Dispatch #17

7 December 1998

Circumstances being what they are -- and arenât they always what they are? -- I have decided to clear out of my flat, and Cape Town, a week early. Just feeling restless, I guess. So I called Nomad, with whom Iâd booked a three-week overland tour of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, and asked if there was room on this Sundayâs departure. A week early. Luckily, there is, so I raced to the Ashanti Lodge this morning, heaps of cash stuffed in my pack, to pay up. Trouble is, thereâs a compulsory pre-departure meeting tonight, and Jayson and I have tickets to go see "Velvet Goldmine." Because Jayson was supposed to meet me 15 minutes after the meeting began, I showed up early, in my slick Jason-on-the-town clothes, at the meeting place on Long Street. There were five or six people from Nomad there, plus a loose semi-circle of chairs full of fellow travelers. Quick intake of breath. All these backpackers. Several languages. Am I really ready to plunge back into the travelersâ world, after more than two months as a Real Boy with real-people friends? I donât see any obnoxious alcoholic long-haired Australians, so thatâs good. But thereâs a British couple next to me, and they donât bother to turn around to talk to me. Great.

At least we get free beer. I drink my Castle, which is cold (a good sign for Nomadâs organizational skills), and meet some small athletic-looking woman whose name begins with L. I forget what. She identifies herself as being my leader. I ask her, humbly, what time the meeting will be over. A giant mischevious smile takes her face over and she demands to know if I have something better to do.

"Youâre going to give me trouble," the L woman says, grinning at me. "I can tell." I sit; it's involuntary. She shakes her head at me. My attempts to explain sound really pansy: "But I have tickets to the opening of the Film Festival," I squeak. She asks what movie. "âVelvet Goldmine,â" I say, and she just glowers at me. "Itâs kind of an art film." She hums and moves on, like sheâs saving me for later. Oh crap; Iâve stumbled into tourist Boot Camp.

A big guy named Fred is sitting behind me. He says heâs our driver. He could beat me up. He tells me to call the office in the morning if I think of any questions to ask. I wonder what a good question to ask would be. Iâve never been to Namibia before. Then a skinny German guy named Ulf (such a skinny-German-guy name) starts talking with us and I forget to think of questions.

Jayson was due to phone me. Secretly, as Ulf and Fred struggle to chat, I become paranoid that my cell phone is about to ring. The L lady would just love that. Weâre about to spend three weeks in the bush -- and Iâm the dressy guy with art-film tickets and a cell phone. My belly is soft, and it could become a stigma. I turn off my ringer, but keep slipping out the front door to check the display.

By 7:15, the meeting still hasnât begun. And here comes Jayson in his smart red car. I slide in and we drive away. Iâve accomplished nothing -- except prance in front of my tour leader like a city-boy dork. I donât even know how much money to bring. Iâm totally dead.

I didnât get enough sleep this weekend. I went out and drank every night. Iâm working on 8 hours sleep for three days. I decided I'd sleep on the truck.

Which I couldnât find. I staggered around the Waterfront parking lot with my backpack and found only the whistling wind. It was first thing Sunday morning; I thought Iâd gotten the date or time wrong, since Iâd missed the meeting. But eventually the truck rounded the corner, with the L-Woman inside the cab, looking at me and pointing me toward a totally different area of the lot. She thinks Iâm an idiot.

I found the group as the truck pulled in. We all stood next to it like apes before their new monolith. We were all in awe and/or fear of this thing--our new rolling kingdom for the next three weeks. Then there was the tension of all those new faces. Our new family for nearly a month. I and these nameless people will sleep, eat, and live together. Itâs going to be like having 20 shotgun wives. They are all around my age. But Iâm overwhelmed. My heartâs not in this yet. I donât want to meet these people. I donât want to descend into the usual cliched banter about nationality and itinerary. I feel myself regressing to fourth grade; I decide to spend the first day being more quiet than usual. Iâd like to think itâs because Iâm a shy person at heart, but I suspect I really donât want to start disliking anyone too quickly.

A tanned, gorgeous, and endowed British girl named Sarah sat next to me. I know I shouldnât read into it. But between the L-Womanâs flirtations and this, I was beginning to feel less shy and more stoic; the difference between a quiet boy and a quiet man. Sheep versus sex.

Someone whispers some unsettling news: This is the L-Womanâs first tour by herself, and our driver, Fred, has only done one tour with Nomad. We also have a third leader--a trainee. His name is Louis. They stand in front of us in the truck. Suddenly, their mix of confidence and possibly wan qualifications make them look like political candidates.

The L-Woman, it turns out, is named Lorinda. Lorinda. Gotta remember that. She seems confident enough. She always wears a black Adidas cap with three white stripes down the back. And sheâs not giving me too much shit today. I think she was just flirting with me because I'm such a handsome boy.

Iâm feeling unhappy about leaving Cape Town. Its power over me is unique. Especially considering the social events of the past few weeks, the city was truly beginning to treat me well. Even as the silhouette of Table Mountain dwindled into a tidy postcard behind us, I kept thinking how to arrange a more permanent life there.

We went to the beach at Bloubergstrand for one last look at the Mountain from across Table Bay. Sarah and I chatted idly on the truck, too. Sheâs traveling the other way round; east to west. She wants to get into event management, but she doesnât know. I found myself recounting the Crash.

We have to get all the way north to the Namibian border by tomorrow. We stopped once or twice. I bought t.p. because you can't be too careful. And beef biltong for later.

Slept, read Greeneâs "Brighton Rock," sat on the beach alone during our lunch stop at Elandâs Bay, staring at the cold South Atlantic. The farther north you go from Cape Town, the more sparse civilization is. Even by lunch, things felt remote, uninhabited, and rustic. A desperate boredom hung in the clouds. The beach made a wet spot on my bum and in the spirit of a stress-free camping experience, I elected not to care.

I didnât go out of my way for anything or anyone. I wasn't arrogant, just quiet. It's so unlike me. Felt mild alarm (three weeks left!!). Lunch was cheese and tomato and bread. I drank too much water and on my way to the loo, I encountered a queer Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum pair from the tour. Henrik is from Denmark. Lluis is a stocky, walrus-moustached man from Barcelona, which he insists is not in Spain, but Catalunya. I donât know how to greet his revisionist nationalism, except to say I was there in May, which seems to please him. His English stinks but heâs really eager--and since he and Henrik appear to be travelling together, Henrik can be his interpreter. They seem nice, if a little bushy-tailed for my tastes at this stage of things. I excuse myself mid-introduction and walk into the bathroom, an enigma.

We drove to Lambertâs Bay, a gloomy, hot fishing town with boxy buildings and a pervasive sense of power lines and fissures in the pavement. We were immediately shown to the rookery, which was down a wharf. Thousands of gull-like white, smelly birds were wing-to-wing from end to end of the wharf--bickering, sqwauking, fighting, fluffing, nesting. Apparently, their guano used to be harvested here; even after the industry ended, the birds never left. There was a small overlook with shattered glass, like a prisonâs guard tower. The sound and smell and endlessly repetitive sight of all those birds--Iâd never seen anything like it before. One girl got mildly attacked by a mother bird. Other people got sick, but I could handle the smell. "Just wait until the seals," Lorinda said ominously.

