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  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Sixty three – Etosha NP

    We now on our way to Halali, the next rest camp that was 70 kilometres away, which should only have taken us around hour but this place was teeming with animals. Every waterhole had an abundance so we didn’t end up getting there until after midday some 4 hours later!
    This wildlife viewing slows you down!
    But how can you hurry when a big herd of elephants turn up at waterhole that you’ve been watching for a few minutes or two or three giraffes bend over, legs splayed, to have a drink.

    At Halali we were back to camping after the dubious luxury of a chalet at Okaukuejo. It was fine, a bit dusty but there weren’t many other happy campers, so it was quite quiet.
    That was until an overlander with at least 20 people hanging off it parked next to us. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep that night.

    Halali also had its own waterhole and that evening we saw a three black rhino again. We tried to work out whether it was the same three we had seen at Okaukuejo the previous evening. It seemed almost impossible that three rhino (one was a baby) would walk 70 kilometres in a day but who knows! As they lapped away at the water, a lioness and a couple of hyena appeared. They didn’t hang around long! One of the rhino continually went for them so that eventually they got the hint that they weren’t welcome to join the rhino family for a drink.

    Our morning game drive yielded more lions again. How boring! There were three males strolling down to Salvadora waterhole obviously thirsty and possibly hungry. We hung around for a while but they just found a shady tree and slept.
    Lions actually sleep or rest for around twenty-one hours a day, leaving just three hours to hunt and eat. It’s a little known fact that they actually have a very low kill hit rate but one decent kill can last them for almost a week. Of course these three guys probably weren’t thinking too much about actually hunting that’s a predominately female occupation. They actually looked like they were having a boy’s day out, a bit of strutting and a few drinks and whole lot of sleep.

    We had the same distracting problem getting to Namutoni the last of the rest camps in the afternoon, which again is 70 kilometres away.  Elephant, giraffe, gemsbok, etc all appeared from time to time at different water holes.

    Namutoni is home to the rather out of place Namutoni fort; a relic of German colonial days. Built in 1899 as an outpost for troops to control the Owambo people, it’s now tourist accommodation. In 1904 seven soldiers faced the impossible task of defending it against 500 warriors, needless to say they didn’t succeed.

    Namutoni had its own waterhole but for some reason it’s not as popular with the animals as the others at Okaukuejo and Halali, even though it’s a lot more picturesque. Still we couldn’t really complain we had seen a cheetah close up and fifteen giraffe on our late afternoon game drive earlier.

    It was time to leave Etosha. It really was an experience and great value for money in comparison to some of the other game parks in Africa. US$22.00 per day for a chalet and US$13.00 per day for a camp site including all the game viewing you can cram in during daylight hours is pretty good. Especially when generally speaking there’s so much game around.

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    A giraffe takes time out to have a drink at a watehole in Etosha National Park in Namibia
    A giraffe takes time out to have a drink at a watehole in Etosha National Park in Namibia

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Sixty two – Etosha NP

    Back at the camp we found a couple of seats by the illuminated camp water hole and waited for the show to start. As darkness came so did a herd of thirsty Elephants. They drank like there was no tomorrow. We thought that they would suck the water hole dry. But suddenly they all stopped and led by the boss bull all fifteen including five babies, trooped off, like a scene from Jungle Book, into the under growth and out of our sight.

    Later that night we were really privileged. Three black rhino sauntered down for a drink. Why were we privileged? Well the black rhino is probably the most famous endangered species in Africa. Due, mainly to poaching, there are a little over 3000 left after having a population of 60000 in 1970. It’s not my place to explain the mechanics of why these powerful beasts are exterminated ruthlessly for their horn so that the ‘misguided’ population of some Asian nations can use it for medicinal and aphrodisiac purposes. Nor is it my place to explain why the Yemeni insist that they must have daggers made of rhino horn.
    Suffice to say that due to both of these stupid ignorant beliefs a few ruthless businessmen make a fortune out of having a beautiful animal virtually wiped out from the surface of this planet and that sucks!

    Black rhino are also one of the ‘big five’. These five were the most prized ‘scalps’ by game hunters and if you think that’s just a relic of the past, then think again, there’s still plenty of opportunities on private land for game hunters to shoot defenseless animals for ‘sport’.

    Now the ‘big five’ are sought after for the best viewing. The other four are lion, leopard, buffalo and elephant and on that particular day we had seen three of them.
    For those of you thinking of game viewing in Africa, don’t knock yourself trying to see this group of animals. There is plenty of other wildlife to be seen that are just as enjoyable to watch. Game viewing is not a serious of ticks on a ‘to see checklist’ but an opportunity to watch Mother Nature at it’s wildest best.
    Anyway that’s enough winging and preaching for now.

    The next morning there was wildlife everywhere!………….. Giraffe, zebra, hyena, red hartebeest, impala and kudu to name just a few and then on then way back a huge bull elephant just ambling across the road just a few metres in front of us. It occurred to us at the same time that elephants have been known to charge if spooked, if this baby had turned on us this little ‘Chico’ would have been scrap metal within seconds.
    Needless to say I had the gear stick in reverse and the handbrake off, just as a precaution!

