Zebra: The Other White Meat

So, after a day and a half in Namibia, we've eaten more wildlife than we've seen. Of course, we've been in the Namibia's capital, Windhoek, which is not particularly known for its wildlife.
It was a short flight from Jo'burg to here and we spent Wednesday afternoon relaxing at the guesthouse and talking over the details of our drive around southern Namibia (which we leave for tomorrow, Friday) with our guy at the tour company. For dinner, we went to Joe's Beerhouse, a Windhoek institution and tourist favorite, known for its wild game. After a snail appetizer, our main dishes came out - skewered springbok kebabs for me and a zebra stake for Katie. Both were very tasty. The zebra, as suggested in the title, was a rather light meat while the springbok was redder, and tasted pretty similar to beef. We also had some good beers for dinner. Besides being cheap (typically a beer is bit over a dollar for a bottle here), with Namibia's history of German influence, the beer here is also pretty good.
Today we struck off to explore the city. Warnings about safety abound at the guesthouse: don't park outside unless you want your car to be broken into; don't carry a bag unless you want to be robbed at knife point. So we took reasonable precautions, not carrying bags and not bringing more money than we needed, and we weren't hassled nor did we feel unsafe. I guess there's always the risk though. What we found was actually a clean orderly city. As with most 3rd world cities I've been in, there is an element of things seeming unfinished, or unmaintained, such as sidewalks suddenly turning to dirt, and nice landscaping interrupted by dirt lots. On the other hand, there really is almost no trash around the city. The main shopping center was comparable to any nice mall in the US, just with no GAP and more handicrafts for sale. The grocery store was as well stocked as any in the US, but with more German sausages and wild game biltong (basically jerky, but don't call it that!)
Our first stop was at the National Museum, which primarily focused on Namibia's independence struggles against Germany and South Africa, and the first elections as an independent country in 1990. Namibia never won independence from Germany, rather at the start of WWI South Africa invaded at the request of England and took over from Germany. Against the protest of much of the world, South Africa held on to Namibia until a 1988 treaty called for transition to independence to start in 1989, culminating with elections later that year, and a new constitution and independence early the following year.
From the museum we walked to the Parliament Building and around the gardens in front of it and to the Christukirche, a German Lutheran Church built in the early 1900s.


We stopped for lunch at a cafe next to Zoo Park, a grassy park in the center of town. From there we watched the activity (or lack thereof, as most of the park visitors seemed to be pretty inactive) of the park, and observed an apparent unofficial, presumably economic, segregation. All the people eating at the cafe were white, while all the people in the park, as well as the waiters at the cafe, were black.
We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out arts & crafts, grocery shopping, and attempting to buy a cell phone we'll be able to use during our trip. The phone situation is a bit different here than in the US, so it took some fact finding to figure out what we need to get, but I think we have it all sorted out and will be able to pick one up tomorrow before we head south.
So tomorrow we start our drive through Southern Namibia. We'll be in a rented pickup and our sleeping accommodations will be the tent that sets up on top of the truck, hopefully out of reach of the wildlife. It will be interesting. We are now at the Chameleon Guesthouse and have a really cool, safari inspired room, with our own private bath. Nice private room, tent on top of a truck...we like to mix it up :)