Ruacana Falls

So much has happened in the last 3 weeks! I’m going to try to get caught up, so bear with me if these next few posts get too long.

On March 7^th we left for our travel seminar to northern Namibia. It’s about an 8 hour drive to Oniipa, the town for our rural homestays. We drove all day Monday, and on Tuesday we went to a fish hatchery. They raise tilapia and catfish, which they then sell to farmers who have been trained in how to successfully grow these fish in ponds at home. These farmers can then sell the fish when they have reached adulthood to earn extra money. It seems like a good program, but I just wasn’t very interested in our visit there (it was extremely hot, there were biting ants crawling all over my feet, and I’ve been to fish hatcheries at home).

After the fish hatchery, we drove to the Angola border to the Ruacana waterfalls! The scenery in the north is very different than the scenery I’m used to around Windhoek. It’s very flat, green, and covered in water right now. Northern Namibia gets floodwater from Angola every year, so there are a lot of homes and farms that are completely flooded right now. There’s also a lot of livestock by the side of the roads, so we were constantly stopping so cows, donkeys, and goats could cross the road.

Wildlife crossing the road

We picnicked at Ruacana Falls, and had most of the afternoon to explore and really appreciate the beauty of the waterfalls. The Kunene River forms part of the border between Namibia and Angola. Ruacana Falls is huge! So much water, although it supposedly dries up a trickle during the dry season (apparently all of Namibia becomes brown and hot during the dry season, which I’m finding hard to imagine after seeing all the green lushness of the country right now). While I reveled in the mist coming off the falls, all I could think about was how in a couple of weeks I was going to see an even bigger waterfall! But it was a lot of fun to walk around the falls, sit on rocks with my feet dangling in the river, walk down a set of stairs leading to the bottom of the falls, which involved getting soaking wet from the spray.

Ruacana Falls

During the dry season, students can walk out into the river and stand with one foot in Angola and one foot in Namibia. Needless to say, the water level of the river was far too high to even think about attempting this, and everyone was disappointed that we weren’t going to be able to say we had been to Angola (Angola is one of the many African countries currently experiencing civil unrest, and we had been warned that although it might be easy to get to Angola, it would be far more difficult to return to Namibia. We were told not to cross the border). Some of us decided to be really rebellious and stick our feet through the fence so we could say we had set foot in Angola. Then we discovered, with the help of one of our drivers, that further along the path there were some rocks you could climb to actually get into Angola! Of course, everyone in our group crossed the border so we could say we had been in Angola. Angola was obviously expecting this to happen, as they had a stone pillar reading ‘Angola’ conveniently located five feet over the border so tourists could take pictures in front of it.

I'm in Angola!

So, I crossed into Angola and can now check that off the list!

More blogs to come in the next few days as I attempt to get caught up on all the happenings of the last three weeks!