    The afternoon yielded different results. We went back to Okondeka hoping to see the same pride of lions. They were missing in action but what we did see was a male lion sitting in the shade of a thorny acacia tree, you know the ones, the trees that are shaped like an umbrella and are in almost every African sunset shot found in the glossy travel brochures.
    We didn’t realise that he was injured until he got up and strolled or rather limped away. We managed to follow him to his destination, a carcass that probably a few hours a go was live Zebra, going about his business of chewing a few blades of grass, before being brutally murdered for Monsieur lion’s dinner. Somehow the lion must have got injured during the kill, but that didn’t stop him chewing away and at the same time growling at the vultures and jackals who anxious to share the spoils.
    It was quite fascinating to watch. I felt like we were watching a discovery channel show!

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    An elephant drinking at dusk at a camp waterhole in Etosha NP in Namibia
    An elephant drinking at dusk at a camp waterhole in Etosha NP in Namibia

     

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Sixty one – Etosha NP

    Before we left home the idea of picking up some casual work in Southern Africa had appealed. We emailed several lodges in Namibia and Botswana with no luck. However some of these lodges were quite helpful and invited us to drop in when we were in the area, hoping, of course, that we would stay as guests.

    One of these lodges was Camp Setenghi, who had an office in Outjo, the last decent sized town before Etosha. Wayne and Ilvia were genuinely friendly and interested in what we were doing and more than happy to offer advice with no strings attached. They still had no work and in fact warned us that it was illegal to work in Namibia without a work visa and that could lead to some unscrupulous employees taking advantage and basically ripping you off.

    We had actually already dismissed the idea of working in Africa. One of the pitfalls of middle age ‘backpacking’ is the fact that you are often parents as well. In our case our grown up sons were both working in London and we hadn’t seen either of them for quite a while. Working would have delayed any reunion, so it seemed a better idea to simply work for longer in England, where there appeared to be plenty of work and where we had no work visa issues.

    Etosha National Park is 22,000 square kilometres of animals!
    It doesn’t have the same international profile as Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Chobe, Kenya’s Maasai Mara or Tanzania’s Serengeti but it does have an abundance of wildlife that rivals any of it’s more famous counterparts.
    The name Etosha means ‘great white place’ after its main feature the mostly dry Etosha pan that is roughly 120 kilometres long and 72 kilometres wide and dominates the Park in area. Game viewing revolves mainly around the many natural and manmade waterholes that dot the southern edge of the pan. That’s not to say that game can’t be seen elsewhere, it’s just they’re the most likely spots.

    We stayed in a small chalet in Okaukuejo, the first rest camp. Each camp has a waterhole of it’s own and we were disappointed that our chalet with it’s hospital towels and décor wasn’t closer to it. But we soon forgot that and concentrated on the business of wildlife viewing.

    One of the beauties of Etosha is that it’s easy to self-game drive even in the little ‘Chico’. The roads are mostly gravel but are pretty firm so a 4WD is not required. As soon as we got settled in, we were off in search of wildlife.

    At the Okondelia waterhole there was an abundance. Zebra, Wildebeest, Gemsbok, Springbok, Jackals and the pièce de résistance, Lions, everyone’s favourite. We spotted one going for a kill and suddenly there were another seven, two females, one male and four young males, strolling down from the hill behind us towards the water hole to our front. Amazingly they just ambled around the five or six vehicles, that were all clambering for the perfect possie and photo, as if they weren’t there. One of them, a young male, got within 2 metres of the car and Sue nearly dropped the camera out of the window in her excitement.

    What incredible looking beasts they are, finely tuned, aerodynamically designed and perfectly shaped, they are nature at it’s handsomest. You can go to the best zoo’s in the world and see them up close but nothing beats seeing them on their own turf. In a zoo they are just a caged animal, here free to roam they are Lions! They have that spring to their step and sparkle in their eye. This is who they are!

    They all met up at the water hole for I suppose a bit of a sundowner. It was a great start marred only by some dickhead in a red Chico moving his car around to get a better shot at one of the other young males close to his car and frightening him in the process. He should have been dragged out of the car and literally thrown to the lions for dinner by the rest of us, who felt honoured enough just to sit still and experience mother nature at it’s best.

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    Two lions hanging out together at Etosha National park in Namibia
    Two lions hanging out together at Etosha National park in Namibia

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Sixty – Windhoek

    We got our liquid back in the bar when we got back after cooling the bodies in the cool water of the pool.
    There were three tour guides in there. They were actually running an overlander full of middle-aged Belgium and Dutch tourists. We got chatting and had a bit of banter. One of them was a South African and of course the up and coming Cricket and Rugby union world cups was the main topic of discussion.

    “You know I’ve got a lot of time for you guys, but I’m afraid you’re going to come second in both comps to us mighty Aussies” I bravely predicted. Harmless banter followed and these guys then went on to giving us some great tips and info and where and what to see in Namibia and Zimbabwe where they were also heading.

    One of the things I always desperately miss when we’re away from Australia is the dry laconic wit that is always tinged with a sense of irony. Nobody does it better than we do and often it just doesn’t work with people from other cultures even Anglo-Saxon ones. But on occasion we do strike people who have a similar sense of humour and meeting these guys were one of those times.