On the truck, Lluis went up and down aisle and made everyone draw names from a hat, then divided us into two teams. Iâm in Team A. So is Lluis; he wrote "THE BEST" over Team A. I guess he wants us to play football. What a strange little man.

Finally to Clanwilliam, site of a modest dam (in South Africa, a "dam" is the lake created by a dam). Essentially, thereâs not much reason to stop here except it makes for a pleasant stopping point. Namibia is quite a long way from Cape Town; you have to drive the height of two provinces, the Western Cape and the Northern Cape, in order to get to the border.

Sunday means no booze, so we drove into the coloured residential area and asked for a shebeen. I bought 2 big bottles of Castle (R5 each) from the utility closet in someoneâs back yard. All over the neighborhood, people lolled listlessly in their yards. A whole family--mother and children--on a mattress under a tree, away from the heat. They played at dead but waved at us when we drove away. The hollow ache of dusty Sunday boredom was everywhere.

To the campsite by the lake, where we arbitrarily tapped tent mates. (I got Josef, Brit, working class, perfectly nice, astoundingly dull) and learned how to pitch tents. While the guides made dinner, Belinda (a young 20, from Perth in Australia) and I volunteered to go first in dish duty. We washed the dishes from lunch. Ugh.

Dinner was rice with chicken or vegetarian goop. I had a Castle and allowed the people around me to warm up to me. Nothing elaborate; just the usual "Where are you from?" "Where have you been?" stuff.

One day I should write a book about all the weirdnesses of being a traveler. Like what you talk about with fellow travelers when you first meet them. "Where are you from where have you been?" is the "What's your major" of the backpacker's world. We claim to want to see the planet but we end up hewing to the same old xenophobic stereotypes from the first moment we meet a new someone.

Washing up took an hour. I kept splashing Belinda by accident. Everyone was already asleep when we finished. I thought of Table Mountain receding, but I was all right. My sleep was shallow and achy. I was in a tent.

We got up at 7:30, did the breakfast thing, and I decided it was time to brave the roofless bamboo toilet stalls. I must note here my unexpected admiration for using facilities without a roof. Sunshine, fresh air, birds alighting for a peek at you on the throne--it takes the shame out of evacuation. Taking a dump and feeling at one with God and the universe--thatâs what travelâs about!

We were being dropped off 25 km up the lazy Orange River so we could raft downstream back to camp. We boarded Freddie. Freddie, not to be confused with Fred, its burly driver, is our Wonder Truck. Itâs truly the Swiss Army Vehicle. Sturdy as a tank, loud as a jet, slow as a toy boat. Gleaming white metal and zip-up windows that offer two settings: wind or plastic. The side opens into a kitchen counter; the back, where thereâs a fridge, becomes a larder. Compartments over and under, two water tanks. Inside speakers that sadly canât overpower the roar of manual horsepower, but happily play mostly Abba and David Bowie anyway. A roof you can sit on, and where the guides sleep. Itâs named, as all Nomad trucks are, for a dead rock star: Freddie Mercury. Thereâs also Janis, Jimi, Sid, and Elvis.

We arrived at the appointed riverbank, which was coated with uncanny, super-fine, flour-like desert sand. The river marks the border between South Africa and Namibia, and is a true desert river: silty, slow, and lined with the illusion of lushness that leaves abruptly off at some classic red cliffs. Very Arizona, I repeat. The desert is puckered from heat and bursts of rain.

While we were putting the boats in, another truck--a dinky bakkie (which is what a pick-up is called here)--arrived. It carried a few of the backpackers from Epic, which I'd originally booked but later cancelled since it was R300-400 more and they make you cook. We had rubber rafts; they had sleek fiberglass, scientist-tested canoes. But we also had Freddie.

Who, of course, politely refused to accommodate Epic--and immediately got mired in the floury sand. Half of us lingered on the lazy river while they strained in vain to extricate it; it sank to its mighty axles. We were told to go ahead anyway, since the trip downstream would take five hours or so. So we left.

All my life I've forgotten the key of partnering. It stems from gym class at team selection time, when I'd loiter off the bounds line and try to vanish. I didn't want to inflict my childhood pain on Josef, so I got him. He's a nice enough person, I'm sure, but he's a crap rower. He took the back, and we zigzagged wildly for kilometers. My arms throbbed because I had to supply the bulk of the manpower. I complained as nicely as I could ("Now, Josef, make sure you're not overcompensating") but he's one of those people with no conception of his body as it exists in time and space--and that extended to our raft. The girls were pulling alongside us to gawk, then passing us as we veered helplessly toward the South African bank. Skinny boy, terrible conversation (Me: "Gee, how long have we been doing this?" Him: "Um. I really couldn't say."). I got cranky doubleplusfast.

Normally I fear water with a fiery blue passion, but lately I've been totally fine. After crisscrossing the Greek Islands in a variety of rinkydink ferries, my terror dissipated. Just one of the ways this trip has changed me.

We stopped for a quick dip by goats and Africans and a canyon and a stream. I waded. Claire, a charismatic redhead Brit who talks an extreme lot, remarked that I looked like I was having a piss. I told her what to think of such a remark. (Early in the day, the Chinese lady who can't swim told me that my hat made me look like a cowboy. You'd be amazed at how good-natured I've learned to be, even in the morning.)

When we stopped for lunch, it was discovered with appropriate horror that Louis forgot the cutlery and plates during the sand-trap fracas. Louis, a born South African, subtly tried to place the blame on our accompanying black guide, but we all knew it was his own fault. We couldn't have the nourishing orange squash drink without sharing jugs, and we ate the macaroni salad without mayo and off any available surface, such as lids, in ravenous groups. Louis, who is only a trainee guide and calls us "people" when he begins sentences (and in whom I detect not only a queeny, prissy streak but a tender spot for racism as well), dithered ineffectively. One or two people asked if I was feeling all right.

Back in the water, I insisted on the back, but couldn't grip my paddle because I'd just applied lotion. I'm afraid I complained, but since it was nonpaddling Josef who heard it, I don't care. Besides, I got it steered properly in short order once we swapped paddles. Twenty-five k's was way too long.

We passed a few straw huts, some riverside fires that appeared haphazardly unsupervised, and lots of grassy growth on the banks. At one point, I saw a snake rear up out of the water, swim a little, and dive back in. I had no desire to swim, even when on closer inspection it turned out to be some kind of gooseneck water bird.

We arrived back in the year 2005, and I staggered to my reward of a cold shebeen Castle. We added the mayo to the leftovers of the salad and had some of that, too. Freddie was back from the sand. Lluis and Juan Carlos began a lively debate, in Spanish, about Catalunya versus Spain while Dave, the only other American on the trip, eavesdropped and noted they were discussing a fiery domestic topic that often comes to blows. Claire likened the situation, somehow, to football hooliganism (love that phrase) and Scotland versus England detente. Suddenly, my head throbbed so loudly (My head: "Jason, let's see what molten lead in your eyeballs would feel like!" Me: "No, thanks--Arrrrrrrrgh!!!!") and I slept in misery. Josef appeared twice in the tent, and I told him with no discernible malice I thought I had heat exhaustion. The air was much drier than we thought it was--this being a desert--and I'd deceptively not been thirsty. My "cowboy" hat had proved inadequate against the sun, my prior exhaustion, the side effects of my malaria medication, Josef's flaccid muscles, and the dearth of liquids at our mugless lunch stop.

