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We left India almost six weeks ago and I still haven’t written my food post for the country. I’m having a hard time because Indian is my favorite cuisine in the world, but unlike all the other countries we’ve visited, I didn’t get fat in India. I actually got skinny. For those who might be worried about my health, please don’t fret. I have more than made up for my lack of calories on the subcontinent first in Africa and now in Turkey. A post about feta cheese and lamb kabobs will have to wait, however, as I take a moment to reflect on the food of Southern Africa.

During our time in India I started to think about becoming a vegetarian. I know that will shock anyone with whom I have shared a meal, as I am a voracious meat eater. At Brazilian churriscos I have always warned people about not filling up at the salad bar and outpaced everyone by keeping my “bring me more meat” button open the longest. In India I started wondering if I had eaten my fair share. Dax was ready to pick up the carnivore baton. He complained about the lack of steaks in India repeatedly and was very much looking forward to a big sirloin in Africa. With our differing attitudes we landed in Joburg. The first day we went to a pizza place which met everyone’s craving. The second we opted for hamburgers. Everyone was pleased with their first hamburgers in over 2 months and we started to get back in our groove. However, it wasn’t the hamburgers or the pizza that broke my contemplations of vegetarianism. Instead it was a lovely little thing the Southern Africans call biltong.

Biltong is dried meat; apparently any meat will do. I have always been a lover of beef jerky. I would make it with my grandpa when I was young, and during my 2 years in Japan he would send me care packages stuffed with pounds of it. I have travelled all across America and tasted the best jerky our gas stations have to offer, but nothing could prepare me for the Southern Africans’ love of dried meat. “Everyday, we eat it everyday,” one hearty man with a big belly and short safari shorts explained to me in Botswana. I first noticed a store in our local Pretoria mall that only sold biltong. Think of your local mall candy shop but exchange the sweets with things like kudu, springbok, beef, and ostrich all available in jerky or slim jim like sausages. Af first I thought this was a phenomenon specific to Pretoria, but I quickly found similar shops full of meat everywhere. There are even whole sections of supermarkets devoted to dried meat. As you would expect, they have the bite sized sticks of jerky we are familiar with but they also had huge slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling on ropes. The slabs of meat were as big as my arm and at one ingenious store they came with a handy pocket knife attached to each limb-sized slab. I quickly got into the tradition and everyday would stop at one of the little shops to choose my type of meat and get some biltong for the road.

Once again on the meat wagon, I joined Dax and started eating meat where we could. We had a couple highlights, Dax had a great oryx steak in Namibia and I had a sumptuous beef steak in Swakopmund. Just about everywhere we went there were steakhouses and in almost any town of note there was a steakhouse chain called Spur. Dax asked if we could go to Spur the first day we were in Africa. I kept telling him we would but never made it happen. They are everywhere I would point out and again promise him to go in the next town. When we hit Capetown, our last stop in Africa, I made sure we went. Everyone but Anne was pleasantly surprised. I had expected a Sizzler level chain while it ended up similar to an Outback Steakhouse. As Outback has an Australian theme for us, Spur is a USA themed restaurant for South Africans, complete with a native American logo and American food throughout–what a nice remembrance of home. In our travels we get a little too much information on how the world hates America. Some of that hate is warranted, but in other cases it just comes across as spite or jealousy. In either case, it was great to find a place that celebrates our cuisine, if not our country. With one week left in Africa and ahead on the budget from all our nights in tents, we went to Spur the first time. The kids loved it because Spur provides a playroom with Xbox 360’s. Dax loved the ribs and I enjoyed the steak. We hadn’t made it to the car before the kids were begging to go back. I told them we would but that we had to get ready for Oprah, which meant we had to get to another hotel. When we pulled in to our new location, the kids screamed and pointed at the restaurant attached to the lobby–another Spur. There was little doubt where we would be eating that night. After the shoot we returned to our little backpacker haven, Salty Crax. (An interesting story for another day was the round of laughter that erupted in a crowded internet cafe when I yelled into the computer on a Skype call to the Oprah people, “The name of our hotel is Salty Crax.”)

