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Things to do in Swakopmund: Three Day Itinerary
Described by my trusty lonely planet guidebook as being “more German than Germany,” the town of Swakopmund is a quaint mixture of Los Angeles and Bavaria that sits on the border between the vast, Namib Desert and the mighty Atlantic Ocean. It is quite a peculiar town, where modern buildings, fancy restaurants and multi-million dollar houses seem to wipe away any sense of being in Africa. My WorldTeach friends and I traveled to Swakopmund for a long weekend at the end of our first semester of teaching in Namibia. After…
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Epupa Falls: The Gem of Namibia’s Kunene Region
If I had not known any better, I would have thought that Opuwo was the last town one reached before falling off the edge of the world. And yet, as we drove past Opuwo toward the spectacular Epupa Falls, the single road leading past town just kept going. Epupa Falls lies at the end of a road that cuts through desolate and sparsely populated countryside. Other than the ostriches crossing the road and the occasional groups of people sitting in the shade of the baobab trees, there were very few…
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Journey to Northern Namibia: Beyond the Red Line
On January 6th, I crammed into a bus with the other WorldTeach volunteers and braced myself for an eight hour journey to Omungwelume, Namibia, where we would have our week-long teaching practicum. The drive took us through various, contrasting terrains—from brush-covered mountainsides to forested flatlands and from vast expanses of open farmland to dusty, concrete towns. For the first few hours, we saw large swaths of land owned by white farmers. If it had not been for the countless police checkpoints, sporadic lodges in the middle of nowhere and the…
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Discovering Windhoek: The Capital of Namibia
Windhoek is Namibia’s international gateway, its largest city and its political and financial hub. It is the sort of place where manicured lawns and well-kept streets belie the stereotypes of Africa that the media has so successfully promoted. It is the type of place in which the rigors of life in the ‘bush’ can be washed off with a pint of ice-cold beer. In Windhoek, Neobaroque cathedral spires lie specked about the urban landscape, interspersed between glass high-rises and shopping malls . Yet, like a desert oasis, Windhoek seemingly emerges…