Before long, Fred called for me, appeared at my flap, and dispensed two yellow pills, two white ones, and a package of dissolving stuff. Remember that recipe: it works against heat exhaustion. My head still screams, but I'm up. Henrik was likewise afflicted, and flagged Fred to his flap, too. Spain, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey--and NOW, on a river with a water bottle, I get heat exhaustion. Makes me look like a wimp. Golly. I got some more water from one of Freddie's tanks. It's so unusual to extract water from the underside of a truck.

We had an old-fashioned braai. It was a panoply of meats. Entire cows on the rack. Tight squiggles of boerwors sausage squeezed into grilles. Chicken. Lamb chops. Ribs. Roasted squash. Salads. Fred stood above it all, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and said the secret was the sauce. The vegetarians shifted uncomfortably.

Lluis sat by me. Apparently his debate with Juan Carlos about Catalunya had passed without incident. "You don't seem comfortable," Lluis said to me. "Are you happy?" Right away I could see what he was doing; he was trying to zero in on my perceived weaknesses and then assume the role of confidant. It's an insidious way to make friends--and he was wrong. "I'm not uncomfortable; just quiet," I said. "Aren't you ever quiet?" His English wasn't good enough to take the hint.

Henrik and Dave and me talked and we all ate gargantuan (literally, for you literary types) amounts of meat. Dave designs video games for 3DO. He's 30, but he's looks 22, and he's where I was a year ago. This is his vacation; now he's hungering for more. I felt well enough to finish my Castle, but my headache began to resurface as Louis seized the guitar and sang suicide campfire tunes. I sat away from the fire and studied the stars. I saw two meteors. I doled affection onto the camp owner's clever, soft herder dog. Then bed.

Hey--I think it's a holiday in America. And it's about 11:11 now. That was when we gave a minute of silence for the veterans in grade school. The principal would come over the p.a. and tell the boys and girls to put your heads down on your desks for a minute, please.

Right now I'm sitting next to a hot spring-fed pool in Ai-Ais, Namibia, at one end of the Fish River Canyon. Sun, canyons, silence all around.

We got up at 6 a.m., which I still don't approve of. Twice during the night I had to go out to pee. Huge amounts. I lost what I put back, and the headache came roaring back. I put some salt into my mango juice in the hopes that it'd rehydrate me. I also had three Advils, two bowls of cereal, and some headache pills. Decamping was miserable--see Jason trudge--but I slept on the truck. Aki and I chatted; she thinks I'd like Japan. That's what everyone says about their own country.

We stopped in the middle of nowhere and were told to walk further into the middle of non-road nowhere. I climbed a hill made out of tough but savagely fragmented black rock. Desert silence, crunching underfoot from the dried weeds, cool clear sunlight. Some of the guys played football in the road. The truck was a teeny dot, I was so far away (maybe a kilometer?), but I could hear everything the soccer players were saying. That's a desert.

A terrible thing is happening to me. I'm becoming who I was at 17. I'm a real smartass. This whole scenario feels a little like high school with passports. I've involuntarily regressed. I'm using my wit, tinged with acceptable vulgarity, to attain popularity. It's not me. But I think my character has been defined now; I have to stick with it.

Back on Freddie, Henrik saw a large bleached insect skitter under Ulf's legs. Pretty soon, everyone was standing on their seats. It reappeared directly behind me. Dave jumped on it, like a step in a native dance. It was reduced to a cold wet tangle of legs. It was a giant spider.

I killed a white spider-thing in the tent yesterday. I felt guilty. It feels wrong to kill something that seems so exotic. But we can't have it in our tent, now, can we?

The rubbish bins in the toilets at Ai-Ais (which means Fire-Water) are marked S.W.A.A. A reminder that until 1990, this place was called South-West Africa. (And Zimbabwe, likewise, only in 1980 shed its colonial slug, Rhodesia--named after Cecil Rhodes of ugly racism and Rhodes Scholarship fame).

The bottom of the hot springs pool became lined with brown dust. We are a dirty crew. We drove on to Hobas, the campsite full of fat rude German tourists who come all the way to Namibia to shove people aside. It was sinisterly hot. It was a hot that made me think of Neil Simon: "Africa hot." My head was still alive with dooziness, and I slept poolside. Passed clean out.

We left late to see the Fish River Canyon, apocryphally billed as the world's second largest. Fred decided it would be better if I didn't hike down--it must have been 43 degrees--and at first my manhood felt impugned. But when I saw the sun, I saw the light. Henrik with his inflamed throat and me--and Fred and Freddie--stayed up top while everyone hiked halfway down.

I'm bombarding myself with water. No mercy. Must've downed 5 liters today. I was, to utilize a phrase I've been fond of lately, ruthless with my body.

The canyon, it should go without saying, was lush, wide, beautiful, satisfying. Green river ducking under sand at its bottom. The sun set over the opposite crest. I remembered where I was, and was thankful. Everyone kept asking me and Dave what the Grand Canyon is like. It's weird to be an ambassador for God's beauty. The doofuses from Epic were also at the canyon. One of them is American. They were eating watermelon and he said: "You ever pour a whole bottle of vodka into a watermelon, let it sit, and then eat it? Dude, s'awesome! You get waaaaasted." ...Do I have to go home? Ever?

Bed came at 9:45 for me, and for most of us. There was a huge windstorm under the clear desert sky, and a shiny steel windmill over my tent. I was feeling much, much better.

Today was truly exhilarating!! Guess I'd been depressed, because I feel so uplifted. And I'm totally well again. Some Friday the 13th!

We got up a shade later than we'd wanted to. Reasons have never been tendered. Lilian, a lovely but persnickety German, was first on the truck, where she sat and whinged. ("Vee are late for da sunrise. So I miss everything. Perfect!") Call it another personal victory, but all I could think was what a waste of time she was. We're in the Namibian desert! There are reasons to be thankful stretching ad infinitum all around us, and you're hacked that we may have to watch the perfect sunrise from Point B rather than Point A? During my worst moments, I realized, I am German. But today was not one of them.

As the salmon sun threw rays over the dunes to announce its entrance, we tumbled out of the truck and sprinted across the predawn desert tundra to the base of an enormous, Nautilus-swirled dune. They just rise from the flat earth in rich red rows, leaving a wide plain between them. I'm always amazed how so many times in nature, mountains other tall structures just HAPPEN--they rise unannounced, without foothills or even the slightest ripple. We took off our shoes and ran up its spine. The sand was cool and reassuring; the rays of the hidden sun shot skyward like quills. The nutty red of sunward sand, the chocolate brown of the leeward slopes, tawny plains, mellow blue skies. I have never, ever, seen nature in such harmony. No color was more boastful than any other, and no line formed without coquettish swerve or effortless grace. Poetry, purity, dulcet interplay of cool shadows and regal golden light. It was one of the most perfect places on earth, and I was barefoot.

Only man makes huge straight lines. In fact, it's almost all we make. But God allows swirls to dance together--in such subtle interplay, souls are stirred and smoothed.