The day we got back from the shoot Anne was a little too tired to go out to eat and wanted to spend a little time working in the common room. I offered to take the kids to a different steakhouse but they all objected and we headed back to Spur– 3 times in 4 days. I told them this would probably be our last as we only had 3 more days left in Africa. However, I broke down on our last day and took them to Spur one last time. Everyone pretty much ordered the same thing, with the exception that I had moved from the Monkey Gland steak (not as bad as it sounds, it’s just a chutney) to their unique “Hot Rock” steak. As someone who never feels a steak is rare enough, this was my dream. When they serve you the steak, it is raw, just staring up at you with all its bloody gore. Accompanying the steak is a hot stone, heated to something like 800 degrees to cook it on. With this I could sizzle the steak for a couple minutes on each side and ensure a lovely rare piece of meat. (I guess all vegetarian desires were gone by this point.)

With our bellies full of Spur we headed off to the airport, which for those who read Anne’s post, Six in an Airport, know was the beginning of a 3-day ordeal. We spent the first night in Capetown, but didn’t get to the hotel until after midnight. After multiple mishaps the next day, we found ourselves in Joburg at a conference hotel the following night. Attached to the hotel was, you guessed it, Spur. This time the food was going to be on KLM and everyone loaded up. The kids were thrilled. I question our sanity to have eaten at the same place 5 times in 7 days, but that last steak sure tasted good. After a quick trip to the local mall to load up on biltong, we finally left Africa with visions of future meatfests in Turkey and Argentina dancing in our heads. Oh, and I hate to mention it, but I also left with a little extra jiggle in my step.

Technorati Tags: Beef Jerky, Biltong, Family travel, fast food, food, Namibia, Meat, South Africa, Spur, Steakhouse

Namibia is an intriguing country, a land of deserts, diamonds, and dinosaur tracks, strikingly reminiscent of the American Southwest. We spent 11 days in the country (almost four longer than we had planned due to the car trouble saga) and in that short time experienced only a handful of the nation’s natural attractions.

Above all, Namibia is a land of superlatives, home of the biggest, the deepest, the longest, and the oldest. Outside Grootfontein, we visited the world’s largest meterorite. From there, we traveled on to the small town of Tsumeb, which is the naturally occurring home of 184 minerals, 10 of which are found nowhere else on the planet. We marveled at Etosha, a vast plain where prehistoric waters once ran, walked in 170 million year old dinosaur tracks outside Omaruru, and gathered rocks at the Spitzkoppe, a 1,728 meter sandstone monolith also known as the Matterhorn of Africa. We descended to the shore and took in the world’s largest seal colony (perhaps the foulest smelling experience of our lives) at Cape Cross on the southern end of the notorious Skeleton Coast. The coast is usually foggy and foreboding, the result of the cold Atlantic sea air colliding with its warm desert counterpart, but our day with the seals proved bright and beautiful. It was on the way back to Swakopmund from the stinkfest that our van, Uncle Vito, gave up the ghost. Fortunately he carried us as far as our lodge before collapsing for good.

Dax and I frolicked in the sand dunes outside Swakopmund, but they were mere molehills compared to the biggest and oldest of the planet’s sand dunes which we visited at Sossuvlei. We ascended Dune 45 to watch the sunrise (some of us faster than others) and enjoyed the 4×4 capabilities of our replacement car as we slid through the sands outside the Big Daddy dune which stands over 300 meters high. We returned to the port town of Walvis Bay, birthplace of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, where Uncle Vito languished in the parking lot of the repair shop waiting for parts to arrive from South Africa. Like its neighbor to the north, Swakopmund, Walvis Bay is a small oasis in the midst of a bleak, windswept desert seascape.

