one thousand five hundred mile trip,which opened my eyes to the great diversity that the African continent has. We took a flight to Johannesburg from where we connected to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, onboard a South African Airways flight.

On our arrival, we found awaiting us John, an old friend of the family. John is an American who had come to Africa in the seventies and had attempted to hike from Cairo to the Cape Town. However, when he had arrived in Botswana, he had fallen in love with the country and had chosen to settle. John had taken the liberty of hiring a vehicle for us and we all went to spend the night at his magnificent house in the outskirts of the city. Early the next morning, we left Gaborone and travelled south until we came to the Trans-Kalahari road, which connects all the countries that have the Kalahari Desert within their borders.

It was here that my preconceptions of Africa being a backward place, a jungle, were forever shattered. The Kalahari Desert has a diverse ecosystem with some parts of it being semi-arid and inhabited by cattle keepers who own large ranches. Other parts are filled with sand dunes as far as the eye can see and within these, one is likely to find antelopes that have adapted to life in the desert. After every two hundred miles, there is a picnic area where long distance drivers take a break before continuing with their journey.

This is a measure that the government of Botswana has taken to ensure that accidents due to fatigue are avoided.We reached the Namibian border after eight hours on the road and the friendly customs officers quickly cleared us to cross into Namibia. Immediately one enters Namibia, he is struck by the level of organization that the people of this country have. One will note that all the buildings and roads are built in straight lines and that everybody is very orderly in all their activities. We were told that this characteristic was inherited from the Germans who were the first people to colonize Namibia after the partition of Africa.

However, the place that fascinated me the most in this country was the city of Windhoek, which is the cleanest and best organized city I have ever seen. Not only was it clean, but the services provided at the hotel where we spent the night were excellent. It was with a feeling of regret that we had to leave the next morning in a bid to get to Walvis Bay on Namibia’s Atlantic coast before the end of the day. We got to the town of Swakopmund within five hours and took up lodgings at a hotel that we had booked earlier online.

Afterwards, we drove to the town of Walvis Bay, which is only about ten miles away from Swakopmund. I found this town to be quite fascinating because of the welcoming nature of its residents as well as the sites that were available for one to see. We spent a great two weeks between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay and their environs and these were some of the best times I had ever had in my life.