We sat atop the dune. We felt the cools sands cascade on both sides. I ran down the dark face. (I'm glad no one told me until much later that the slopes are where some of the world's most poisonous snakes and scorpions are found. Meanwhile, I pranced gleefully through the sand. Tee-hee.)

Incidentally, the sand is red because of the high iron content. Technically, they're rusted. The way that red plays with the sunlight is stunning. Words cannot convey.

We drove deeper into the dunes and had breakfast. Then we walked through the desert 5 km to Sossusvlei (soss-oos-flay), a dry pan. It's only been flooded twice in the past century: 1934 and last year. The whole region sees a maximum of 100mm annual rainfall. We got some striking photos, saw some gemsbok (grey and black antelope with huge straight horns), wild ostrich, springbok (a small deer with lyre-shaped horns). By 11, we realized it was far too hot to walk back to the truck; even the briefest of forays from the shade ended in gasping clutches for bottled water. So we hitched a ride back with an enterprising young ranger who charged us 10 Namibian dollars (R10, or about $1.30) to pack us, standing, on the bed of his bakkie. We sank and fishtailed unnervingly over sand. At one point, when the truck lurched, I grabbed instinctively for something substantial and accidentally connected with Sarah's chest.

"Oh my gosh, I grabbed your boobie!" I blurted. Everyone laughed. I felt silly, and now Henrik insists the phrase must go on the tee-shirt at the end of the trip. (He's also been repeating another one from our sweltering desert hike to the pan. Sweating, I remarked that I intended to use the pool at the campsite that afternoon. "This is my holiday, dammit!" I said. He nearly peed himself.)

(Several days later, Lorinda will allege that I reached for her boobies, too. Although this may be true, I choose to add this to the stockpile of her flirts.)

On a trip like this, time off is doubly rewarding. It's a break from activities as well as the group. I shaved, ate, swam a little, drank a beer at the pool, rinsed some sandy clothes, napped. A dusty windstorm kicked up in mid-afternoon. Fine orange sand everywhere. You either capitulate or go insane. The tent got battened down. Dust coats my day.

At sunset, we went round the corner to the Sesriem Canyon, a mini-canyon (1 km long) with a sandy bottom. Jeff, talky Claire's boyfriend, accidentally stepped on a black beetle. We were huddled over the footprint, mourning it, when it stirred, stood up, and stalked away. "Little 4x4 insects!" Jeff said. After that, we couldn't resist squashing them at every chance. Finally, one of the beetles lost a leg. ("It's always funny till someone loses a leg...") It didn't seem to mind, but we called an end to the game.

Lluis appeared with a handful of brown lumps and announced, "Ah, look! Is shit!" Somone peered at his hands and told him no, it wasn't. Lluis was defiant, and said, "Yes. I know. Is shit!" I thought it was pretty funny. (They turned out to be owl pellets because of all the bones and fur.)

Sometime earlier in the day, people stopped paying attention to Lluis's antics. He was forever standing in the aisle of the truck, getting in people's faces, attracting attention. Later in the day, he discovered his bottle of Coke was missing. This really upset him and he went to bed without supper. I think it had more to do with not getting attention than with losing his Coke. After all, he's been sexually rebuffed by every woman on the tour. He's 35 but he's a child.

Atop Sesriem canyon, Henrik and I continued with our wine as we watched sunset. With Sarah, who has already forgiven my accidental fondling, we talked about Real World things, like movies. It felt good. I felt so happy after sundown, as Freddie rumbled through the dusty dusk, and I grinned at the purple African mountains on the horizon and found the awe I had misplaced. It's so good to be alive, so good not to waste your time. So good to feel loved and missed. And it's so good that whenever I get too German about the dust in my shoes, I have red wine to correct me.

Henrik and I drank and talked and ate and drank, and it put us both out. Sitting around the fire has become a cozy daily ritual. I keep finding unexpected doors into other worlds, and I keep stepping through them.

The dunes. I can never do justice to their beauty. I didn't just see them or climb them. I FELT them. I was a participant in a painting--one of God's ultimate works of art, crafted, it must be, for His own pleasure. All colors being pure and pleasing, all lines being gentle and unexpected, all signs pointing to the excellence of life and the teamwork between blank chance and arranged fate. The dunes simply WERE, and questioning geological creation was beyond the point. To fully feel the dunes, you don't have to stand in awe of their existence. You just have to stand amongst their existence, listening to the wind together, as time carves lines on you both.

As we packed to leave Sesriem, Lluis was again absent from our meal. It was quietly explained--by those who understood Spanish--that he would not be eating for three days. He was on a hunger strike.

His demands are unclear (I would classify them as nonexistent) and no one could coax much information from him about the protest. The man is a terminal weirdo. A hunger strike on an overland tour through Africa! With no demands! I laughed about it all day. Lluis is the new butt of my jokes.

Out of Sesriem, we stopped in Solitaire. Isn't that great? Solitaire, Namibia. The name is apropos. Driving in Namibia consists of staring out the window at rocks and dirt. More than the earth, you notice the lack of anything. Hours go by and you'll be lucky to see a car, a shack, or an animal. If there's a hut, chances are it's been named and it's on the map.

Solitaire is on the map, but it's pretty much 12 buildings, and most of them seem to belong to the folks who run the filling station. We went in to bry water and juice and were greeted by two tired terriers and a ferret-like grey, rodentish animal. Someone called it a mongoose, but when it sat up to check me out, I knew it for a meerkat. It followed the white terrier everywhere--it thought it was a puppy--and when I came over to it, it rolled over on its back as if it wanted to be stroked. I knew better, but Willem is Dutch and knows no such things, so when he tried to touch it, it lunged for his finger. A whisper of "rabies" was passed between us, and that ended the play session with the adorable meerkat. Its surrogate mom got bored of us and went behind the counter, and the meerkat nipped gingerly in its path. By the time we left, the two were curled up together by the cash till.

The owners also had a teevee. At the time, it felt exciting.

The drive was laborious and bumpy--I could barely light my crack pipe--but we plied through one spectacular national park (the Kuiseb Pass through the Namib-Naukluft Park) and stopped in the crux of some screamingly jarring moonscape rocklands.

We had lunch at the very tall Dune 7 (why don't they give them names, like Betty, or Sandra-Ann?), outside of Walvis Bay. We were thinking of civilization and water with great anticipation as we sat next to this giant white dune. Lluis remained on the truck alone--where he was sure to attract the most attention. Henrik and Dave clambered to the summit, but the sand was too hot and soft for me to feel likewise inclined. Marielle is a German girl who does what the boys do. On top of being watchful and tomboyish, she has a big head and a round face and extremely light eyes. The overall effect is that she looks like she was born to be smeared with pig's blood. She's the type who's very nice in person, but you still have nightmares about when it's dark. I like her.

Pretty soon we wheeled into Walvis Bay ("Valvis Bay"--German and Afrikaans) and ogled the flock of wild flamingoes (!!) that live off the coast. It was suddenly very cold, thanks to the same coastal Atlantic water that also makes the desert possible. The flamingoes were white (not anought shrimp in their diets?) and in my memory's eye, they were so pale because it was cold.