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Finding a long term rental car is a challenge. Anne started working on a rental car for Southern Africa weeks before we arrived. When we had internet, she would check prices at all the big shops and search for a smaller shop that might give us a deal. All were very expensive and it started to look hopeless. We debated going Indian style - putting all 6 of us and our luggage in a VW Golf or a Smart Car, but in an effort to stay sane and legal, we decided to go with something with 6 seats. This kept the price high, but we got lucky and finally found a smaller rental car company which cost significantly less than the big boys. They delivered the car a couple of days late, which was fine as we were lazily recovering from India in Pretoria.

When our van of choice finally arrived, everyone piled in and off we went on a test drive. The children took to the car and started calling it Uncle Vito as it the model name was Mercedes Vito. Uncle Vito came to us a little damaged. The previous renters had abused him and broken a seat and the passenger side sliding door. Even with his bumps and bruises, the kids latched on. I couldn’t quite get over some of the car’s shortcomings and made statements like, “Vito, the shame of Mercedes.” Uncle Vito probably heard me talking and decided to turn on us. Our unassuming mini-van was to become the cause of much hardship for both us and the wildlife of Namibia.

I am still probably too harsh on Vito. He made it the first 4000 kilometers of our Southern Africa drive without incident. His thirst for oil was a little worrisome, but he pushed us through all the dangerous places (South African townships, Botswana’s wild bush, Zambia, and the Caprivi Strip). But when we left Etosha, Uncle Vito started struggling. His internal computer put a governor on us and would not go over 3000 RPM’s. This slowed us down considerably and we puttered to the closest Mercedes repair shop, which took us well off our chosen path. We spent a day wandering outside the repair shop while they tried to resolve the problem. After about 3-4 hours they threw up their hands and sent us on our way. They told us, we needed to go to a bigger repair shop which would have the latest computer diagnostics. They told us and Vito’s owner that he would be safe to drive and sent us on our way 400-500 kilometers away from the next repair shop.

Driving at our reduced speed, we were able to see more of the countryside as fully functional cars zoomed past us. Uncle Vito’s slow pace had an added drawback. We haven’t quite figured it out yet, but his slow rate of progress and low level engine noise turned him into a stealthy critter hunter. We have been keeping track of the number of animals we’ve inadvertently killed on the trip. (We would be bad Jains.) The number had not been significant considering the sheer number of miles we (and our drivers) have driven: a parrot in Australia, a chicken in Cambodia, a cat in India, and a big lizard in Botswana. But in 6-8 hours of slow driving through Namibia, we went on a mad killing spree. It started with a few single birds. Anne would scream, I would groan, and we would move on. Then we got a double kill. Two little birds were playing on the side of the road and together flew right up into the windshield. Thump, Thump. Next we almost took out a family of warthogs. One especially bright boar waited for us to approach and darted right in front of us just as we passed. I swerved a little and the frightened pig skidded to a stop right at our tire and spun around in retreat. Dax claims he has never seen an animal’s eyes look that big. Soon after the pigs came a sparrow and a sparrow hawk who unfortunately was chasing it. We only heard one thud, so we might have missed the sparrow. A couple more birds followed and before the night was over we hit a bat. (Who hits a bat?) By the end of the day we had killed a double digit number of winged wildlife, the last one being stuck in our grill when pulled into our camp site.

