My beautiful weekends in the desert

 

One of the nice rules of going to school in Africa (but this happens in many country in the World except Italy), is having Saturdays off. This allows you to do things with your children on week-ends and enjoy their company even when they take along friends.

Charlotte and Caitlin were always together and sometimes we used to leave for a long weekend to the desert. But not  to the usual desert, we would reach the Namib Desert at Tok-Tokkie the Southern part of The Namib Rand.

It was a six hours drive, half of which on tar road till Mariental and to Maltahohe. Then you would leave the tar road for a gravel one and further South for that mix of pebbles and red sand.

Descending the escarpment towards the desert it was always an astonishing view. We would be there by midafternoon when the sun started to weaken and its rays would cut the sky low. Golden grass would stay still because also the wind would calm down; oryx would gently climb the dunes and families of ostriches would start sheltering their chicks.

A broken down rusty gate was the entrance of the lowest part of the Namib Desert allowed to live in and Charlotte would jump out of the car, bare foot as always, and open with a scrrrrish the gate, let us in and close the gate again.

By now we knew we had reached home. The Namib Desert has always been a sheltering home for us. We knew the place, we loved the sand, we enjoyed the silence and we were always great for the many colors that our eyes could see. A really relaxing natural SPA!

Charlotte and Caitlin in their "private" pool at the resevoir

Charlotte and Caitlin will immediately dive into the resevoir for a plunge.

Eleonor and Mark would be there waiting for us and having always something interesting to hench the thirst! In the evening we would join in parparing a nice, juicy braai. They lived at Tok-tokkie for many years. Mark has guided some of our customers around the country but his base was always the desert and many many weekends we were there all together.

Charlotte and Caitlin drinking after a long ride

We would spend hours looking at the dunes, looking over the dunes to see more dunes, talking and wishing we could share with European customers these marvelous feelings…. But is this something that only “wild” people could love or are there other people that would enjoy it?

This was we were thinking when a great idea came to our mind! Year 2000 was approaching, this was an occasion!