Sophie, Willem's Dutch girlfriend, keeps walking into my shots. I'm so cranky it may make me hate her.

Poor Walvis Bay. It was Saturday afternoon, and deserted. Wide streets, straight and overplanned, stretching to the vanishing point with only one or two parked cars visible. It was like your most boring nightmare version of an Everglades town, but strangely, after a week in Nowheresville (usually without the ville), it felt like a burst of suburbia. A sense of air conditioning tantalized me. Painted houses, washed cars, high schools with athletic fields. A mostly empty and somewhat dark grocery store. I bought a phone card and when we got to the campsite at Langstrand, to the north, I called my mom to tell her I was fine. The connection was awful and the phone gobbled all my time as if it were bitter about being stuck in the desert. But, sense of duty lifted, I showered, grabbed a few beers at the lovely bar at the end of the pier, and admired my position of being oceanside in Namibia with clean hair and a Windhoek lager in my hand.

Very tiny town. This site, plus a few houses and beach bungalows. Fish tankers way off the coast. Where there isn't a brooding, cold ocean, Sahara-taupe dunes skirt us all around. The desert truly meets the sea here. Dave called it "The World's Biggest Beach."

We have three new people.

Adam and Rhondda are Australian, from Brisbane. Very nice people. She's a nurse; he's got a wicked sense of humor. The girls have their eye on him.

Tobias. German. Very very, in a way none of our current Germans are. Fat, pasty white, begins every other sentence with "I don't like..." Well, already, I don't like HIM.

Josef and Lilian opted for the one-week version of the trip, so they will be leaving us. Farewell, Josef. Lilian, sorry you couldn't unwind. At Sesriem, I did business with my dish partner Belinda. I approached her in the pool and asked her to be my new roommate. It was either that or room with Ulf, who (don't tell him) smells.

We drank. We ate. Sarah and Claire and me gossiped. Dave hit on Belinda, but for some reason she didn't take him up. Lilian met Tobias and pronounced him "thick" (score one for Lilian). Juan Carlos beat everyone at pool. We were all in the Jetty Bar above the Namibian surf, the stars were out, the company was pleasant, and there was still so much trip left to take.

We packed out and went to Swakopmund for supplies and to fix the flat tire. I found out my camera lens got scratched somehow. Sarah inspected it and said, "Do you have enemies?" Beatrice, the tall dark Swede, told me I should have had a filter but now it's too late. Gee, thanks.

Henrik and I bought stamps for postcards, then we checked our e-mail (I sent e-mail from Namibia!) and ate at Steers (I know...). I tried to find an English-language newspaper since I've been out of the loop for a week, but no luck. The stores were full of German things. And German tourists--yuck! Henrik is fond of saying that they're hunted for sport in Egypt because of their insensitivity. I bought a Kinder Egg to treat myself. It contained a teeny wooden locomotive that I'm sure was made by brutalized Taiwanese children. We drove.

We had lunch at a place in Hentiesbaai, Fishing Town, where the pool table was shaped like an L. Pictures of dead fish on the walls.

Then--ooh, inhale--to Cape Cross, and the largest seal colony in Africa. Mating season: 100,000 (someone counted) barking, squabbling, honking and snapping, SMELLY seals. Like an upgrade from the birds. Little pups were wiggling everywhere; it was a sea of blubbery creatures, and the sea itself was teeming with them. It looked like someone had poured a glass of water over an anthill. Thousands and thousands of 'em. It must have been right after the birthings, because squishy placenta patties littered the foreshore. The seals kept sniffing at them. All the mothers dragged their pups around by their back of the head. One seal kept dashing a pup against the rocks every time it approached. She was trying to kill it. Eventually, the pup wandered the other way and received kinder treatment from another mother. Animals are so savage. Bleached skulls and bones were half buried in the sands, baby carcasses rotted in ignored corners. And the stench! Rot, fish, shit, afterbirth, sea. Truly dizzying. Some of us (not me) fled for the truck. I inhaled through my bright green bandana from the EW retreat. I was mesmerized. Seals redux.

Then on to Spitzkoppe, which rises like fearsome majesty from the scrubby flats. It makes for a fierce silhouette; some call it the Matterhorn of Africa. We were the only living souls for miles and miles. Our own craggy mountain, all to ourselves.

Henrik and I began to climb it. The boulders were soft and round from afar, but enormous and sharp up close. Very soon, I slashed the tips of my left hand's index and middle fingers, without even knowing how. Mean-ass rocks. I had only been gripping the rock as I pulled myself up. It sheared away the top layers and I bled and bled and bled into toilet paper bandages. After that, my balance was off as I favored my right hand, and as we scaled the face of enormous rock plates, visions of traction lurked in the crevices. So I came back down. City Boy fails again.

City Boy had a beer and watched some of the others away way up on top, and he watched the sunset over the slope of the other Spitzkoppe (it was very obliging of God to put two near each other, for photographic purposes). I saw it paint the sky like make-up. Adam took a piece of toilet paper and showed me how they wipe in the Australian Army. You don't want to know. Hint: The paper never meets your bottom. I had another beer, which became wine, which became a tipsy campfire dinner in the shadow of the imposing peak. Thinking of snakes and scorpions. Hey, Namibia's no Cleveland.

Lorinda's suggestion that we sleep outside, under the stars, was met with uniform approval. I went to get my sleeping bag and it was gone, although I think I found the mat. No amount of searching would unearth it. Who would do that? I was very mad (and afraid I'd have to buy a new one) but Lorinda offered her spare, which doesn't zip up. I slept exposed to snakes and scorpions on my mat, under a naked, sprawling tree, the dark shape of Spitzkoppe presiding over the shooting stars and my dreams.

Stars and stars and still more stars, and brighter than thoughts.

Which, thanks to Lariam, my anti-malarial, have been unusually vivid. Under Spitzkoppe, I dreamed about a teenage vampire who wanted to bite me/have sex with me, and it took place in a faux-Bavarian tourist village in a valley. I kept waking up to the cold winds and the southern hemisphere stars. The night before, I dreamed my brother and Henrik (who remind me of each other somehow) set me up to take the fall for a murder that I didn't commit. Lariam! Between that and the heart palpitations, I'm coming off it.

We pretty much got on the truck after opening our eyes. There were no tents to strike.

I woke precisely at dawn. I had to pee like a mutha and I needed the spade so I could go squat somewhere, which was how the day greeted me alongside the mighty mountain. Squatting.

We drove. I slept. Henrik and I sat together again. We stopped in a little town (Uis?) where we bought pastry and bread. I found a tacky postcard for my friend Jason Kaufman. It's of a topless native in a supermarket, selecting mustard.

At Twyfelfontein, Belinda and I snagged an A-Frame to sleep in. We went to see the 6000-year-old rock carvings and paintings. Apparently--conjecture here--the nomads painted them so the young would learn about water holes and available animals while the men were off hunting. If you ask me, they doodled on the walls because there was nothing else to freakin' do in the middle of the desert and they were bored out of their skulls, like I was looking at them. The canyon had since splintered every which way. Our guide was local and black and only spoke a little Afrikaans with the most gentle, lilting accent. Fred translated. The man would talk and talk and talk and Fred would turn to us and say, "It's a giraffe." I'm weary of ruins. They're too ruined, if you get my drift, to fire much imagination.