The next day was much less eventful as we drove through the desert. Our killing spree came to a temporary halt but Uncle Vito was not done with us yet. The following day we took an easy drive of about 100 kilometers up the coast to see some seals. On the return trip about 20 miles outside our destination Uncle Vito went from bad to worse. He started to heat up and refused to go over 30 kilometers an hour. Never pushing his temperature gauge into the red zone, we limped him along until he finally rolled to an exhausted halt outside the gate of our backpackers’ lodge. Later that night a tow truck came and took Uncle Vito away. The repair shop did an analysis and told us it would be two days before they could fix him. Since our rental car company could find no other replacement car from Capetown to Windhoek, we decided to make the best of the situation and wait. The morning it was due to be repaired, we called the shop and found out it would be at least two more days since it was a national holiday and the part they thought would be arriving from the capital four hours away actually had to come from Johannesburg. By this point, we told our rental car company they absolutely had to find us another vehicle. We were understanding, as they are a small company and were 2000 kilometers away. They again spent all day looking and still came up with nothing. Anne and I decided to go look ourselves. We couldn’t find another mini van but we did find a king cab pickup and a 15 seat microbus. The rental car company agreed to rent us the truck so we could go to Sossusvlei while Vito’s repairs were completed. It was a 500 kilometer drive there one day and another 500 kilometer drive back the next.

Of course, when we returned from our cramped drive, (6 of us do not really fit in a 5 seat king cab) Uncle Vito was sitting in the lot with his front bumper off, draining liquid, with no hope of a speedy recovery. Distraught we called the rental car company again and told them we could wait no longer. We had already lost 3-5 days and needed the 15 seat microbus to take us to Capetown. They agreed and the next morning we were on our way in a Toyota Quantum. Now this car I liked. The kids have not come up with a good name for the Quantum and I could care less. It made the 2000 kilometer drive at top speed without causing us any trouble…at least while I was driving. The ghost of Uncle Vito popped up and spooked two hapless guinea fowl into the Quantum’s speeding bumper while Anne was driving. Her scream is still echoing through the canyons of Namibia.

Editor’s Note: Tom’s selective memory erased the fact from his brain that he actually killed one bird with the Quantum before I decapitated the guinea fowl. — Anne

Technorati Tags: birds, mercedes vito, Namibia, roadkill, vito

While being stuck in Swakopmund due to Uncle Vito’s heart problems, my mom and I decided to try out the local sport of sand-boarding. It was on my list of things to do in Africa from the beginning so I was quite excited to finally get a chance to do it. There were two options, lie down boarding, which resembled what we had done a couple months back in Vietnam but much faster and crazier, and stand up boarding, basically snowboarding on sand. My mom chose the first and I chose the latter. We were picked up early in the morning by a bus full of instructors. After a quick stop to pick up some German tourists, we drove a little farther into the sand dunes and stopped at a base point. Here the instructors explained to us what we’d be doing and suited us up with boots and bindings. Everyone made sure the equipment fit and then we were separated into three groups: lie down boarders, experienced stand up boarders, and novice stand up boarders.

After being separated we started off up the dune. It was quite the hike. On the way the instructors explained that since the dunes were public property, they couldn’t build a lift. Since they didn’t want to deface the dune, they don’t take quad bikes up, so every day they and their clients make the long steep walk up the dunes. After an exhausting hike we reached the top and followed our various instructors to different parts of the dunes. My instructor, a surfer from So-Cal, gave me and the one other German who hadn’t snowboarded the basics on sandboarding. After a little while he said it was time to take a run on the dune. Having never done anything like this before, and not knowing what it would be like, I was a little nervous so I opted to go after the German. He went and made it look relatively easy. I tried to follow up and found it was much harder than I had anticipated. It was nothing like surfing or skating. I could hardly make it a couple meters without falling. I was distraught when I reached the bottom of the dune but intent on doing better my second run.

While I was climbing back up the dune for my next run I had a nice talk with the German tourist. When we reached the summit, I found that the next run down I would be trying my hand at lie down boarding. I watched a few people go before me and it looked like a good deal of fun. I positioned myself on the board and was pushed off by the instructor. I started blazing down the dune at 55 kilometers an hour. I once again had to climb the dune and by now was totally exhausted. I reached the top, and despite being tired, quickly strapped on my board for the second run. This time I took the dune straight on and barreled down it. I was doing quite well until it came time to stop. I had forgotten how and so I attempted to do it the only way I could think of. Kicking the tail of my board out. This didn’t end well as I pulled an “ostrich” and had my head stuck in the sand. I was excited about my run though and made my way up to the summit again. Once again I was strapped up for another run, but one of the instructors wanted me to do a tandem lie down board with my mom. The tandem was more like sitting up and was very slow. I objected but in the end was forced into it. My mom asked me how it was so far and I told her “Great, except for this!” She agreed and said the tame sit down run wasn’t worth the effort of hiking back up.

