Tuesday, 23 July was the day I was supposed to arrive at the resort so I got up super early and enjoyed the a breakfast they serve complimentary at the hotel and made my way to the airport with six suitcases and two carry-ons for the short two hour flight from Cape Town to Windhoek Namibia, the capital city.
I was to be picked up by a gentleman named Phillemon, who drove for the &Beyond resort and had driven five hours from the resort to get me. I had warned them that I had a lot of stuff and he brought a ten-seat Land Rover that the company uses for some of their Safari excursions. Well, the poor guy had to wait for me for two hours while I harangued with the Customs agents, trying to make them understand that all of the stuff that I had was personal use, but it was very tough for them to understand because not too many single people come in with six suitcases full of gear and are not trying to sell any of it. It's also unusual for them to run across somebody who will travel halfway around the world just to take pictures of the sky just for the hell of it, so after talking about forms and duties and all of that, I finally showed them some of the pictures on my phone that I take and then we went through all six suitcases every item and I explained what they all were, “This is a camera, this is another camera, this is a telescope mount. This is the telescope itself, etc., etc., until they were finally convinced that I was just using all this stuff as personal items, even though I don't think they really got it, but the best part was they ended up waiving me through with no charge, Whoopie!
Poor Phillemon had to wait for me while this was all going on, all the other people with signs had left and he was the only one standing there holding the “Bill Gwynne &Beyond Resort” sign. I felt really sorry for the guy.
As it turned out, he had other business in town; we stopped off at a couple of guys’ house that were mechanics for Land Rovers and he collected something from them to bring with us, and then we went and picked up a couple of guys who were coming to the resort and by this time we were all hungry so we stopped at Hungry Lion, which is kind of like the Namibian version of KFC although you see KFC everywhere around here.
It was now around 4 o'clock, only a couple of hours before sunset, and we were just leaving town. I had brought the drone with me because I really wanted a shot of the Land Rover driving on a dirt road at Sunset leaving that big dust trail behind as we drove off into the distance while the drone followed us. It was looking less and less likely that this was going to happen.
We were still on main roads with lots of traffic and I was becoming resigned to the fact that perhaps I brought the drone all the way for nothing, but like magic about 20 minutes before sunset, we turned onto a gravel road! I had told him earlier that I was looking to do this kind of thing and so I started asking him if this would be a good time. He was agreeable so we stopped I unpacked the drone real fast and gave it a launch and was able to get about eight or ten minutes of footage of the drone following the Land Rover and doing a nice scan around the mountains and desert of Namibia, I was so psyched that I got that shot!
It was a five hour trip in the Land Rover from Windhoek to the resort, the last three hours of it were on a dirt roads which the Land Rover handled nicely, but I was being cautious of my one remaining kidney and the bumpier parts of this ride. Fortunately, he had made this run so many times he knew all the little bits of road that you had to be careful on.
A quick 3 second shot with the phone!
It had been dark for a couple of hours already and we were within 40 or 50 km of our destination when he asked to stop and take a little break. I think he might've been getting sleepy so he had a couple remaining pieces of his chicken and the Namibian version of RedBull and walked around a little bit. This was my chance to get out of the van and look at the Namibian night sky for the first time, and it I can tell you it was absolutely breathtaking!
Sagittarius and the center of our Galaxy was straight overhead instead of low to the horizon from the US. The southern cross was blazing away and had just passed the Meridian (midway point between East and West) and you could see the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon going straight overhead! The center of our galaxy was so bright that it had a three dimensional effect that I've never seen before. This was my very first inkling of what the next two months were going to be like.
We arrived about 9:30 at night and the guys helped me with all that luggage into my room that they have set aside for the Astronomer and since I was still pretty awake, I unpacked all the suitcases and got set up in the room, which is actually very nice ! There is no cell service here whatsoever, but they do have pretty good Internet and I'm able to check mail and make these blog posts and I even uploaded a video yesterday so that's working well.
Once I had done all that I took a walk up to the Observatory area just to get a glimpse of the telescope and figure out where I was going to set up my photographic rigs the following day. I took a moment to familiarize myself with the part of the sky that I had never seen before; you can look at star maps all you want, but it's a totally different thing to reconcile the map against the real sky. You could see the famous globular star cluster Omega Centauri naked-eye, and that will certainly be one of the first things that I show people when they come to the telescope each night! It’s a show stopper!