We returned to camp. I bought a giant Windhoek from the "camp bar" (a hut with a fridge) and watched the guys play the locals in a game of football. Dust rose everywhere as the sun set. The local Namibians looked happier than as if it were their birthday (collectively--okay; bad grammar there) and smiled through the filth and exertion. I didn't play. I don't play.

After dinner, Belinda, Henrik and I went out near the dry riverbed, where Lorinda warned us not to go. She said elephants tread softly, but emphatically nonetheless. (In fact, last week at this very site, an elephant ransacked an overland truck and nearly trampled some sleeping campers.) We had our bags and mats and we stared up at the stars. We saw them shoot. And we saw satellites twitter past. We started drifting asleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, when the campfire was grumbling (probably about Louis' earlier guitar playing), I woke up to see Belinda had gone back to the A-Frame and I was seized with an irrational (or pretty damned rational) fear of elephants. So we retired for real; Henrik in his tent and me in the torturous A-Frame Device of Hell. (Later, Belinda claimed Dane Boy and I were snoring, but that simply can't be. Must have been the elephants.)

I woke up after dawn; there were a few wildebeests (aka gnus) at the hole. I rolled up my mat, revealing two plump green caterpillars, which started to hustle away. I was admiring the orange morning when two metallic-blue birds landed by my feet and glanced at me expectantly. I stepped aside and one of them gobbled up one of the caterpillars, then the other one. It was fun to watch, but I must admit that I'd accidentally rigged the bugs' doom. I turned the Circle of Life into an ellipsis; that's beyond the tourist credo. Maybe something will eat that bird now.

I guess I've ended a few insects since arriving here. But Africa is not a man's land. It's a bug's world. I heard somewhere that if you took all the spiders in Africa--and just the spiders--and put them on a scale, and then you took all the people of the world and put them on the other side, they'd balance out. That may not be true, but the spiders here are mambo spiders. They could be mistaken for kittens. Claire is apoplectic at the sight of spiders; it's like being afraid of yeast and working in a bakery.

It was your average day of game driving. After the explosion of wildlife at Okaukuejo, the standard distribution of springbok, zebra, gemsbok, ostrich, and wildebeest was a letdown. And it was furnace hot. Africa hot. Even the animals vanished in puffs of steam.

One of the zebras was lying down. "Look, it's sleeping," someone said. Louis, the fey trainee guide, took the opportunity to underscore our ignorance. He said it wasn't uncommon for one of the smaller foals to die. "But it's just resting," Willem said. Sure enough, it stood up and walked away. "Well," Louis said, barely chastened. "If it WAS dead, it wouldn't have been unusual."

So we camped at Namutoni. The area was particularly full of giraffe. One might call it giraffy. I love giraffes. They have long eyelashes, they lose all dignity when they try to bend down and drink, and when they poop the pellets tumble out like you've won at slots.

Lluis was horsing around at the supply store and managed to cover himself with flour, or baby powder. It was amazing and heartening how despite his outlandish appearance, people completely ignored him.

We checked out the lame wildlife at the site's waterhole. There were a few springbok, and six giraffes. And an owl. It was like comparing a Christmas cracker to an M-80. The sun sank away extra fast that night, exhausted from its exuberance.

You can find a Coke anywhere in Namibia--even before water--but you can't find a newspaper. The world is becoming America.

Ravenous for news, I found Voice of America on the AM dial, and the signal drifted in and out like a half-remembered tune. But I did find out that the president of Zimbabwe has suddenly and unwisely seized 841 white-owned farms, which he plans to hand to blacks. There's some mild unrest building. We'll be there in a week.

Up at 6. It was supposed to be 6:30 but Lluis decided it was time. I am going to kill that swarthy man. I've given him a new nickname: El Nino. It suits him perfectly; he acts like a special little child, and he's capable of destroying the world with his tantrums. He heard me pronounce him El Nino; people laughed. He got vewy vewy quiet and folded his arms. One could even say he sulked. I wonder if a second hunger strike is in the works.

Unwashed, we made a game drive. Henrik and I sat up front with Fred like big boys. Aside from the festering, reeking giraffe carcass being tunneled by a pair of jumpy jackals, there wasn't much to report. Well, warthogs. I report warthogs. And a few vultures.

Everyone was crushed. They wanted to see lions. No lions. Some of us don't think they actually exist. They probably made them up for the tourist literature. (I saw plenty last year in Kruger, so I was content.)

Then the drive to Rundu. I listened to my tape with the Indigo Girls' "Get Out the Map" on it, and napped. We stopped for lunch on a road lined with shabby straw-hut villages. Unsmiling children with distended bellies (no protein, water invades) watched us. Some people entered the village across the highway, but I didn't want to turn the native people into Minolta moments. The five who went came back saying the locals were requesting Bibles.

Cheese and tomato sandwiches. Tobias ate early and often. I limited myself to a single helping in light of my weight and the hungry children. I gave Ulf half of my orange since someone took his. I think it was Claire, by accident.

Rundu proper reminded me of Hazyview, South Africa: packed with people, most of them shifty-looking. Got a Coke (R1.85!!) but no paper. My change was a rare R5 coin from the 1994 Mandela inauguration. (In Namibia, as in Swaziland, South African currency is legal tender.) The other day in Uis (?) I got three old one-rand coins, and one of them has the evil apartheid architect Verwoerd on it. Score!

The camp is on the Okavango River. Just across is Angola. The river barely seems wide enough to serve as an international border, especially with a formerly communist nation torn by civil unrest. I could swim there--if not for the crocs alleged to reside beneath the calm surface. Who needs Border Control? Even now, though, the sun is setting over the river. I'm bathed in Angolan light.

A PRIMER OF DANGER:

Fish River Canyon threat: baboons, scorpions

Sesriem threat: Sandstorms, scorpions, snakes

Langstrand threat: German tourists

Spitzkoppe threat: snakes, scorpions, jagged rocks

Twyfelfontein threat: elephants

Etosha threat: jackals

Rundu threat: crocs, snakes, malaria

Yep, we're in Malaria Area. (Sounds like a third-world version of "Sesame Street.") It's so nice to be out of the desert! Green and shady and cool breezes. And malaria.

I spilled garlic pasta on my Edinburgh Fringe Festival shirt. Henrik and I debated aestheticism, evolution, spiritualism, and the link between perception and belief. Yay, wine! (I spilled some of that, too.)

It was three hours to the next camp, inside the Caprivi Strip that joins Namibia to Zimbabwe. (Ngepi Threat: Hippos, crocs, malaria.) We took an afternoon game drive through Mahango N.P. and saw sable, warthogs, and a few elephants flapping their ears against the heat as they strolled toward shade. Too darn hot for much else. We got to sit up on top of the truck, which was stellar--wind in my hair, sun on my skin.

Dodging lots of branches. Damned if half the trees in Africa aren't spiked from leaf to root with vicious thorns. One tree brushed so closely along the roof that it stole Jeff's shirt, which had been lying next to him. We looked behind us and it was dangling several stories above the road. We also saw a baobab tree, that popular tree. (Strange that a tree should be popular.) (Is the poplar popular?)

