Wow. It’s dark! It’s really fu#@!ng dark, and so quickly.
I make sausages wrapped in bacon, and little sweet red peppers stuffed with cheese and also wrapped in bacon, because, hey: bacon, on the camp fire.
I scoff them very quickly with a glass of red, sense of ease reducing as quickly as the light.
I haven’t experienced such total darkness and isolation since Siberia. In Siberia, though there was technically the possibility of bears, it was more likely id meet Vladimir Putin, but out here… well. God knows.
It’s scary in a cheesy horror movie giving you the creeps even though you know its not real kind of way, not in an actual threat kind of way, but it’s still hard to ignore the shiver down your spine when you’re out in the bush like this completely on your own.
The fire burns bright but fast because the wood is so dry, and so as it fades I retreat up the ladder to my roof tent.
The sides of the tent slope up towards the peak, so with the door unzipped then if I lie on my back my head is almost out on the open with an uninterrupted view straight up to the stars.
And my God, what stars!
The tent feels like home, like sanctuary, and so the psychological chills vanish to be replaced by awe at these surroundings.
It’s so completely dark with no artificial light around for tens of miles that the sky is thick with stars. The milky way looks like a painting and I can easily see the fast moving pinpricks of light that are satellites in orbit.
I’ll probably be watching this mesmerising, beautiful sky until I fall asleep. Complete tranquillity. Just a few distant animal sounds.
Good night from Namibia!