The Desert Express

We had an opportunity this last weekend to take a special train called the Desert Express (the "Express" being a complete misnoner) to Swakopmund, which is a town on the west coast of Namibia, on the Atlantic Ocean. We left Windhoek on Friday about 13:00 and rode for several hours through the countryside until we reached a siding where there were giant 4wd trucks waiting for us. The trucks took us to a nearby lodge, where we stopped for a quick iced tea before getting back on the trucks to go see some animals. We got to see some animals we had never seen before, such as waterboks and blesboks. There were also kudu, warthogs (with babies), giraffes, donkeys (Abigaels favorite), dik diks, and 2 white rhino (who were actually dark brown in color; white and black rhino are determined by the arrangement of their horns, it has nothing to do with the color of their skin). The waterboks have interesting (and kind of funny) markings: they are dark brown, and from behind they look like they have a toilet seat haning on their tail. After the drive, we went back to the lodge sundowner and a snack, which we had on a lookout platform over a cliff, and saw rock dassies hanging out just below us. Rock dassies look like marmots, but their closest biological relative is the elephant. Oddly, they share nearly identical DNA.

We then returned to the train and had dinner in the dining car. The train stopped at night on a siding in remote location and everyone went to bed (except Mr. Wrye and I, who went out for a little walk to try and see the stars, but it was cloudy, and even started raining on us, so we gave up). Abigael and Lillian were very excited because our room on the train had bunk beds. It was also the first time any of us had slept on a train in actual beds (and not seats).

Early in the morning, while we were still sleeping, the train started moving and when we woke up we were in the middle of the Namib desert. We took showers in the very tiny bathroom (in which we had to swing the sink out of the shower and over the toilet to take a shower), and then had breakfast before stopping to go climb a dune. While the surroundings weren't quite as spectacular as Sossusvlei, this dune was actually higher and steeper than the one we climbed before. I still had to carry Lillian most of the way up, but I got to run down the dune face with Abigael this time, and Lillian let Mr. Wrye run down carrying her instead of sliding
this time.

We then got back on the train to go the last few kilometers into Swakopmund and the end of our very fun train trip. It was an amazing experience. (Lillian keeps saying we didn't ride the train, we rode the engine. She's very insistent about this.)

Another interesting thing was that we got to take our car on the train. The train left to go back to Windhoek the same day, but we spent the night and drove back, so we brought the car. They attach freight cars to the train to carry the cars and Mr. Wrye drove the car through across the tracks, up the platform, and on to the train car himself (and off at the other end). Just
one more interesting thing to a very fun trip.