The New "Best Place Yet"

Amazingly, our flight from Windhoek, Namibia back to Johannesburg, South Africa on British Airways was not affected by the worldwide IT outage that was occurring at BA headquarters in London as we checked in for our flight. They hand-wrote everything: tickets, boarding passes and luggage receipts...and we were within ten minutes of landing at JNB right on schedule. We're assuming the pilots were either on a different IT system or flying VFR (Visual Flight Rules) that day. We elected, by plan, to overnight at J'burg in order to insure we had no problems catching the next day's evening flight back to Paris. So, uncharacteristic for dining on our "trip of a lifetime", we got a pizza at the J'burg airport, a bottle of wine and just chilled out at the same hotel that we stayed when we commenced the journey to Namibia. It was very convenient...right at the airport to walk to, and comfortable. Another plus is that we found a "laundry\cleaners" right there at the airport terminal that, for ZAR100 per kg, would wash, dry and fold our nasty, sand infested clothes.  So, after some conversions from kg to lbs and ZAR to $...Sold! This was not only a great deal, but also freed us up on our scheduled washing day in Poland. So, for US$48 we dropped off the laundry, picked up our pizza and got a great night's sleep...hopefully not our last one on this incredible continent. The next morning at noon we appeared at the airport laundry where the nice young African lady had us all ready to go. She had earned a nice tip...and was overwhelmed and near tears that we delivered one into her hand.

Destination Krakow, Poland, was quite a journey. Easy overnight flight to Paris on the same Airbus 380 that we rode down on, but then an extended layover in Paris and on to Amsterdam for more wait time until arriving at 2230 in Krakow. Thank goodness for partner crown rooms at every stop which provided comfortable seats, very good food and plenty of drinks. We were pre-arranged to be met...and were done so...at the John Paul II (he was from here...remember?) airport by a very nice young polish man in a Mercedes van who was eager to practice his English on us. So, at 2330 we arrived at the Hotel Santi, a beautiful old restored hotel from the 1700's right in the middle of old town Krakow. We both were exhausted from the sixty-six hour trip from Windhoek so we so slept so well that Bill didn't even get up to potty at his usual 0400 time!

We woke up at 0800 to see a beautiful sight outside our window...the Cloister of the Dominican Fathers which we toured first. What an incredible sight inside this ancient chapel. Anxious to see the rest of the city, we explored the old town and also toured the Wawel Royal Castle which overlooks the city from a hill and is the ancient home of the kings and royalty that has ruled this country over the last six hundred years. Every hour in the town square a trumpeter in the top of a tower toots out a tune, but stops midway through the last note. The story is that...in ancient times at that same spot...as the trumpeter was blowing retreat during one of their wars, a Tartar archer shot an arrow right thru his throat! 

Inside the Church of the Dominican Fathers

Town Hall Towers



Krakow is a VERY cool and beautiful placed...easy to walk, very European, old and tons of history.  We ended the day at the Hard Rock Cafe (pin and beer) and had an outstanding polish dinner to end the evening. Our initial reaction to Krakow: One of the prettiest world-class cities of Europe that we've ever seen! Here's a preview:

First stop:  The Galleria for a sim card for Andrea's phone.  Playing around with the selfie exhibit! 

Walking in the old town

The American Consulate, a block from our hotel

Something you don't see in the states, kids riding their bikes to school. This was outside an elementary school! 

Pope John Paul Residence until 1978, while he was Arch Bishop of Krakow

St Peter and St. Paul Cathedral

This next series of shots is Wawel Castle

Statue of Pope John Paul II

The courtyard of the Royal Residences

The Gardens

View from inside the state rooms

How the Castle looked when hit by WWI

Hanging with Brad and Angelina

Well...not really but we may have sat where they sat and for darned sure, saw what they saw. Here’s the background and the last post from our fabulous time in the country of Namibia.

For our last three days we saved the best for last: a stay at the Wolwedans’ Dune Lodge in southern Namibia near the world famous towering red sand dunes. All-inclusive food, drink and activities, our own guide and the most spectacular scenery we have ever seen. The place is small and intimate and the best we could determine there were at least three workers for each guest. The facilities were world-class and the employees made us feel that we WERE Brad and Angelina…of course for the price we paid we would have expected nothing less. But it was well worth it. And speaking of the Pitts, the connection was that while they awaited the adoption of their Namibian baby several years ago, they stayed at the resort. Our bartender said he served them and hung with them without really knowing who they were until later. Anyway, the superlatives don’t do the place justice so please view the pictures for this piece of paradise.

This series of pictures was driving into the resort and our accommodations.

Front of our bungalow

Back of our bungalow

The walk to our bungalow

The evening gathering place 

Private planes..... much better than our very small car! 

We were able to custom craft the activities with our guide and we choose a morning desert walk with a real Bushman, an afternoon game drive with sundowner and a horseback ride with sundowner the final day. The sundowner is an African tradition of watching the sunsets…that are breathtaking…with a totty. The Bushman walk was particularly fascinating as he pointed out so much about the desert that the layman would never know or see. We also spent quite a bit of time just hanging at our villa or the pool or library reading, napping and enjoying the spectacular scenery.

Morning bushman walk:  We dug for spiders and found this White Lady deep in her hole covered by the silk she had woven for protection.

Sunrise on the walk

Bill and the Bushman, Udi

First day desert sundowner jeep ride

Riding to sunset...Click here for video! https://youtu.be/54h6nZlGSzY

Second evening we rode horses to the sunset.  We preferred the jeep ride...

Our guides

Andrea's horse on the right and below

We quickly became friends with the bartenders, Salome and Stanley

The meals were gourmet; multi-course and the evening meals were always presented with much African flair. The guests ate at community tables at night, which enables us to interact and trade safari stories with interesting people from all over the world. This resort was totally "green". All power was solar (Andrea managed to blow a fuse in our bungalow by attempting to use a blowdryer),  they grew all their own produce and fed the all the food trash to pigs that they later slaughtered for meals. 

 There were French, Germans, Swiss and even a few other Americans. Also, there was a Namibian family from Windhoek…Ron, Tonja, Zune and Krynauw Weber who were on holiday there for a couple of days. They were very interesting and fun folks. Daughter Zune is in training for a spot to represent Namibia in free-style swimming in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Son Krynauw was a 2013 world champion in the Triathlete competitions in Cyprus and a national karate champion in his weight class. Pretty impressive family. When they found out we were going to be back in Windhoek on Friday night they graciously invited us to their home for a “real” Namibian Braai. After texting our man Nico the taxi driver for a ride to their home, we had a most enjoyable evening with Ron and Tonya sharing commonalities as well as differences between our two worlds. AND, we had an outstanding Namibian meal! It was nice to see a different side of this beautiful country. They promised to someday make it to the United States and to contact us when they do.

Ron, Bill, Andrea, Tonja... what a memory!!!

Today is Saturday, May 27, 2017…day thirty-six of our trip and we are in the Windhoek airport awaiting the start of our long journey to segment three of our trip: Eastern Europe starting with Krakow, Poland. We’ll sleep tonight in Johannesburg and then catch the Air France overnighter tomorrow night back to Paris, to Amsterdam and finally…to Krakow. Sixty-two hours door to door.

In closing, Namibia is one of the most beautiful places in the world and we believe it is a great, reasonably safe place to visit on holiday or honeymoon. Tourism does not seem to have overrun the place at this point although even now it is already the number one driver of the economy. The people are friendly but many are very, very poor. In fact we were told that of the country’s two million population, about two thousand taxpayers pay ninety percent of the income taxes collected. It seems there is no easy path for the improvised to pull out of that…or do they even want do? We hope so.