    It was time to move on to our next port of call, Etosha National Park, nearly 800 kilometres away. We knew we would never be able to get there in one day, especially with 280 kilometres being on gravel and having a car that struggles at 80 kilometres an hour let alone 100 or 110. We did expect however to get further than Windhoek which was little over half way. …………..but that was not to be.

    The gravel section seemed slower than ever and a puncture slowed us down even more. The irony of this was that it happened only half an hour after chuckling at our overlander friends who had stopped by the side of the road to also change a wheel. We now had the problem of getting the puncture repaired. The overlander drivers had given us the name of a place just near Windhoek but it was closed and a slow search eventually found us a place that seemed to take forever to repair it.

    Another problem was rearing its head, that of cash. We had attempted to get some cash out of several ATM’s before heading out to Namib. For some reason none of them wanted to release any money, so we were now starting to get desperate and the ATM’s still weren’t working. A trip into a bank was necessary, something you try to avoid at all costs. It’s not that the bank tellers are unfriendly, it’s just that African banks are slow, disorganized and very bureaucratic. It usually takes three queues to find the right one, which will always be the longest. When it’s your turn the teller looks at you as if you had asked for the Prime Minister’s bank account number. On this particular occasion I got off lightly at only 40 minutes, which was a good job too as Sue was waiting in the car outside.

    By the time we had restocked our food supplies, we just couldn’t be bothered to travel on. A bed at the Cardboard Box seemed a much better option.

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    Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia.
    Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia.

     

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty nine – Namib desert

    Sunup was at 6.30 am and we were first in line at the gate for the 4.45 opening except they actually didn’t open until five. It took one hour to get to within 4 kilometres of Sossusvlei. From here the road is only suitable for 4WD or feet. We only had the latter and it took us a good hour to trudge across the sometimes gravel but mostly sandy track. So after all that we missed the fucking sunrise over Sossusvlei!

    But we there are plenty of other dunes on the way and the sunrise was still pretty good, as was the light as we got to Sossusvlei.
    But it was more than just that.
    Being out there with only the occasional Gemsbok for company (there was another couple, but they gave up after 20 minutes), surrounded by these spectacular shaped dunes changing colour before our very eyes was incredible.
    Sossusvlei itself is without doubt the home of the most dramatic dunes. It has two as a backdrop one of which stands like a giant curly lock of hair, a semicircle with a tail supported by a mountain of red quartz sand grains.
    This is the dune!
    We spent an hour taking photographs, wondering around, eating our breakfast and just enjoying being the only privileged humans in what must be one of the world’s most special places.

    That was until the buses arrive laden with camera carrying, overweight and loud tourists.
    I have absolutely no objection to people seeing the world through a coach window, I believe they’re missing a lot a lot but I respect their choice. What I can’t understand is that insistence that some of them have to touch everything. In this instance they head straight for the dunes and walk along its finely sculptured ridge destroying the moment and changing its shape forever. Not massively of course because the dunes are constantly shifting their sands anyway and I suppose no damage is really being done. ……….But it’s the principle! Being on the dunes cannot be any better than just being there and seeing it untouched and undisturbed by the destructive feet of people who will climb down, get back into their bus and then ask “what’s next” as if it was something to tick off their list of ‘must-see’s in Namibia’.

    We left them to it and walked to Deadvlei a kilometre away.
    Deadvlei was equally as impressive but in a different way. A flat crusty white pan dotted with dead black trees of varying shapes and sizes against a backdrop of the sidewall of a huge dune. No finely sculptured sand shapes here just an impressive mountain range of dunes surrounding this eerie scene. And it was hot too! I set up the tripod and dripped sweat over the camera and the crunchy soil. Probably the first drop of fluid the pan had seen for who knows when.

    We still had the 5 kilometre walk back in this heat. By now there was almost a continual stream of 4WD vehicles and buses following the track. Not one of them stopped to offer a lift!
    Even the occupants of a Landcruiser that got bogged and I offered a hand, drove on past us once free. Back at the car we found out why! There’s a shuttle!! A small bus takes people back and forward to Sossusvlei for N$50(US$5) return or N$30(US$3) one way. No good for sunrise (it doesn’t start until 8) but would have been great for the return. If only we had known we thought, sweat stinging our eyes, our bodies crying out for liquid and legs weak from dragging them across the thick sand.

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    Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia
    Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty eight – Namib desert

    The Desert is inhospitable place when it’s sunny & hot, when it’s raining and windy and still hot it’s pretty much the same. We had a day and a night to kill before our next booked accommodation at Sesriem (I’ll get to that later) so we found an obscure camping ground called Betheseda on the way and put up the tent ready to just relax. Our ‘neighbour’ was a young Uni. student called Jane who looked like she was here to stay for a long time, judging on the permanency of her tent and the number other occupants like dogs, chickens and turkeys who were obviously quite at home in an around her tent.

    I checked out the swimming pool thinking that a swim and a doze by the side would wile away a couple of hours. Unfortunately it was empty.
    Oh well, we’ll just crash by the tent I thought. Well the only thing that crashed was the weather. A thunderstorm came from nowhere and within minutes we were sitting inside the tent hoping our weight would prevent it from taking off and listening to those big drops of rain peppering the canvas walls. Finally we risked leaving the tent when the thunderstorm moved on but now the wind had changed direction and was a hot gusty son of a bitch which made everything dusty and uncomfortable and didn’t ease up until nightfall (at least we got a peaceful night’s sleep).

