Schlink Attack: The Little Five of Namibia

Deets likes to say he is a reptile, a reasonable supposition considering that he is president of Snake Town, the place where reptiles rule and pigeons wage war. Mark and I decided that a trip to the coast for a living desert tour would be a good idea. Here we would see the "Little Five" of Namibia: 4 reptiles and a spider. The trip was a surprise, so we picked up the kids from school (a rare treat for them) and headed west to the Atlantic Ocean.

Swakopmund is a very popular tourist destination, but I can't say it is my favorite place in Namibia. The town has a weird feel, it's rarely sunny, and the pale and pipelined moonscape surrounding the town makes my soul feel withered and isolated. But, there is something to be said about being near the water, and the restaurants here are quite good.

We booked a family room at the Delight Hotel, part of the Gondwana conglomerate chain. The second I walked in, I knew I made the right decision. The hotel is colorful and punchy. The staff were kind. The room was cozy and chic plus they had the softest towels. In a town that was cold and hazy, the hotel was, in a word: delightful.

Around 8:00 am the next morning our group of 6 adults and 6 kids would pile into the 4x4s of Charly's Desert Tours and take off for the Dorab National Park, a short 60 second drive to edge of town. Seriously, the edge of Swakopmund city life quickly disappears into the sand dunes. Imagine the history this place has buried beneath it.

We didn't have to wait long to find out. While the guides were busy searching for signs of animal life, another guide gathered the group around a long stretch of bleached horse’s bones left over from World War II. True to its name, WWII affected far more than Europe and the Pacific. Bitter, bloody fights raged throughout Southern Africa. Fingers and guns were pointed in all directions.

The bones show that horses were lined up and shot, perhaps due to malnutrition, perhaps for revenge on the enemy. Either way, propaganda was at a fever pitch and the stories left behind are not easily forgotten. Alas, the guide continued to weave bits and pieces of Namibia’s history, sharing details of the beautiful tribes, traditions, and languages that have shaped the country that it is today.

In the meantime, the scouts were hiking up dunes, looking for tiny indentations in the sand. A small V-shape in the sand indicated a Palmato gecko was resting about 15 cm beneath the surface. Nocturnal, translucent and 6 cm long, these geckos have internal organs that show a beautiful rainbow hue. When agitated or scared, these geckos “puff” themselves up to make them look bigger, though for humans trying to take pictures of them, they are remarkably, still tiny.

In a sloth-like fashion, aNamaqua chameleon meandered through a tangle of low succulent bushes. Its independent eyes scrolled the environment, its tail in a perfect curlicue as it made its summit. Namaqua chameleons are green-brown in color and regulate its body temperature by changing half of its body to a light grey in order to reflect heat. They lay eggs early in life (6 months) and reportedly run much faster than them, despite being sized more than four times bigger.

Fixing his the eyes to the horizon, the guide walked to a long line of broken concrete pyres from the days of inspired trans-Namibian railroad construction (late 1890’s). At the time, engineers forgot to accommodate for high and low tide changes. Since ocean tides are quite powerful and unrelenting, the result for the potential train line from Walvis Bay to Swakopmund was a disastrous one. In fact, the Martin Luther Museum, located on the outskirts of the city, houses a locomotive engine (the Martin Luther Steam Ox) that was ultimately abandoned. For train enthusiasts, it’s worth a visit. Otherwise…

Next to the blocks was a stick stuck in the sand, the next marker for dune life. No more than 4 cm down was the dancing white lady, cartwheeling spider. This venomous creature’s life is more horrifying than the praying mantis: there is a desert wasp that enjoys tracking them down to sting, paralyze, and lay eggs inside the spider so its babies can have a live and cozy food source upon hatching. The spider, when threatened, will escape by rolling up its legs and cartwheel down the dune at a rate faster than the wasp can fly.

Found only by the broken sand trail it leaves along steep dunes, the shovel snouted lizard has a fantastic dance, picking up its feet in a side to side fashion to keep its feet from burning on the hot sand. These lizards bite no matter how big the predator, but when the time comes to escape they will dive into the sand face first and shovel themselves under.

As for the creepiest of all creatures, the sidewinder is considered second smallest of the snakes, maxing out at 30cm long (after the dwarf adder). These snakes blend painfully well into the sand, and feeding on lizards and geckos. The guides have to search for faint S-markings in the sand, which are often covered up by the wind. Be aware of these creatures as their bite is cytotoxic and neurotoxic. That means there is local tissue destruction and nervous system effects. In effect, a bite from one of these will result in something much worse than an owie and a headache.

Sadly, no sidewinders could be found. We went home snakeless, but Deets did not feel cheated since he was the glorified ringleader of all the kids who ran up and down the dunes, screaming their heads off like tea kettles in response to our lifting of the Cone of Silence when the guides were speaking.

Wrapping up the tour with a barf worth bang, the guides took pleasure of taking us on a ~~torture~~ rumpus ride up and around the dunes before returning to the tar road. If given the choice to die, I might have taken it. At what point in my life did I turn into an old woman who can't handle a little bit of roller coaster action? We arrived back to the hotel where I immediately crawled into bed like a hungover, flu-ridden, miserable human being who was forced to watch her prize pig disemboweled with a machete. Forty-five minutes later, I was right as rain.