 At night we sit at the camp bar and talk. I abstain for hydration's sake in the Delta. Juan Carlos tells me about India--the stench, the scams, the beauty. I'm alternately terrified and thrilled. I add Tabasco to my dinner of rice and veggies and it makes me sorry. I pack a single day pack for the next three days in the Delta and then I crash.

Two hours by loud open-air "transfer vehicles" through the Botswanan border. Perpared for no comfort, no showers, no soap, plastic-tasting water, demonic heat for the next three days. Totally up for it.

The entry form to Botswana misspells the name of the country: "Botwana." The world needs editing. Cluck, cluck.

Now it's country 18. Round mud-and-straw huts, chipper donkeys, rubbish as usual, brown dung-colored soil. Grassy, surprisingly, although it tends to be patchy.

Into the Okavango Delta, one of the last wild places on earth. It's a huge floodbasin that takes up the top portion of the country, with very few settlements and a vast amount of space and natural resources for wildlife. There's nothing else like it in the world. Maybe the Florida Everglades, if you discovered it 600 years ago, quadrupled its size, and stocked it with African game.

We load our stuff (day packs, tents, sleeping gear and food) onto a few motorboats and are whisked down a complex tangle of marshy canals. Reeds pass along both sides. Fish eagles stride along the banks with loads of other enormous birds. Bright green ones, purple ones. Muddy croc slides carve the bushes every dozen feet, and in fact we spot a few as we motor by. Their spines twist and gleam in the sun as they slither beneath the lily pads. Their eyes are mounted on their snouts, which they aim at us like cannons. The water bubbles from time to time; we know they're there and they watch from below. Now and then the driver stops to clear grass from the props. His little girl of about three squats at his feet throughout the hour-long trip, sipping a Fanta. She wears a faded red dress.

 We land deep in Botswana, in the Delta, and are trucked an additional half-hour past the dry spots in the canals and through Seronga, a traditional village of about 2000. We finally mee the polers of our mekoros. Apparently, being a poler is a position of some esteem. They start when they're just little kids, steering a narrow wooden dugout canoe with a long forked piece of wood, identifying wildlife, locating and avoiding danger. To tip is to bring shame to your name. Our poler's name is James. And there will be crocs passing just inches beneath our boats.

The bags are quickly loaded onto the canoes. The environment is so delicate that someone convinced the polers to stop chopping down trees and to mold their mekoros from fiberglass. The Delta is threatened in other ways; giant tourist hotel chains want to build here. It's disappearing. In another 10 years, the Okavango Delta will be just another spoiled tourist spot, like Thailand or Mount Everest. We enter one of the Earth's last and largest wild areas, and we do it without motors or radios. We do it the way it's always been done.

The grass and reeds lean close to our boats, and the channels are often so shallow you can almost spy the bottom through the murky water. The sun is ablaze--you can smell your flesh baking. Even my light "cowboy" hat is burning to the touch. I lie still and decline to move. We're low--at the surface of this mysterious tangle. A tiny green frog lands on Henrik's leg, looks around, then leaps back into the thicket. Often the boat heads straight for weeds, like it's running aground, only to glide over them. We're awash in stout lily blooms. It's overwhelming and spectacular, with just the furnace heat of the sun and the gentle splashing of the poles to keep up alert. Where are we?

James sees some buddies on shore and they holler at each other in Setswana. (Try clicking over distance!) "Sorry," he says. "I want to take something." And we head for shore, flying over brambles as if they were liquid.

Camp is reached too soon. We erect our tent beside an abandoned 8-foot termite mound. There's the skull of a buffalo the Botswanan guides say was killed by a lion right here. The group zips out, by boat, to a swimming area, but it's murky. Still, it's nice to cool off. Manon and Willem emerge with leeches.

Several of us hike inland. Elephant droppings are everywhere, but they look old. I've become good at identifying animals by their turds. I can even tell how long it's been since they've been there. Maybe it's the cowboy hat. (One of Louis' guidebooks suggests thrusting your hand into elephant droppings to see how moist and warm it is, and therefore, how old it is. I don't do that.) This is wild country--I expect bird-sized mosquitoes to darken the sky at nightfall and deflate our heads with a single suck. But we hike on. Lluis takes it upon himself to disappear without telling anyone he's going back, so we hike deep into the fields to look for him. There are bleached bones everywhere, but only fragments. Juan Carlos steps on a thorn which pierces the sole of his sandal and his toe. Later, as if for compensation, he finds a gorgeous striped porcupine quill.

At camp I have coffee. Some of the polers are playing a local instrument called, phonetically, a sewatu-watu. It involves vibrating a wicker strap with a stick, and holding the strap to your open mouth to make sounds. None of the white folks can do it, but I catch on right away. Then Dave does. Must be an American thing. Still, we're only doing scales...

The termite mound dominates our camp like a totem. It reminds me of Devil's Peak in "Close Encounters." The clouds turn melancholy purple, then sullen grey, as the sun descends. Birds, aphids, crickets, frogs. Gentle campfire banter. And the sun goes down over the vast marshes of the Delta. I am remote.

To conserve space, it's three to a tent in the Delta: Henrik, Belinda, and me. I get silly. I have a really cool flashlight that sits on your head so you can dive into your backpack in the dark. When I look somewhere, it sweeps the tent. I started making foghorn noises, like a lighthouse. The Human Lighthouse.

Sometime around midnight, there was a horrifying din in the woods by camp. Grunting and huffing and animal shouting--and shuffling and shrill screaming, like something being killed. Belinda and I made sure the tent was zipped up. It was scary--yet strangely cozy. A ferocious battle somehwere in the insect-packed wilds of the Botswanan darkness.

Right before dawn, little gremlin chirps filtered between the tents, milling about the camp. Monkeys. I was half asleep. Soon, the calming effect was shattered by the shouting of chacma baboons--barking, yellng, threatening. We all woke up and moved our stuff inside, but Henrik and I had to pee so we hastily padded out, too near to the tent, and did so.

Fred said the first disturbance sounded like a leopard kill, and the second, a monkey feud. He keeps a HUGE machete hanging on a tree.

At 6, we got into the mekoros and were ferried to an enormous plain. On the ride there, James plucked a gigantic night-blooming lily from the water, and its hosepipe of a stem, and handed it to me gleefully. Then we split into two groups and tromped for a three-hour game walk. We saw some tseedes (kind of an antelope crossed with a buffalo) and a baby tortoise. We also ran across the skull of a baby elephant, and one from a buffalo. Very heavy. But pretty much, the only wildlife we found was as single baby tortoise plodding methodically across the soil. How pathetic.

I scanned the ground for hours for a porcupine quill of my own. I found only sand, rocks, and poop. At the end of the walk, I looked up and James had one tucked carelessly into his hair. Damn that magic man.

The other group came back flushed. They reported wandering into a herd of angry buffalos. "So?" said Claire. "WE saw a tortoise."

From 10 to 2, we vegetated at the camp while Lluis climbed a tree and tried to get attention. We took our mats and placed them under the trees, and napped under crawling insects. It looked like Jamestown. We also went to the swimming hole again, but with no leeches this time. No winners.