    One of the disappointing things about budget travelling is the amount of planning you have to do! Having left a career that incorporates planning as an essential tool, I had sort of hoped that we wouldn’t need to do it much. The trouble is if you don’t plan then you could go wrong and miss out on something worth seeing or experiencing or possibly have to wait for another chance which means that you may be in the wrong place to sit around and then get bored and spend money!

    For example we had to plan how much time we spent in Swakopmund so that we can get back to Windhoek to catch the tour to Botswana and get dropped off in Victoria Falls and then we have to decide how much time we spend in Zimbabwe, before getting to Malawi and Tanzania etc etc. But I guess it’s a lot better than having to plan what I’m going to say at the next Sales Meeting about sales for the month, strategies, KPI’s, WCA’s and other ‘exciting’ topics.

    Back on the road again and the rain had left big lakes of water covering the gravel road. We (I say we but it was really me, Sue got out of the car to watch) managed to navigate through two of the three consecutive temporary water holes without mishap. The last one was a bit scary as the car began to slow the deeper it got but ‘Peter Brock’ here was equal to the challenge.

    Sossusvlei is arguably, Namibia’s greatest natural attraction. It’s basically a 32,000 square kilometre area of sand dunes in the Namib Desert. But that doesn’t do it justice. Some of the world’s largest and most spectacular dunes are found here and Sossusvlei is merely the most accessible site. The German word vlei means pan and that is what Sossusvlei is, a huge dry pan set amongst 200 metres high dunes 69 kilometres from the civilization.

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    Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia
    Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty seven – Namib desert

    We had actually booked a campsite for the next day but took a chance that they had a vacancy for that night. That almost backfired when the camp manager said that they were fully booked but then went on to say, “I think we can make a plan”.

    Strange sort of saying that! I had first heard it in South Africa and we sort of guessed it means “we can work it out” or “I think we can do something” etc. Namibia was effectively colonised by South Africa from the end of World War I until 1990 when it gained independence. They were only meant to administer Namibia for a short period until the League of Nations worked out (‘made a plan!!’) what to do with the place. But the South Africans were a stubborn lot and had also become paranoid about National security, so once they took control, they had no intention of leaving in a hurry.
    The South African influence is still pretty strong. Even though English is the official language, Afrikaans is spoken by nearly everyone as a first language and most of the whites that live here are either South African or have South African ancestry.

    So anyway we had now become accustomed to coming across these pseudo South Africans, who, to be fair think of Namibia as their home.

    The campsites in nearly all of these National parks are big enough to take up to eight people, so in this instance even though there was only about ten sites, a couple of them only had two people and we were able to share a site and still have room to spare.

    It was a beautiful shady campsite nestled in a small but deep valley between huge sandstone boulders on one side and a steep rocky bank on the other. It did have a couple of major drawbacks, no electricity even in the ablutions block and no shop or fuel. Can’t really say that the latter really worried us. But as the days were now quite short we ended up showering in the dark, a unique experience not to be missed especially when you drop the soap.

    We were there for one reason; to walk the 17 kilometre Waterkloof trail…… and quite a hike it was. It felt like thirty kilometres!

    Up at sunrise the next morning, we followed the yellow feet (markers) along a riverbed or two for most of the way. You know, riverbeds are often rather tedious and awkward to walk on. They’re usually cluttered with big boulders, rocks and stones and sometimes an occasional metre or two of sand and this was no exception.
    There were some pockets of small clear pools of water populated with a few frogs, crabs and tiny fish. But they died out after a while and then reappeared around 3 or 4 kilometres from the end, bigger and deeper, deep enough in fact to revitalize our weary bodies and aching feet.
    Between these two riverbeds we had actually climbed till we reached and then crossed a flat treeless plain to reach another, though steeper ascent to the trails highest point of 1910 metres. From here there were great views of the surrounding Naukluft Mountains and the desert, despite the increasing cloud cover.

    Now it was time to follow those yellow feet down the mountain which wasn’t as easy as coming up. It was made even harder by two German blokes virtually skipping down the rocky trail past us as we carefully and slowly scrambled our way down. They were a lot younger we told ourselves. This really doesn’t help much, you know! It just confirms that even though you still feel like a 25-year-old, your body is reminding you that you’re not.

    Why is it that the last few kilometres of any hard walk seem like ongoing hell? We think we instinctively know that we are nearing the end and then we torture ourselves by assuming the end is really just around the corner, knowing full well that it’s nowhere near. Finally it really was just around the corner and we trudged back to our tent, cracked open a couple of beers and flopped down exhausted after nearly 8 hours of walking.

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    Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia.
    Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia.

