Alas, no Ghadames

Our trip to Ghadames has been cancelled, lack of interested people.  A bit of a pain really as it's too late to plan something for the Eid weekend now.

HOWEVER, we are planning our 2 week vacation to Namibia now, we're headed to a place called N/a’an ku sê wast of the capital Windhoek.  Namibia has to be one of the world's most beautiful countries, clean, friendly people, wild wildlife and stunning scenery.  It will be our second trip there, this time not so much as tourists but we're volunteering at the N/a’an ku sê wildlife sanctuary.  Go check the place out, it's N/a’an ku sê they have all sorts of projects for people to get involved in.

Here's a quick selection of some shots from our last trip:

This is down near the coast in the Skeleton Coast National park, it's so beautiful the way that the dunes and desert landscape just seem to blend into the sea.  It's so damn dry there, even Libya gets more rain than Namibia.

The second one is sunset over the desert near the Rhino Camp at Palmwag in the Namib Desert.  We'd been out almost all day looking for the desert elephants and giraffe, which we found by the way.  These animals are awesome, the elephants and giraffe have completely adapted to such an arid environment.  With their phenomenal memories they remember year on year and pass down through generational teaching where to find water or where to dig just below the surface for it.  To actually see them in this environment is humbling when you think that they travel miles each day in search of water and food.

The photographic opportunities for landscapes and animals are fantastic.  The places that you can get to see are breathtaking but it's a real shame that so much of the country is off limits due to the diamond mining.  Namibia has the greatest percentage of land set aside as national parks but also has the greatest percentage of country off limits for the reasons I mention above.

The bird on the left was photographed on the road to Kamanjab when we were in Namibia in 2007.  I like it because the bird seems to be staring straight into the lens, it has a real haughty look as if to say "oh yeah, here's another tourist".

One of the things that I find most interesting about Namibia is the fact that it was administered by South Africa for so long but doesn't seem to have the same post apartheid hangovers that South Africa has.  The whole country feels more relaxed and at ease with where it is in the world right now.

Anyway, I hope you like the shots, we're looking forward to our next trip and bringing you some more shots to show how beautiful this country is.

cheers

DADFAP

In and Out of Libya

I've been slack, no doubt about it but between work (yes in reply to one commenter I DO have a job) and some travel, the BOLG has suffered.

Mrs Dadfap returned at the end of Ramadan from her sojourn in Australia and as I had done the right thing I flew her up the front of the bus on Emirates. As she flew business her baggage was tagged priority, didn't mean a damn thing. The business class baggage came out of the plane last and we waited for an hour for it to come out. Moral of the story, arrive refreshed wait for your bags!

Travel:  travel internally in Libya is surprisingly easy and cheap, not bad at all really.  I know that Libyan airlines don't feature too often in Frequent Flier reviews etc. but I have nothing but good things to say about my experiences so far about Afriqiyah.  Good planes, helpful staff both on the plane and on the ground, better than some American airlines that I have suffered with.  I flew to Benghazi a couple of weeks ago with them on an Airbus (don't ask me which one!) and it's a good clean operation.  I came back on Libyana which was OK too, except that the flight was about 90 minutes late without explanation.  Now, I don't know if you've ever been to Benghazi but the airport's not really one where you want to just spend some time languishing in the waiting rooms.

Benghazi is a vastly different city to Tripoli.  I know it's smaller but it has a completely different feel to it.  The traffic is less manic, the people are more relaxed and it's cleaner.  There are no piles of garbage lying around like you see in Tripoli, no trucks full of rotting household waste lumbering down the streets to dump it God only knows where, it's a nicer city all round. 

We're off to Ghadames for the Eid later in November.  It's another large set of ruins in the desert about 550Km from Tripoli.  It's supposed to be an extremely interesting place so we'll have some pictures when we get back to post here.  The picture above is from the Wiki page on Ghadames (shameful I know but at least I did the right thing with the credit).  And no doubt some tales about the bus trip, yep, 550Km on Libyan roads in a bus!

Cheers for now

DADFAP