Like that annoying relative who wants to bore you with slides and home movies; this is my last little diary on my trip to Africa. That’s right, after this, I’ll be `all out of Africa’… I would have tried to post it a lot sooner, but I just finished up the week from hell at work, and now I feel a little rested and ready to tackle it.
I’m writing this to share pictures of the fun and neat things that we saw and did, but also as a bit of thanks to our hosts on the second part of our trip, which was primarily in the desert… This is why I’m calling this last installment “Wine from Water”
This is the label from a bottle of wine from the Neuras (pronounced like “annoy your ass” but leaving off the first “an”) winery and guest farm, that we stayed at… and this is a close up of the palms that the label comes from… both trees are hundreds of years old and likely were planted by settlers.
This is a photo of a teenie bit of the compound from atop a hillside that’s about a thirty minute easy hike. The inset on the left is the vineyard with the two palms; the inset on the right is the guest farm.
This is a view of the rooms that we stayed in on the farm.
Neuras is owned and operated by Allan and Sylvia Walkden-Davis… if you are interested in a similar experience, they can be contacted at:
neuras@mweb.com.na
PO Box 155, Maltahöhe, Namibia
Telephone & Fax: ++264 (0)63-293417
Allan and Sylvia were wonderful hosts to our party of nine, and very helpful with advise and tips for day excursions. Sylvia is quite the gourmet, and we had three meals per day of just incredible food that was samplings of local tastes…
On the night of my brother-in-law’s fiftieth birthday, Allan grilled lamb for us, and it was like nothing that I had ever tasted… I usually don’t care much for lamb, but I had thirds!
If you are really interested in the guest farm experience at Neuras, you had better act quickly, because Allan and Sylvia have plans of migrating more into the winery as a business. As I said at the start, Alan is really trying to make a go at producing wine, and this is their fourth year at it.
This is Allan giving us a tour of his facility
The only way that Neuras or any of the farms that we visited in Namibia are able to function is due to natural springs… Neuras is blessed with about 6 of them, and this is the one which is used to irrigate the vineyard.
This is a view of the vineyard, which at this point in time is heading into late fall.
Trying to make wine in the desert is fraught with some unique perils… this is a picture of the imported oaken casks that Allan first attempted to use, but now doesn’t rely on much… Because of the aridity of the desert, he lost 10% of his first run due to evaporation…through the casks! The same task is now accomplished with stainless steel drums and oak slat inserts.
Allan is also quite the naturalist, and took us on a nice hike through the mountains and rugged foothills of his property. He showed us fossils of some of the oldest living organisms on record… strange things that predated even plants. I took tons of beautiful pictures on this hike, too many to post here, but this is a montage of some of the desert wildflowers we saw, and a typical bird nest.
One day of our stay at Neuras was dedicated to a trip into the deep desert around the Naukluft Mountains. These are some of the largest and tallest dunes in the world. To give you a perspective of their size, this is a picture of four of our party hiking around atop Dune 43.
These are my two nieces running down the face of Dune 43.
It’s unbelievable that you can still find life in these places. Most animals hang around the tops of the dunes… particularly birds… to await the bounty borne by the desert winds.
Two more views from the desert floor.
Most life forms are armed to the teeth…everything has thorns!
Well, I’ll close with a typical sunset from the farm at Neuras…
Again, I apologize for the poor quality and compressed size of the pictures. One picture that I wish that I had the skill or the equipment to take would be that of the night sky… it is simply breathtaking the stars that you can see… you feel like you are in outer space.
I would encourage everybody to plan and make a trip abroad sometime… it really is affordable with a little work and planning, and I wouldn’t trade the perspective that you acquire for anything…