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty six – Namib desert

    Dan Viljoen is a good place for hiking or even just casual walking. We sauntered along the 3 kilometre Wag-n-Bietjie trail to the Stengal Dam enjoying the twittering of birds and the gentle breeze and then at the dam watching a lone wildebeest and a family of warthogs go about their business.
    The park has plenty of game, none of which are at all dangerous. On the game drive we did after the walk, we spotted Mountain Zebra’s, Gemsbok, Springbok, Red Hartebeest, Kudu and two Wildebeest standing on a cliff edge with a backdrop of Windhoek in the distance.
    Coming from a country such as Australia where the wildlife is on the whole small in size and nocturnal in nature, it’s mind-blowing how much wildlife you can see on this continent. Even more mind-blowing is the thought of how much more there must have been before the arrival of Europeans, who brought hunting and poaching and the destruction of the animal’s habitat. Fortunately most African governments have recognised that preservation of these magnificent beasts is important not only to the environment but also to tourism and have set aside large areas for them to roam freely and safely.

    The Rooibes trail we followed the next morning was around 6 kilometres longer and was a good little hike through green hills covered in scrub brush and small acacia trees with panoramic views across to Windhoek before following a river bed. The final couple of kilometres let it down; taking us through a neglected part of the park that was overgrown and speckled with dumped used tyres. We’ve encountered several good walks in the past that have been spoilt by the last stretch. Its almost as if the track designer lost interest two thirds of the way and just ordered the trail builders to find the quickest and most convenient way back. Still it was a good walk and once again we saw plenty of wildlife.

    I managed to get hold of Werner, the car hire owner ,so that we could do something about the gaslight that wouldn’t work. We met him back in Windhoek at the Maerua shopping centre, Windhoek’s and probably Namibia’s biggest. We swapped lights did a bit of food shopping and headed out to our next destination, the Naukluft Camp in the Namib Naukluft National Park.

    The road to Rehobeth was 100 kilometres of flat bitumen and even in our little toy car we could get up a head of steam. What slowed us down considerably was the 130 kilometres of gravel road to Naukluft. We had, to be fair, been warned. Werner had told us to keep the windows closed to prevent dust getting in but driving in mid 30’s heat without air conditioning and no fresh air was just too much. From hereon in we knew that most of the roads we needed to use would be gravel so we had to get used it and if that meant driving with the windows down and sharing the car with grit, well too bad! So by the time we got to Naukluft we were just a little hot and dusty.

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    It is extremely fast and can reach speeds of 100 km/h and can leap 4m through the air. The common name "springbok" comes from the Afrikaans and Dutch words spring = jump and bok = male antelope or goat.
    It is extremely fast and can reach speeds of 100 km/h and can leap 4m through the air. The common name “springbok” comes from the Afrikaans and Dutch words spring = jump and bok = male antelope or goat.

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty five – Windhoek

    We had to organize the next three weeks because 90% of the attractions are in the National Parks, so unless you are on a tour you have to book in advance any accommodation with the Ministry of Environment & Tourism (MET) who manage the parks. There is of course plenty of private accommodation outside of these parks but the majority of these are expensive lodges close by or hotels, B&B’s and municipal camping grounds further afield.

    The MET office was located in the centre of Windhoek and the moment you enter the office you have that initial despairing feeling of hopelessness as African bureaucracy oozes from every desk, wall and official.

    We had the feeling that this could take all day.

    In the end it took about an hour and the guy behind the counter was really helpful and patient as we shuffled and reshuffled to try and fit in with their vacancies. “We’re not world class yet” he said “but we are getting there slowly, so we please be patient with us” …………this guy was good!

    Windhoek is pleasant enough, plenty of shops and the odd restaurant but strangely enough not many travel agencies that deal with budget trips to Botswana. We had been warned that it was probably not a good idea to wander around at night, so what do we do? Yes you’ve guessed it, walked back in darkness after a lengthy stint at the supermarket stocking up!

    Our hire car was a little Chico, again.

    I cannot stress the word ‘little’ enough. With all the camping gear, an additional mandatory spare wheel and our bags, it was touch and go whether we could actually get in ourselves. The biggest components were the two foam mattresses and a canvas tent similar to the one we had used in the Kalahari. On the back seat was a box full of camping gear like a single burner stove, gas bottle, cooking utensils etc. A sign that said in English and Bantu “Warning. Snake in Box” was stuck on both the side rear windows. I asked Werner, the Namibia Car Hire owner, manager and probably only employee, what that was about.

    “The blacks are afraid of snakes, so they’ll think twice about breaking into the car” Nobody was that thick I thought at the time. And sure enough a few days later as I filled up the car at a service station a couple of “blacks” were standing near the car laughing and pointing at the sign.

    Daan Viljoen Game Park was our first stop in this eighteen day self drive tour. It’s about 25 kilometres from Windhoek and it’s quite a peaceful place. Well it was when we first set up camp! But as is often the case a group of campers turned up and parked a few spots along deciding that we would all enjoy their ‘ghetto blaster’ playing rap and techno music as much as they would. Having just had to clean the tent of sand and dust, we weren’t impressed. Add that to the fact that the gas light jet was blocked (I nearly started a fire trying to get it to light) and we were really off to great start.

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    A Wilderbest overlooks Windhoek, Nambia's capital
    A Wilderbest overlooks Windhoek, Nambia’s capital

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty nine – Namib desert

    Civilization is the Sesriem campsite, located on the Namib Naukluft National Park boundary. We had already worked out that if, like all keen photographers, we wanted to see these dunes at sunrise, we had to stay here. Access to the park gate is through the campsite. The park gate opens at 5 am the camp gate two hours later, so stay anywhere else and no sunrise! Of course for those not interested in getting up real early, there’s plenty of choice of accommodation, but they’re all quite a few kilometres from Sesriem let alone Sossusvlei.