The rest of the day I did a few more runs, getting a little better every time. I did one more lie down board run going 67 kilometers an hour, incredibly fast, down the biggest dune, which the Namibians call Dizzy. For my last run I decided to attempt going off the kicker (jump). I was nervous. I lined myself up and launched off. It was very exhilarating for the second or so I was in the air. When I came back down I managed to right myself but soon I was toppling over again. When everyone was at the bottom of the dune, it was the instructor’s turn. The first one down did a simple 180, while the second busted a huge front flip off the small kicker. Everyone was surprised and cheered him on. We made our way back to the cars and had some drinks and sandwiches. Everyone was parched and guzzled down multiple sodas. We all talked for a while over our meal. My mom met an American who had home-schooled her children while they lived on a fishing island in Alaska, and I talked to some Italians who were interested in my online schooling. Soon we said our goodbyes and headed back to our hostel. This experience has me hooked on sandboarding and currently I’m trying to find a place to sandboard in Capetown. Now to find a place to sandboard in Georgia…

Technorati Tags: Family travel, Namibia, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, sand dunes, Sandboarding, Swakopmund

¶ Namibia was a big surprise for me. I’ve always loved collecting rocks (along with coins) and I didn’t know before we came here that Namibia has more different rocks and minerals than almost any other country in the world. We spent a day rock hunting around the Spitzkoppe mountain and visited the Kristall Galery in Swakopmund, a showroom and store all to rocks and gems. My dad told me that when he was little, he and his grandpa liked to collect rocks in the mountains of Utah and then take them home and tumble and polish them. ¡ I can’t wait to get home and do the same with my Spitzkoppe rocks!

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After our intimate encounter with wildlife on the Caprivi Strip, we weren’t sure how we felt about camping our way through the rest of Namibia. Cautiously optimistic, we exited Angola and made the one-day drive to the jewel of the country’s animal venues–Etosha National Park–where we planned on a two-night tented stay. We had heard that many of Namibia’s campsites are plagued by hyenas and baboons and were not eager to encounter either one late at night. Frankly, we didn’t know whether we’d even be able to camp since all the guidebooks and South Africa’s auto club (the equivalent of AAA) insisted we had to prebook in Windhoek, the nation’s capital. Once again proving the authorities wrong, we drove up, paid the required fees, and popped our tents in the reassuringly fenced and convivial Okaukuejo Rest Camp. We ran into some lovely South African women who had also been at our campground in Nata, Botswana. We hadn’t met them and it had been dark when we arrived, but they recognized us by the sounds of our voices. Apparently there aren’t many American families with small, loud children traveling the Southern African campground circuit at the moment and we were easy to identify.

Confident we could fight off the occasional pesky jackal, we were ready to rest easy…but first there were animals to find. We’d already found elephants, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, warthogs, hippos, kudu, impala, wildebeeste, and a slew of other animals on our previous self-styled safaris, but the big cats had eluded us. Tom was eager to track down a lion or two so we set off into the vast Etosha pan. We were barely a kilometer outside the camp gates when we found what Tom figured would soon be a front row seat to to a feline feeding frenzy–a dead zebra. The great beast laid bent and broken on the ground beside a tree. Something had snapped its neck, a leopard perhaps? As we drove up, three or four jackals were just beginning to take the first few bites out of the coarse hide. We knew the jackals couldn’t be responsible for the kill, but when no bigger animal appeared, we began to wonder what really had happened. The best we could surmise was the big, dumb beast had been looking the other way and run headlong into the tree.

