Namibia Trip Report

[chrisinhouston]

It's been quite a while since my wife had overseas work but this project with Rio Tinto is now moved from mines in Utah to other countries. She went to Namibia in May, I didn't go on that one but I did go on our recent trip in early July. We spent 2 weeks there and the biggest hurdle is just getting there and back. We flew from Houston to Frankfurt on Lufthansa in business class. It is the big A380-800 double decker and it was really quite nice and with the United code share we got full miles to qualify for status so now I have gone from zero for the year to just under Gold at 44,000 miles! We go back again in September for a month so I will make Platinum after that!

Before our flight from Houston we hung out at the new American Express Centurion Club, one of the perks of my Platinum Business Card. The A-380-800 is quite nice, business class seats are in a 2-2-2 configuration, we chose a window and aisle on the right side of the plane as the sun isn't so bright as you fly east in the late afternoon and soon into darkness. Only mixup was that somehow Lufthansa picked up that I used to order the Asian Vegetarian meals with United. But that was from way back when economy served free meals and the special meals were usually better than the regular ones, I haven't had that meal in ages on United so I forgot I had it in my profile. All I can say was when they put down that food in front of me it looked really horrible and luckily the FA found me what preferred both for dinner and the breakfast when we landed. Lie flat beds were ok, but I felt like I was in a coffin with nowhere to put my arms as I dozed. My Dr. gave me some Ambian which helped force me to get 6 hour or so of sleep.

When we got to Frankfurt we had a 13 hour layover!!! Oh well, we were able to hold up in the Lufthansa Senator's Lounge where we showered, ate off and on and napped a bit. We boarded our next flight, a Boing 7478-8 and had seats in the small upper deck business class. We had eaten a nice dinner at the airport and by the time the fight took off we declined the dinner and went right to sleep, again that Ambian did the trick. We landed at 10am in Johannesburg, South Africa and had a 3 hour wait for our next flight which was a horrible little jet with South African Air Express to Walvis Bay, Namiba. Horrible in that they had changed the plane at the last minute and we had booked seats 3a and 3b in what was a 2-2 config but now it was a 3-3 so I had the aisle and my wife was crammed into the middle seat. Oh well it was only a 2 hour flight. We landed in Nambia and I wondered as we touched down if we had landed in a desert. Nothing but sand dunes and a lack of any vegetation. More on that later.

I used my Canon M3 for my airport and flight pictures, I had other DSLR gear for Africa but the M3 is small and produces good images. I also was playing with a new Lens Baby 35mm Sweetspot lens I had just got. It's one of those novelty special purpose lenses with distortion and soft edges but a sharp sweet spot in the center. I don't know, you either like or don't. I see it as kind of an Impressionistic look.

Here are a few images, the statue of Albert Einstein is in the Frankfurt airport, he is just sitting on a bench and people have their pictures take with him.