We woke up early next to the Orange River this morning, excited to spend a day on the river that separates Namibia and South Africa. After tightly strapping our gear to two person rafts and getting a brief orientation, we padled off with the current.
The day was broken up by exciting runs thrugh rapids, exotics monkey and bird sightings, and testing the purity of the water in the Orange River. After arriving at our camp, we hiked up to a nearby ridge for a beautiful view of the river, surrounding rocky mountains, and a family of baboons climbing a nearby mountain.
We can't wait to run more rapids and explore more of this beautiful landscape tomorrow.
The first challenge of the day was a portage. The river dropped down into a gorge, so we jumped out, hauled the boats to the cliff edge and prepared to abseil them down. Ant, our guide, lowered the boats and then we formed a chain to pass them into the water. I think he was quite impressed at how we worked together to complete the process so quickly and efficiently. The whole trip has been full of valuable lessons on working together, communicating effectively, trusting each other, reading the situation and planning ahead!
The next challenge the river threw at us required us to use the skills we’d been honing so far, and remember those lessons. Big Bunny; the swiftest, deadliest rapid of the river. We all climbed the cliff beside the river to assess what lay before us. The water ran wildly, rocks and waves forming dangerous obstacles which we had to plan a route through, so that once we were in the water and could no longer see what was coming and had little time to react, we could come through without ending up in the water! Ant showed us the route and then it was our turn. The waves and current challenged our well laid plans, but other than a few 360s, we came through beautifully and no one capsized, although everyone was very wet and Ant had expected that we were going to swim!
The rest of the paddling was quite easy and we finished much sooner than expected, so some people swam a bit and then the Young Explorers climbed up a rocky mountain to get a photo of us on top. It was a decent scramble to get up, and by the colour and shape of the rocks we could see how high the river rose when flooded – it was so high it was hard to comprehend. It also brought home how low the river is now: due to irrigation pressure the river runs at only half its natural level.
At the end we met two local shepherds and Nadja and Seb gave their Wenger Swiss Army Knives to them which made them very happy. And now it’s back to PANGAEA for our next adventure and hopefully calmer waters!
Friday morning greeted us with torrential downpour and chilly winds! We went to the school to meet up with a journalist and to play with the kids. We had a lot of fun chasing each other in the rain! It is amazing to see how people from different cultures can bond through games and sports. After a while we left to buy some supplies that we could use for our work in the coming weeks.
For the weekend we drove to Addo Elephant National Park, where we were overwhelmed by the beautiful scenery that surrounded us. We only drove 20 meters into the park and suddenly an elephant emerged from the bushes, how exciting! We were so lucky to come within three meters of a large elephant bull! It was exhilarating to see his massive body moving so quietly next to us – a really special moment for all the European Young Explorers as they have never seen an elephant in its natural surrounds! Even though it was so cold, we saw many other animals: red hartebeest, Kudu, Vervet Monkeys, Eland, many warthogs, foxes, a buffolo and (to Saskia´s delight) we saw several herds of zebra. All of the Young Explorers were in awe of the amazing showcase of nature!
In the morning the rain was pouring down and we would never have guessed that the sun would come out! Before we had to leave the sky cleared up and we had a spectacular view with the sun breaking through the clouds, the blue of the sky ranging from bright blue to almost black, the ocean in the far distance. The grass seeds were illuminated and contrasted strongly with the dark clouds looming overhead. It truly was a magical experience!
The highlight of Sunday was definitely a big herd of elephants counting at least eleven adults and six calves. They walked in a row holding their tales just a few hundred meters in front of our cars and disappeared into the bushes just after Simon had taken some nice photos of them.
Although we didn’t see the king of the jungle, the lion, this excursion was such an extraordinary experience and much more than we had expected. We saw two of the Big 5! Moreover, it really helped us to bond as a team and gives us new energy to continue with our work at the school.
What an eventful day! Off to a not so great start for our first day on PANGAEA, with wind speeds of 40 knots and 20 foot high waves!
Just about everybody was bedridden throughout the day with seasickness, not a pleasant sight or smell.
Perhaps the highlight of the day was at dinner time, we’d managed to rouse everyone for some pasta and just as we all came out to the conference room about 3 people started spontaneously throwing up, so much for dinner, that sent everyone right back to bed. Luckily though neither Moose, Dima or Richard were around to capture that little moment for the Moose cut.
All duties for the day were cancelled, including the watch system, and Mike, Tristan and Jacek took control of the boat for the day.
After a stormy night, we woke up early and drove to Walvis Bay to see Pangaea for the first time. The excitement had built over the three-day trek and we couldn’t wait to see what would be our home for the next two weeks.
After unloading our gear and settling into our tiny bunks, we took a brief tour of the boat and then headed back to land to see Dune 7. The highest in the world and over three million years old, it was quite exciting to climb to the top and and look upon the barren desert that stretched in every direction. After sprinting down the face, we boarded Pangaea and set sail south towards the Orange River.
As the sun set, we motored out of Walvis Bay into a huge storm.