We left the zebra behind vowing to return and quickly discovered more zebra, giraffe, and wildebeeste. Much to the kids’ delight (Dax excluded), our new big discovery was birds…oodles of them. Using the handy spotting guide the park provided, they identified many varieties of exotic avians including the famed secretary bird, familiar to old people like their parents from the Disney classic Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The sun began to set and we had to get to back to the camp before they closed the gate. We circled back by the zebra but still no cats had materialized.

Like an excited little kid, Tom woke early the next morning and beat everyone else in the park to the zebra. 15 minutes later he was back shouting, “Hurry! Out of the tents. The lions are at the zebra.” We jumped into Uncle Vito and raced back to the carcass. During the night, most of the animal had been devoured. When Tom arrived, a pack of jackals had been feasting, but within a few minutes a hyena chased them away. The hyena was almost immediately replaced by three lions, two female and one male, who asserted their food chain superiority. The male lounged lazily in the distance while the lionesses tore the carcass with their frighteningly powerful jaws.

We lingered for a good 30 minutes and were joined by many of the tour groups who had shared our campground. Of all the high-priced guides and expert park rangers, it had been Tom who located the lions first. Who says you can’t safari successfully on your own?

We returned to the camp, struck our gear, and hit the road. We had 145 kilometers to travel to reach our next campsite at the western end of the park. We saw a few more of the same old animals and a bevy of interesting birds before arriving at the midpoint of the park–Halali Restcamp. Here we cooled in the swimming pool and feasted on our own buffet of ground kudu and pork chops. In stark contrast to predominantly vegetarian Indians, Africans believe a meal is not a meal unless there is at least one healthy serving of meat.

We found a few more rhinos along the way to Okaukuejo but after the lions and our rhino spotting in Hluhuwe-Imfolozi, nothing seemed that impressive. Our second night in Etosha reinforced how unusual our tactics for exploring Southern Africa are. We were surrounded by tour groups in their monstrous overland vehicles with nary an independent traveler in sight. While the participants on these tours seemed a jovial lot, we were glad to be on our own this time around, looking out our own windows, deciding which route we wanted to travel, and eating our own food. We agree we’d prefer the safety of one of these trucks if trekking through the racier central African countries, but given the relative safety of this region, making our way on our steam is liberating.

Our tents proved waterproof that night as the rains came, though our trash cans were not jackal proof. Having had our fill of animals, we headed off in the direction of the infamous Skeleton Coast, one of the first destinations Kieran and Asher picked out of our travel books at home. The only problem was Uncle Vito refused to accelerate beyond 3,000 rpm and we were stuck going 100 km/hr. Could we have been too smug in our independence? Ahhh, but that’s a story for a future post.

Technorati Tags: Etosha National Park, Family travel, Namibia, Camping, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Safari, Southern Africa

This may be a big shock, but the camp sites in Africa have no internet access. I just wanted to let you know that we will be very slow to answer emails and comments sent over the last week or two. I got on for a half an hour today to get a couple of posts up and clear the 1000+ spam comments. We will be in Cape Town soon and will be back online then. Don’t let our absence stop you from sending us stuff. We love all the comments.

There is a narrow stretch of land that spans the northern border of Botswana and stretches from Zimbabwe in the east to Namibia in the west. Known as the Caprivi Strip, the area has been controlled by various nations over the years and had long been the subject of heated international dispute. Officially part of Namibia since it’s independence in 1990, it was the site of a separatist coup attempt and violent incursions from Angolan guerillas as recently as 2002. The strip gained a certain notoriety in travel circles when in December, 1999 armed thugs killed tourists traversing the highway that links mainland Namibia with Victoria Falls and other destinations eastward. After a series of such attacks, the nascent Namibian government closed the strip to open travel and instituted a program of armed convoys similar to that we encountered in central Egypt in the summer of the same year. The hostilities on the strip died down after the conclusion of the Angolan Civil War in 2002 and travelers are once again allowed to travel the region independently.

