How would you like to be this lone giraffe in the middle of nowhere?

A traditional Herero woman showing us the way.  They have adopted their way of dress from the German Missionaries. The German Missionaries came to Namibia in the late 1800’s. 

A little shop in the middle of nowhere. We stopped to have a soda, but there was nothing to buy! We had been on a 4×4 track for a few days and were hoping for a cold drink.

We spent the night in a Himba village. These boys used our table as a jungle gym.

Girls night out! (Literally) The woman stayed up all night singing and dancing to celebrate a girl’s coming of age.

Look at the ornate hair of this Himba woman. It’s actually extensions covered in red ochre. Her big necklace is a sign that she does not have children.  

Look at all of that jewelry! They are still living their traditional ways. The girl on the left moved to the city, but she did not like it and moved back to her village. The girl in the middle is one of the chief’s many wives.

The Village Chief and his sons. He was very curious about our culture. 

We stayed the night in a San’s village. Everything they make comes from nature. This is going to be a bow string made from a plant fiber.

 In a trance, the medicine man waits for an answer. He needs to know what to use to heal a patient. The ancestors give him the cure. The medicine man rubbed his charcoal burnt hair on us and blew in our ears to scare away evil spirits.     

Mom made some new friends and we bought some of their jewlrey made of ostrich egg shells.

ns

 This is Lily whittling her own bow. They also showed us how to dig up tubers and drink water trapped in a tree.  The Sans can live with very little water and made fun of us for buying water in a store.

Miles went hunting with the Bushman. He’s using the bow he made.  The Sans aren’t allowed to hunt animals anymore, so we shot at a target. Now they are forced to shop in a store.

Bushman Sosatie: Oryx (Gemsbok), Ostrich, Kudu, Crocodile, Zebra. We found out that eating game has less environmental impact than eating beef. 

Namib Bush Fire: Ostrich, Springbok and Oryx (Gemsbok). The Ostrich was our favorite. 

We met up with an American family driving around Africa, so we went to the Kalahari together.

Here we are searching for the black maned Kalahari lion! It was great to meet a family traveling Africa.

We were lucky to see the famous Kalahari Lion.

The Forte’s got stuck right after the entrance gate. They took a side road when everyone told us not to. This is why you do not travel alone. My Dad had to help the park rangers dig themselves out more than once. The crazy thing is that they were going to rescue people that were stuck for three days.

Sometimes rainy season isn’t best to travel back roads. We should have told people where we were going.

Here we are taking a break before we continue to dig out our car.We ended up being stuck for five and a half hours until the mud decided to dry up. The whole family was tired and sore, but we learned a lesson.

We met a cyclist, Akira, who couldn’t bike through Chobe National Park to get to the border, so we gave him a ride. He thought the hyenas were “so scareful.” We loved having him ride with us.

We saw a car that was tracking wild dogs. They told us that lions are at the viewing platform. Here we watched lions for two hours. One of the lions even walked up the platform stairs to scout for prey.

Posing? Posing like a jackal. Jackals are everywhere and always fun to see. We even saw a genet walk down the road. Hwange National Park is not like Kruger, the wildlife is not used to tourists.       

We were walking back to our car and saw this…a giant cat print.

On a hike in Matopos National Park, Zimbabwe we came upon these Bushman cave paintings. These paintings are 2000 years old.