    Nothing wrong with Sesriem though. A huge big complex with huge wall lined sites. Each site was luxurious as campsites go with a water tap, a bin, a shady tree, a BBQ and a garden bench. Our site was right at the edge of the place almost in the desert, well actually it’s all in the desert, we just had a closer view. It has a pool, a bar and a shop. The former two came in real handy after our first look at the dunes.

    In the extreme heat of the afternoon when really a siesta underneath a shady tree would have been better we drove down along the white dusty, sandy track. But it was worth it. We didn’t have time to go to Sossuvlei and get back before the park gates shut at Sunset, so we headed for dune 45. Dune 45 is the nearest high dune, which is 45 kilometres from the park gate. It stands almost on it’s own, rising from the flat pan around it, glowing red and brown in the bright sunlight which was rapidly being diffused by the sand laden wind.

    Hiddenvlei, a sort of mini Sossuvlei but hidden by the many dunes behind dune 45 was a 2 kilometre walk away and the trip was notable for the thousands of pinpricks from the grains of sand that were now being propelled at us by the ever increasing gusts. Trying to take photographs was a challenge. Forget the tripod it was all I could do to stand still, let alone the hope the pathetic little thing that we had lugged with us would.

    In some ways it was quite exhilarating, to be there virtually all alone amongst these sandy giants that shift shape in quite short periods of time. Apparently these dunes differ from the their more famous counterparts in the Kalahari and the Sahara in the fact that they are constantly being remodeled by the remorseless wind. Certainly we could see evidence of this before our very eyes as tiny particles of the colourful quartz sand spilled over the crest and down the leeward side. This side is called the slipface for obvious reasons and gives you the classic picture that Hollywood and others have served up as a backdrop for their countless desert blockbusters over the years.

    By the time we got back it was dark and we ready to eat and smooth the sides of our parched throats with a couple of ales from the bar. We didn’t stay around long though. We had to be up at 3.30 am!

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    Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia
    Sossusvlei is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia

     

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty four – Windhoek

    Strangely enough the train actually got into Windhoek at 6.15 am, on time!
    We had managed to sleep a little despite the noise and the fact that my seat leaned to one side and changed on its own accord from recline to upright once in a while.
    That’s the thing about Africa the colonialists had put in all this infrastructure and then pulled out leaving the Africans to maintain it. With few exceptions, Africans are not big on maintenance, so the little jobs are just left until it actually it becomes bigger & then bigger again and a full-scale breakdown occurs.

    We had managed to book a room in the Cardboard Box; a backpackers hostel a couple of kilometres walk from the station. Now it was time to test out these backpacks. With the big ones on our back and the daypacks on our front and feeling like a couple of packhorses, we trudged in the general direction of our destination.
    There were several times in the course of our travels that I wondered what we were doing. And this was one!

    Here we were walking along early in the morning in a strange town with our wardrobes on our back, through who knows what kind of district and being continual ‘honked’ by eager taxi drivers to stay with people younger than our own kids.

    We could be in our comfortable home having breakfast on the patio, or better still asleep in our four star hotel provided for us by Abercrombie & Kent or another equally famous and expensive Tour Company.

    The Cardboard box was open but its ‘reception’ was closed when we got there.
    We dropped our packs and slumped into the usual overused ready to throw out couches and waited.

    This turned out to be the friendliest hostel we had stayed in so far.
    Owned by a couple of local white guys it was run by two girls, Irene & Louise. Irene was Irish and Louise was English and like most of the people who run these places they came here travelling and ended up staying a while.
    The hostel also had a their own travel agent with plenty of info on tours, local attractions and adjoining countries like Botswana, which is where we were headed next. These guys turned out to be pretty handy in organising our next few weeks.

    At home we had we had worked out how we were going to get as far as Windhoek by public transport but had drawn a blank from there to anywhere else in Namibia and then on to Botswana and Zimbabwe. It had become obvious to us that for us to see what we wanted to see in Namibia and then to go to Botswana we would have to either hire a car or join a tour or overlander.

    We ended up doing both.

    Regular backpacker tours run from Windhoek to the Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park in Botswana and then drop you off in Livingstone, Zambia, which is right next to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. We didn’t book that right away as we hoped we could find a cheaper tour that maybe spent a bit more time in Botswana but we now knew it was there.

    The next thing we did was get Cardboard Box to organise a cheap hire car and some camping gear whilst we trundled off into the city to organise the next 3 weeks in Namibia.

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    The ruins of the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz
    The ruins of the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty three – Luderitz

    Diamonds were discovered around Luderitz relatively late in 1908. The Orange River and some of the islands off the coast had yielded some good results from around 1866. A chance discovery by a railway worker sparked off a ‘diamond rush’ and the establishment of Kolmanskop.
    In its heyday it supported a wealthy, mainly German, population of 300 with a hospital, school, bowling alley, theatre and casino. Its only problem had been water that had to be carted from Cape Town. In 1956 the mines were closed and workers were shifted to Oranjemund 200 kilometres south. The town was abandoned and since then has battled to stay afloat in a sea of sand.

