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Last weekend I took part in a course about elephant behaviour, just out of interest. It turned out to be a professional tour guide course, but never mind. I never thought one could talk 3 days solid about elephants, but it was possible and even very interesting. My intention was to learn what to do when near elephants and how to predict when one has to leave them alone to avoid being charged. I got an idea of that, although there is of course no clear answer for all situations. But I also got so much relevant background information starting with anatomy to guess when a broken tusk would be painful (and therefore the elephant aggressive) to the family structure of elephant groups. There were surprising facts such as that they have only one molar tooth at a time in each quarter of the jaw and that they have 6 sets of that. Or that giraffes communicate by infrasound (a bit off topic, but still interesting). Or that the weight of an elephant results in only 600g per square centimetre footprint area. All in all, it was a strenious, but enjoyable weekend and I hope I passed my test today so that I can join the practical part of the course next year. And avoid elephants like the one on the picture which I took on a guided tour last year in Caprivi.
Last weekend I finally managed to take part in a gravel- and off-road driving training course, something I already wanted to do before I rolled my first Landrover. Two women from the Afrikaans course joined the party. The training is provided by a German couple on a farm near Solitaire, almost in the Namib desert. To get there you have to drive 250km from Windhoek - mostly on gravel road, so you have already done some training before arrival. I was glad about the airconditioning in the car because it was very hot - summer in the desert. We started with 2h of theory and the most important thing I kept in mind from that is: YES, you should brake when the car becomes unstable. So far many people told me this was what I had done wrong during my accident: I put my foot on the brakes. Another useful thing to know was that one should not look at any obstacle on the road, but rather at the way around it. The practical training was exhausting, of course more for the nerves than for the body. We started with driving at low speed around some cones and then gradually increasing the speed until the car started to slide. This was a horrible feeling, but after a while I found out that even then it is possible to gain control again (within limits) if you react calmly in the right way. The next exercise was to brake fully while steering the car around a wall of cones. Yes, ABS makes it possible, although in this case only at speed up to 70km/h. Then we tried driving bends and our trainer asked me whether I want to become a ralley driver. No intention at all, thanks. I think our tyres lost a bit of rubber during these lessons.
The second part was off-road driving, to find out what the car can do and where the limits are. Now both of us (my car and myself) know what is possible. I would never have dared to try all these things, the worst of which was driving along a slope with the sky in one side window and the earth right in front of the other one - at least it seemed so. We also drove diagonally through ditches and up steep hills. The highlight at the end was a drive up a solitary hill from where we had a great view down to the dunes. Then we drove back to camp through a dry riverbed, trying not to get stuck in the sand.
The evenings we passed enjoyable with BBQ and chatting.
