The very hot room meant that the hand washing I did before bed was dry to the point of almost being crunchy. I only hand wash when we have two nights in the same place as it usually requires more than a day to dry properly. Not here! 
Breakfast was excellent and we set off at 8am for the nearby Damara Living Museum. Our itinerary has us visiting it on the morning we leave here but that’s a long drive and we elected to visit early this morning before it got too hot. Also we’d like to fit in a visit to the petrified forest on that day. 

Wilfred tried out a side track to see if it was a shortcut to the main road, which it was, and we passed some local villages where many of the lodge’s staff will live. All part of a communal living and farming arrangement that is supported by the tourist ventures. The villagers use donkey driven carts to carry goods, which Wilfred describes as the Kalahari Ferrari. 

We were the first to arrive at the museum. It has examples of how local people used to live and is staffed by locals in the style of their forefathers with goatskin clothing. They demonstrate various activities within the village and outside and your guide explains about the uses for various plants. The jewellery making ladies wanted a good look at my lily patterned silver ring and a young girl (3 or 4 years) was fascinated by my rings and ballpoint pen. They demonstrated how the early Damara people used iron and how the blacksmith operated, also a game like backgammon, jewellery-making using ostrich shells, seeds and wood, and medicinal uses of plants.

They also did some singing and dancing. Afterwards you are taken to the shop where I purchased a hanging Christmas decoration with an elephant, rhinoceros and giraffe carved from wood and spaced with ostrich shell beads and porcupine spines. The living museum is all a bit contrived but interesting and I was happy to spend some money to support them.

 

However, there’s something a bit odd about a topless lady wearing a goatskin skirt at the entrance who is busily changing the date stamp for your admission entry receipt. 

After our return we had a quiet morning reading and writing in the covered area by the pool, before lunch (pork chops and oxtail stew + salads and vegetables) and then a nature drive taken by the lodge guides this afternoon. 

The nature drive began with 16 of us in this large open sided truck which Mike pronounced sounded like a tank. We got about 2km down the access road when the driver stopped as he clearly agreed with Mike’s assessment and we turned back. They must have suspected that outcome as two open sided Toyota Landcruisers were waiting in the car park. We all transferred into 2 vehicles and got another driver and we set off again. 

We went this way. We went that way. We met this teenage boy who had photographic proof on his phone that he’d seen elephants in the mountains this morning. He hopped in and off we went to the mountains with another 2 Toyota loads of tourists. 

The mountains are what we would call hills but they are rocky with a bit of brown grassy stuff and some sand. It all looks vaguely like central Otago after a very dry patch but with sandstone rather than schist. 

I now have a new respect for Toyota Landcruisers. We went up and down and through numerous dry river beds and in places you would not expect vehicles could go.
At times our guide and the boy would jump out and scale a mountain with binoculars in hand, each time returning with another direction to suggest. People pay to get that type of 4WD experience. People pay for that type of workout at the gym.  

We saw fresh elephant poo. We saw fresher elephant poo. We saw 10 Springboks (all together in a group), 4 zebras running along and a single Oryx. That was it for a two and a half hour search. Mike and I didn’t really care as we saw the elephants yesterday (evidently there are 21 altogether in the group) but the others were pretty disappointed. 

We were right at the top of a hill for what would have been a great sundowner stop but it would have made a tricky descent in the dark and our driver headed down asap and stopped on the track at the bottom for drinks and snacks. This being Namibia, the snacks involved quantities of cold meats and sausages, biltong, olives, some cheese and some sun dried tomatoes. From the cooler box: beer, cider and soft drinks. 

Wilfred laughed when we described our excursion and was also glad we had taken the opportunity to see the elephants yesterday. 

On offer for dinner tonight was ostrich (tastes like beef), cold oryx, crocodile, beef tongue, ham gammon, and lamb casserole. Also pickled herring, smoked salmon and some sort of fried fish. In addition there were hot veges, pasta, 3 types of gravy and various salads, most of which were smothered in mayonnaise, which seems to be the African way. If a tourist goes hungry in Africa it’s definitely not the fault of Africa.