    Some of these old buildings had been partly swallowed by the sand dunes, whilst others still stood proudly above the sand.
    Wondering around, a black and white picture formed in my mind of well dressed people going about their business, men tipping their hats to the ladies, horse drawn carriages or model T fords honking as they passed by friends, butchers, bakers and barbers.

    This image was only partly reinforced by our return later that morning to do the guided tour. What was also reinforced was why the sand had been so successful in claiming some of the town. The wind was painful! Millions of tiny particles of sand stung any bare skin and got into our eyes, ears, and anywhere else there was an opening. The picture I now had was of windblown deserted streets as the town’s residents all stayed inside waiting for these almost daily mini sandstorms to ease.

    The journey back to Keetmanshoop on the bus would have been fairly uneventful had we not spotted the worlds only desert horses, some distance from the highway. These horses somehow survive in this harsh environment without aid except for their only source of water, a man made water hole, installed especially for them. They are feral and what’s even weirder is that nobody knows for sure where they came from originally. There are plenty of theories of shipwrecked, or abandoned German cavalry horses.
    I liked the theory that they were once stud horses from the stock of a Baron who lived in a castle nearby. The thought of a European aristocrat living in this harsh environment and pretending that he was still in lush green Bavaria or wherever is just so typical of European colonisation.

    The bus arrived in Keetmanshoop one hour late, which by African time is actually the equivalent of two hours early! Fortunately that really didn’t impact on us as we still had a two hour plus wait for the overnight train to Windhoek. The train itself left an hour late thanks to a bureaucratic conductor insisting that he checked all tickets at snail like speed as passengers boarded. Had one of his colleagues not intervened and presumably told him in Bantu that he was a stupid prick and to go and do something more useful like tie himself to the rail tracks in front, we would probably still be waiting to board the train.

    We had traveled by train in Africa some 4 years before so we sort of knew what to expect. What we had not experienced on these other journeys but had been told about was the videos. A small TV screen sits above the doorway adjoining the next carriage and blasts out the latest movie at decibel level that makes most rock concerts seem quiet. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the movie had been half-decent! This was California Man known as Encino Man in Australia and some other parts of the world. It was absolute crap!

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    The ruins of the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz
    The ruins of the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty two – Luderitz

    Luderitz is the arsehole of the world! I’m sorry, I know that there are plenty of people who live there and love the place but I had to say it!
    Someone, somewhere decided that they would put Luderitz about 350 kilometres from anywhere on the way to nowhere and then have the gall to make it sound appealing enough for you to make the effort, only to find that there is actually nothing there!
    Look it’s all very twee having these Bavarian style buildings that house teahouses and pastry shops sandwiched between the desert and the Ocean but if I wanted to see German character I would go to Germany.

    We stayed a couple of nights and managed to keep ourselves busy. The backpackers was quite comfy and more importantly quiet, we virtually had the place to ourselves.

    Most of the ‘attractions’ are spread out away from the town so you either hire a car or go on a tour. We chose the former as the tours weren’t running very frequently and were quite expensive. One tour we did do however was the “West Coast Experience” on the schooner ‘Sedina’. Two hours on a boat, one hour motoring to a desolate spot called Halifax Island and one hour sailing back.

    Actually it wasn’t really that bad, we got to see lots of Cape Fur Seals, Heaviside Dolphins and some really smelly Jackass Penguins plus an old whaling station. But the terrain was so desolate, just sand and rock, no colour, trees or shrubs just a naked bleak landscape. I wondered, shivering in the cold and wet from the continual splashing of seawater, what the suicide rate was here.

    The scenery didn’t change much during our self-drive tour; it just got windier, to the point that just getting out of the car was a challenge. We wanted to walk across the wooden bridge to get a closer look at the Cape Fur Seal colony at Diaz Point but the wind was just too strong! The rock actually got darker and bleaker as we drove around the peninsular that faces Luderitz, if the moon is like this, I don’t want to go there! Even the scattering of a few flamingoes on Agate Beach didn’t raise our spirits. What did though was Kolmanskop!

    Kolmanskop is literally the jewel in the dreary Luderitz crown. A once thriving diamond mining town, now deserted and thanks to a few hardy souls, a tourist attraction.
    It borders the Sperrgeibiet, 20,000 Km2 of desert set aside for diamond mining and a prohibited area. In fact a permit is needed to visit the town. We managed to get a couple of Sunrise to Sunset permits so that we could photograph the town at sunrise.
    Boy! Was that a good decision! At 6.00 am the light was perfect and the buildings literally glowed in the golden light. Even better the wind was non-existent and as the only visitors to this eerie ghost town, we snapped away to our hearts content in comfort.

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    The ruins of the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz
    The ruins of the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty one – Keetmanshoop

    Alfred and Bridgett gave us a lift back to Keetmanshoop, where we met up with Riet again in her B&B.
    Because Riet didn’t have to collect us we got a free tour of the only two tourist attractions in Keetmanshoop, the quiver tree forest and Giants castle.