Today was an exciting one as it was our first day working with the kids back at school after their school holidays!
After a successful morning presentation on Pangaea message and our current Geberit Project at the big community hall, we gave a presentation on hygiene and tooth brushing to the younger children before we joined together with all the school kids to do a massive school cleanup! We were all amazed by their energy and enthusiasm in getting involved with cleaning the environment! One hour, and FIFTY full black bags of rubbish later, we were all so proud to see the school evolving into a cleaner and more beautiful area!
While some played soccer with the local children, other prepared for our community murals by painting the walls. We were all relieved to see the food garden healthy and in place after the torrential downpour over the weekend! Everything is looking great and we are excited by our steady process as well as the growing involvement of the school and surrounding community!
All in all, today was an excellent one, Involving the kids and making cleaning our environments fun and worthwhile!
Today was a special day because it was Quentin’s Birthday. At 5 past mid night we woke him up by singing Happy Birthday and bringing a tasty chocolate cake. After a short celebration we went back to bed.
When we arrived in the school this morning the workers, parents and staff from the school were already working on the food garden, which is our main project for the next few days. We really appreciate the effort the local people are bringing into the project and so we could progress even more than we have expected.
During the morning some of us were working hard in the garden and other went organising all the supplies we need for painting the walls. Even if we are at the school only for a few days we are working all together like a big family. Also the kids are helping us during the holidays and we had a lot of fun together by painting the walls and even sometimes ourselves ☺.
Before we went to Port Elizabeth we didn’t know how much the community will help us with the project but today we realised that with our presence and initiatives we can start the project in which everyone from the community supports us and thus makes it not only our project but also their project. We are very happy about this because we know when we aren’t at the school anymore the project will go on.
Today we left the school a bit earlier to go to Jeffrey´s Bay where the Billabong pro surfing tournament took place. It was incredible to see how they danced with their surfboard over the waves.
As the day before we had a lot of new experiences especially culturally.
The day began with a bit of a surprise – instead of walking first thing, we went to a salt spring to soothe our aching muscles. After driving back past our campsite from last night, we arrived at the spring. The murky, green water was luckily warmer than we expected as shivering, we stripped off and hopped in. The high salt content of the water made the water especially buoyant, and also left our faces and hair white with salt! We kept Dima happy by making shapes in the water.
After showers (yay!) we began hiking again. Starting after lunch, it was only a short walk, 20km, along the coast where we saw our first ship wreck of the skeleton coast and walked past yet another endlessly long and empty campsite! Mike told us stories of his adventures and we learnt more about the desert, landscape and vegetation we passed. It was after dark before we reached the campsite and the night was clear for a change (no fog) so we saw our first sunset and the Southern Cross. We eventually arrived at the campsite where it was blowing a gale, so after putting packs into the tents to hold them up, we built a sand wall to break the wind a little. We didn’t blow away, but it was a pretty noisy night!
We got off to an early start at 8:00 A.M. and continued walking south towards Henties Bay.
After walking for 10 minutes, we noticed the 4×4 was stuck in the mud. For the next hour, we tried all sorts of techniques to free the vehicle from the “pudding.” Drenched in “pudding” and making no progress, we hiked off to the beach to take water samples.
Soon after, local fishermen and police showed up to help, but quickly left after deciding the “pudding” would likely ensnare them as well. We finally gave up digging and resumed walking for hours through unchanging landscape.
Sand seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction, which made it difficult to judge our progress. By 5:00 P.M., we came within sight of Henties Bay which appeared to be quite small but was actually vast in size. We reached our camp site, in someone’s back yard, and rushed to set up our tents before dinner.
Our feet were hurting and blistered so we looked forward to a nice rest because we knew that more hiking was waiting for us the next day.
Up nice and early in preparation for our first day of hiking in the Namib Desert! Bags all packed we sent the majority of our stuff to PANGAEA and then hopped in the buses and drove, and drove and drove, past two police checks! We just kept going and this worried us, because over the next four days we knew we had to walk back that distance. Finally we arrived at Cape Cross and checked out the seal colony living there, 15000 noisy seals crowded the beach and swore at us as we took photos.
Eventually (at 2pm) we put on our packs and took the first steps of our long hike. Not more than 100m down the road we stopped, a local police car whizzed up and two men hopped out, where are you going, they asked us, after much discussion with Mike they told us that we had to drive back outside of the Cape Cross reserve before we could begin our hike…so off we went back to the main road, parked and began once again.
And once again only several minutes of hiking in a police car whizzed up to tell us off for whatever we were doing. This time however Mike successfully talked them out and we continued on our journey. We walked across salt flats and hardened sand and lots and lots of loose sand. Despite the desolate landscape we saw birds, flamingos, jackal footprints and even a springbok! Four hours and around 20 km later we arrived at Mile 72, perhaps the longest campsite in the world, with not a soul to be seen…anywhere. Head torches on we pitched our tents, ate some dinner and crawled into our sleeping bags for a cosy nights sleep.
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