This suited us just fine since the Strip afforded us quick entry into the Namibian heartland from Livingstone, Zambia. We toyed with dropping back down into Botswana to the Okavango Delta but decided a quick boat ride from the town of Rundu would be sufficient (two days on canoes with the little kids seemed a little more than any of us could bear!). Rundu sits at the western end of the strip where the Okavango River begins its descent into the world’s largest inland delta. Here we found a lovely little lodge by the name of N’Kwazi that was situated directly on the riverbank and seemed the perfect stopping off point on our way to Etosha National Park. Little did we know it would be the site of our very own Caprivi nightmare.

We arrived just as the sun was beginning to set and as such didn’t have much time to scope out the grounds. We set up the tents in a location appointed by the lodge manager and fired up the braai (barbeque) for another one of Tom’s delicious homecooked meals. After playing with the lodge dogs, taking a brief swim, and visiting with some young men from the town, we went through our usual nighttime camping routine of eating, cleaning, and grooming before collapsing exhausted into our tents.

As Dax and I washed the dishes, I noticed a menacing machete lying on the table next to the sink. Next to it was the jacket of the security guard, Bonnie, whom Tom had met earlier in the evening. “I sure hope he’s on our side,” I thought to myself as my eyes ran up and down all 24 inches of the rusty blade. When I got back to the tent, I asked Tom just who Bonnie was supposed to be protecting us from–animals or people. “People,” Tom replied. I knew theft to be a rampant plague upon Southern Africa but had no idea how Bonnie intended to stave off thieves in the night with this particular weapon.

We fell asleep peacefully, once again admiring the beautiful African sky and thanking our lucky stars we could be in this captivating place as a family. Around 12:30 I awakened abruptly to the sound of drums beating in the distance. “What on earth could that be?” I wondered. We were in such a remote location and it was so late, I couldn’t imagine anything respectable was afoot. Was there some sinister midnight ritual going on? One of the locals had tried to explain to me the workings of Angolan black magic and how the last queen had been killed a few years earlier by witchcraft. Could human sacrifices be involved in the drumming? Would the drummers or whomever they were beating out a rhythm for be coming for us?

I dismissed the racings of my mind as paranoia and fell back asleep only to be awakened a few minutes later by an equally unnerving noise–growling. Transfixed by fear, I listened as an unknown animal slowly made its way around the perimeter of the tent sniffing, panting, and groaning with a raspy, guttural exhalations . I immediately realized that all that stood between me, my three youngest children, and this creature was a thin sheet of blue nylon sheeting. The sound abated and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was still too worried to fall back asleep and was horrified a few minutes later when I heard a few of the lodge dogs yelping and running away. Something had frightened them and given the noises I had just heard, perhaps eaten them as well.

Not two minutes passed before the creature returned to our campsite. This time it sniffed around my tent and then headed over to Dax and Tom’s tent just 10 feet away. I heard movement in the tent and knew that Tom’s parental protection radar must have awakened him too. When it sounded like the animal had moved away I whispered as loudly as possible, “What do you think it is?” “I don’t know.” “A bushpig, a hyena, a lion?” “What should we do?” “I don’t know.” “Do you think we could make it to the car?” “I don’t think so.” “Where’s the guard?” “I don’t know.” “Should we call for him?” “I think we have to.” “Let’s wait and see if it comes back.”

We could hear our invisible predator rasping in the distance and figured we had to do something to ensure it did not return. Clearly we were holding its interest; since we hadn’t left any food out, we could only assume it was considering us as a meal.
“OK, I’m going to yell,” Tom whispered. “OK,” I agreed.

“Guard. Help. Guard,” he shouted quickly, deeply, and loudly.

