Waterfalls and disgusting chips

This past weekend, Carmen and I decided to meet up with a group of other volunteers at Ruacana falls, about 150 km away to the north and east. I wasn’t sure what we were in for, but it turned out pretty well.
The trip began on Friday afternoon after classes let out. We were in a bit of a rush, as we had been told by various people that it may or may not be difficult to get a hike at that time of day. Ah yes, no good transportation other than catching a hike, that is pretty much public transportation here. We walked with our huge touristy packs to the gas station down the hill, and began to look for rides. We asked one truck, no luck. I then spied a nice-looking, clean, new truck/SUV. These are not common here. At all. I went up to the vehicle, asked about Ruacana, and as luck would have it, that’s where they were heading. Carmen and I proceeded to be absolutely spoiled on our first hike here. It was a new car, we were the only ones hiking, and there was air-conditioning. Not bad for my first time in a car in maybe a month. It was a bit more expensive than we wanted, but well worth it. The man who drove was super interesting as well; apparently he is the marketing director for some Namibian regulation commission that works on importing and exporting livestock and farm equipment. He lived in Kenya for a while, educated in England, etc. Needless to say, we were also paying for good conversation.
So we were dropped off by that vehicle about 10k from where we needed to be. We began walking, and made it maybe 400m before a kombi came by and we flagged them down. It just so happened that Rachel, another volunteer, was in the kombi, coming from the east. We hiked the last 10k with them, and stopped at a BP station. There we met up with some other volunteers (Tomas, Jen L., Aleks, Emily, Chris, Chloe), and enjoyed a huge treat – ice cream with chocolate sauce. Heaven. Chris and Chloe have a car here, and shuttled us to the campsite. Awesome campsite, with stone circles to sit on, braai pits, and showers with hot water(!). We set up, and ate dinner while playing Citadels and mafia.
The next day we went to the Ruacana falls themselves. The falls require leaving Namibia, but not entering Angola… weird. We were in some odd border area, and could see Angola about 10 ft away behind a fence. The falls were very pretty, and we came when the water was flowing at least decently with the recent rain. We didn’t get sprayed, but they were impressive nonetheless. We climbed down to the bottom of a long flight of stairs, and sat on the rocks for a while, seeing monkeys and a crocodile while we were there.
That night we had a little braai with veggie burgers (a contradiction??) and tried to stay out of the rain. It was quite a relaxing time, and it was nice to catch up with everybody. We all have very different situations here, and it was cool to compare and contrast. Rachel, for instance, has just been given a ten day holiday (at least), since her town is flooded. The learners have literally been swimming to school.
The whole weekend made me very excited for other breaks. We are planning on going to Swakopmund around Easter, Cape Town and maybe somewhere else for May break, and hiking Fish River Canyon in August (super excited about that one). While I shouldn’t focus too much on the time when I am not teaching, it is fun to make plans. Hopefully we can make other little weekend trips like this one too. It’s exciting to think that I am getting to see a good deal of Namibia, or at least my little corner of it.
Ah, and before I forget… The title of this post refers to the chips available at the BP in Ruacana, and really groceries in general here. Chips here, you see, have interesting flavors. They have only dried tomato fritoes, no other kind. They had fried-chicken flavor chips, but no ranch or bbq. There were Mexican chili chips, but no sour cream and onion. I bought a couple bags, and enjoyed the raman-flavored variety (fried-chicken). Other types were less than pleasant…