At 2 we broke camp and took our mekoros back. Piping, brutally hot. I took off my shirt and layed very still indeed. James broke off a papyrus bloom because a teeny green and orange frog was clinging to it. He also snagged a day lily and made a necklace from it by tearing the stem into two strands, peeling them in a funny way, and tying the two strands together. Manon wore it.

I had to fight to get my contacts in this morning. I'm totally filthy. My shirt is stained, smudged, reeking of heat and dirt. The sides of my feet are tough and black. Washing my lenses in my palm turned them milky. Eventually, Claire took one, put a drop of saline solution on it, and popped it in my eye for me. Mom away from mom.

Three of Henrik's toenails were killed during an extended hike. We always wear sandals; everyone in the group has noticed that the biggest one is about to fall off. "Ah, Henrik," I say languidly. "The sun is catching the yellow of your dead toenail. It's lovely." His stomach churned, but I was making an ironic point about how dirty and scummy we feel--and yet how we still are enjoying the endless glory of the world's beauty. (Performance art in the Delta?)

We all know each other's ailments. Jeff's leg keeps bleeding after he screwed it up during the Twyfelfontein football game. Beatrice's throat is infected and she has trouble swallowing. Lorinda burned her foot in the campfire and can't wear shoes. Louis forgot DEET repellant on his forehead one night and he looks like a pizza face. Marielle burned the bottom of her feet on the sand somewhere and was walking on napkins within her sandals. Willem got heat exhaustion, then two days later his girlfriend Sophie got it. Seems all they do is rub each other with damp cloth.

We all guzzled Delta water purified with a chemical called Milton, which up to now we've used in washing the dishes. It tastes like the town swimming pool when you were nine years old. I had a liter and a half--and that was being moderate. The water is light orange. People ask, "Is that water or juice?"

The night was a pleasant blur. Some of the group swam with some local children, who are quick as little fish. The trees above our heads swarmed with bats all evening as we ate dinner. In the distance, a lightning storm grew in intensity until it passed over us at midnight. Flashes of light illuminated the Delta through the mosquito mesh of our tents.

I did the Human Lighthouse again for Belinda and Henrik, but it's losing its wacky charm.

Our final destination! We pull out of the dark-edged Hippo Lodge in time to see the help going through our rubbish. Let us not forget that despite the gin and tonics, we are in darkest Africa.

It's a quick drive, but we have four border checks. Out of Namibia, into Botswana, back out again, and into Zimbabwe (Number 19!). The map on the wall of the border post was peeling; beneath "Zimbabwe," the word "Rhodesia" was clearly visible. Then, as the terrain gets hillier and more lush, we arrive at Vic Falls.

Vic Falls is the biggest burst of civilization we've had since Swakopmund. But it's still strictly small-time; the remnants of a posh British steam-train resort at the turn of the century. (In fact, the wooden Victoria Falls Hotel is a handsome relic of that more refined, colonial era.) The streets are full of vagrant Zimbabweans, and scads of overland trucks, and heaps of backpackers. But it's dusty, and it's hot, and everything looks like it's only going to last for another decade or so. The campsite is grody and the grass is dying, but there are locals who will do my laundry for pennies a serving, so I'm sated.

Sure enough, President Mugabe's foolhardy move last week has plunged his economy into decay. The Zimbabwean dollar has fallen 100 percent against the rand; international investors no longer trust his regime and so the Zim dollar is worth only 34 to the American dollar. You can buy a liter of Coke for as little as Z$9. I bought a "Time" and a "Newsweek" for the combined total of less than US$1. He's an egomaniacal autocrat, and he's only using the money to fund war efforts at home and in Congo. The world financial authorities are discussing exchange controls. The interest rate here has been raised twice this year, by a total of 6 percentage points, to 35 percent. Needless to say, everyone is pissed off.

Zim tourism amenities are controlled by the government, so they're likewise corrupted. There are several prices to everything: what YOU pay, and what a local pays. You can shell out European prices for a hotel room--$200,300 a night. Admission to the actual Falls is set at US$10, so no matter what the local currency does, Mugabe gets his cut. It's extortion, but in Zimbabwe, it's legal.

We go to the Falls right away. It's right before rainy season so they're at their lowest, but they're stunning! The water catapults off the cliffs and plummets handsomely. More than one fall, it's really around 1 km of falls with patches of vegetation between. The resulting mist creates impromptu rainbows everywhere, plus a jungle-like atmosphere were the humidity creates a tiny ecosystem on the opposite cliffs. Henrik, Sophie, Willem, Beatrice and I stand in awe of them. After almost three weeks in desert and swamps, this is our soul-swelling reward.

We're glad to be here before rainy season; apparently during the wet time, the mists are so huge you can only HEAR the Falls. You can also see the bungee jumpers leap into the gorge from the arched iron train bridge. Why, why, why?

Another benefit of dry season: White water rafting is its most exciting. We sign up at Shearwater for the next day. I watch the videos of overturning boats and backpacker carnage and neglect to think about the consequences of my actions. My fear of water shall know no bounds, I tell myself as I sign on the dotted line.

At night, the whole group goes out for Mongolian barbecue. Sarah, Henrik and I share a bottle of local wine for US$1 each, and quickly obliterate ourselves. In turn, we fill our pots with veggies, sauces and meat and the chefs cook it for us. Dave sits next to me and I coach him further on taking a World Tour of his own. I'm the Johnny Appleseed of doing insane things to your life.

Sometime between firsts and seconds, but well after my second double gin and tonic, I turned to Dave and said, "Know what? Today's Thanksgiving."

He thought for a second. "Oh wow, it is."

And I looked up at all of us. All of us--my surrogate Desert Family--are seated at a long banquet table. Henrik, a Great Dane and my new friend. Sarah of the wicked humor and the grabbable boobies. Claire who talks a good game but has a heart of cream cheese. Belinda flirting, Jennifer cracking wise, Ulf silently feeling content, Beatrice generating wisdom, Marielle smiling more and more. Me, making wicked comments and disguising my sensitivity. These are the people who were important to me today. As a traveler, you're lucky to have so much at one time. You're lucky to travel with so many people you like.

I turned to Dave and said, "This was an excellent Thanksgiving dinner." He agreed. This year, even though I was away from everyone I know, it was complete.

Tobias/Augustus Gloop again went to get seconds before half the table had firsts. This time, people challenged him on it. He claimed his rice had gotten cold. Lluis/El Nino sat in the corner quietly--Napolean after Waterloo.

Every Nomad trip gets a tee shirt at the end. We choose a name for the trip and what goes on it--the highlights. Our names go on it, too. After much genial debate, the name of our tour was whittled to three options: "Lions 0, Tortoise 1," "This is my holiday, dammit!" and Juan Carlos' "I'm hungrier than a gypsy dog" outburst. That one won. We dubbed ourselves the Hungry Gypsy Dogs.

After dinner, Lorinda gathered the women together and spoke to them. It looked like they were planning something awful.

Belinda and Henrik and a few others went to a nightclub after dinner. I was so sleepy my ears were ringing. I went home and got in bed. (Translation: found the tent and laid in it.) I found out later they got up to hanky-panky. I also heard that the Zimbabwean hookers were in heavy supply but short demand. (Fred to Dave: "Don't do it or you will f--king die.")