The plea brought a terrifying result. Immediately the beast, not the guard, came running. Instead of scaring it away, Tom’s yelling had brought it hurtling back to us. By this time Dax and McKane had awakened and picked up on what was happening. When another minute or so passed with no response from Bonnie, Tom yelled again, “Help. Guard. Campsite. Bonnie. Campsite.” All the while Dax heard the monster breathing its evil, throaty growl just inches from his head. In my tent, McKane, always the worrier in the group, planned with me how we would shield Kieran and Asher should it decide to crash through the fabric wall that separated us.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably more like three minutes, we heard Bonnie’s voice cautiously approaching. “Hello?” he queried. “Over here,” Tom called. As a groggy Bonnie arrived, wielding both flashlight and machete, Tom emerged from his tent and I popped my head out of mine. “Animal…big animal here,” Tom explained.

Bonnie looked confused and Tom went on in halted, please-understand-me English to give an account of the animal’s repeated visits, including the unearthly noise it made. “Dog,” Bonnie said. “No, big animal. Not dog. Sounds like this,” Tom corrected as he once again tried to replicate the rasp. “Yes,” Bonnie agreed and made the same noise.

“Wild dog? Hyena?” Tom asked. “Dog, not dangerous,” Bonnie replied.
Obviously we weren’t making any headway and Bonnie was not understanding the gravity of the situation. We all clambered into Uncle Vito and decided to wait and see if our demon creature would return. Bonnie shook his head and said, “It’s safe. You can sleep in tent.”

“We’re just going to stay in the car for a while,” Tom countered.
10 minutes passed with no sign of the beast. Bonnie returned every few minutes to shine his light around the campsite and assure us it was ok to return to the tents. Finally, Tom, who has braved bears and wildcats in the American West, and Dax, who fears nothing except final exams, decided to return to their tent and brave out the rest of the night. By now it was 2:30 and we were desperately craving sleep. McKane and Kieran filled in the back rows of Uncle Vito while Asher and I took the front bucket seats. I kept the window cracked and spotlight primed in case Tom or Dax hollered for help from the dark.

After four hours and much tossing and turning, we watched the sun rise and ventured from our metal and nylon cocoons, still stunned from what had happened in the night. After a little detective work, we pieced together the puzzle of what had happened. The drums that had awakened me emanated from a neighboring lodge that throws late night parties and is currently the bane of the N’Kwazi owners’ existence. Something–probably a wild dog–had ventured into the lodge and scared the owners’ many dogs, with the exception of one–a massive, hulking Bull Mastif with a respiratory affliction. We couldn’t believe a dog could have made the deep-throated sounds we had heard but the English-speaking guard insisted on taking Tom to the “big dog” and sure enough it was our own demon dog, who the guard assured us is quite mean.

As best we all could figure, the demon had scared off the wild animal that made the other dogs yelp and then patrolled our site in an effort to protect us. Misinterpreting his sounds and his size (waist high on Anne and over 150 pounds), we had been terrified rather than comforted by our ailing defender.

Whether the wild creature meant us any harm, we’ll never know. What we do know is that we now quiz lodge proprietors on the presence of animals, both wild and domestic, and make sure we scope out an area fully before setting up camp.

The moral of the story: as parents, we would do anything to protect our kids, but doing so is often a thankless task. Dax and Kieran keep reminding us that we were scared of a…..ha ha…big dog….ha ha…and Asher bursts out into cries of “Help! Campsite!” in a husky voice at least five times a day. Embarrassing? Perhaps, but our night of terror on the Caprivi Strip is actually what this trip is all about. On this one night out of the 350 we are spending together, we shared an experience that brought us together and that we will remember and laugh about for the rest of our lives. I’m the first to admit we’d prefer the memories come without fear, but having survived our night in Rundu, we feel a camaraderie and sense of accomplishment only adversity can bring. …..final line?

Technorati Tags: Camping, Caprivi Strip, Family travel, Namibia, Okavango Delta, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Rundu