    Giant’s castle is not worth the wear and tear on the word processor.
    The quiver trees though were mildly interesting. Named after the San Bushmen who used the branches to make Quivers for their arrows, they are from the Aloe family and have a highly efficient method of retaining water by having a coating of wax on their leaves and branches. The forest had about 250 of these little oddities (they can grow up to 8 metres) growing out of very inhospitable rocky landscape. Mind you from what we had seen of Namibia so far the whole landscape is pretty inhospitable and pretty bloody hot!

    Riet for some unfathomable reason or other seemed a lot less friendly than she had been when we first met her. Not that she didn’t do the right thing but we sort of had that sense that we were imposing rather than being valued guests. Maybe it was because I snored! Certainly I think she was glad to get rid of us the next morning when she dropped us off at the train station to catch the bus to Luderitz.

    There are trains at this station but not one that was going our way. There used to be a train from Keetmanshoop to Luderitz but that was discontinued and a bus service runs in its place.

    It was a long hot and uneventful ride made uncomfortable by more than just the heat and the dust, I had a nose that wouldn’t stop running, the bus was full and quite cramped and we were permanently on guard watching our bags in the luggage hold. Africa in general has a reputation for making luggage disappear from public transport. Somehow we felt our luggage was a lot more secure in the Intercape Mainliner hold. Every bag was labeled and a steward got out and found your bags for you. On this bus it was chuck it in the hold and get it out yourself.
    This was also the first time we were the only whites. That’s not being racist but it did take us out of our comfort level until we got used to it.

    The landscape was just desert of varying shades of brown from the light rust coloured sandy stretches to the dark brown almost grey lunar landscape with the odd small town carved out of nowhere. At a couple of points the bus actually runs along the still existing rail track and pulls up at the once rail now bus station in places like Aus and Seelhelm. The towns in fact were a welcome distraction from the harsh and fairly flat landscape. Personally I’m more of a train person. When the train pulls into the station I enjoy watching people get off or on or just shuffle around the platform. In this case I was just clutching at straws to ease the boredom and take my mind off the heat and the tap that passed for my nose.

    It’s been said many times before but I’ll say it again: Why is it that we can send a man to the moon, swap organs, eliminate diseases like small pox and genetically create different species of flora and fauna but can’t cure the common cold?

    At around 30 kilometres from Luderitz we felt a significant temperature drop. The coastline of Namibia is severely influenced by the very cold Atlantic Ocean. I say severely because the maximum temperature almost never gets above a 23/24ºC. If there’s not a blanket of sea mist, there’s a cool breeze that often imitates a gale force wind. Surprisingly enough the rainfall is actually lower along the coast than it is 160 kilometres inland. It was a very welcome relief after the heat of the last few days.

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    View of a Quiver Tree in Quiver Tree Forest near Keetmanshoop
    View of a Quiver Tree in Quiver Tree Forest near Keetmanshoop

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Fifty – Fish River Canyon

    There was, we discovered the next day, a second viewpoint. This had been recently found and developed by Louie and without doubt it was pretty spectacular.
    Right on the bend of the gorge, the river was right underneath us, it was like looking down two canyons. Fellow guests, Alfred and Bridgett, had stayed in the more swanky lodge at Hobas, which was around three times the price, and had seen the hikers viewpoint, the main and most visited spot in the canyon. They reassured us that this spot was at least as spectacular, after we said that we wished we had managed to go to Hobas.

    Alfred and Bridgett were from Germany and whilst Bridgett spoke good English, Alfred struggled to understand us and put his thoughts into English. They both however were travelling in a classier style, they had hired a car and would have still been staying at the lodge in Hobas had it not been fully booked.
    To go from there to this rather basic and rudimentary lodge with the singing owner was a culture shock in more ways than one.
    They certainly didn’t know what to make of Gertrude.
    Gertrude is Louie’s mum and stays with Louie for around 3 months at a time and gives him a hand. She means well but she was an absolute pain in the arse!
    Her persistent chatter, interference and fussing in almost everything would have drove me to first degree murder had we have to put up with her for 3 months.
    In some sort of weird way she took a liking to Alfred, continually making sure he was happy and this is the weird bit, reminding him he was German. She was a sort of female version of Basil “whatever you do don’t mention the war” Fawlty.
    It was with some relief, particularly to Alfred, that another German couple Jurgen and Sabrina turned up to spread her attention.

    Louie may have been a rather average singer but he was a pretty good on the Barbecue. We had some good meals except one, Kudu steaks. Kudu are striking antelopes that are common around southern Africa and supposedly are good tucker. Sue couldn’t eat hers, mainly I suspect because of her love for any animal of the wild. I didn’t rush back for seconds. It had a strange soft liver type texture that made me wander whether it was ok! However there were no repercussions the next day so it must have been!

    I don’t know how hot it got but it was unmercifully hot! During the day the sun just beat down cooking everything and worse still heating up this lunar landscape of dark rock. At night freed of the sun’s rays this rock almost glowed as it radiated heat making the night more uncomfortable than the day. We had hoped to do some hiking in the canyon but there was no way we were prepared to risk this sort of heat. But the heat didn’t stop the group of hikers we saw earlier, who eventually found their way to the lodge; actually Louie picked them up from a prearranged spot in the canyon. They all looked terrible.

    After they had scrubbed up we got talking to a couple of them. They told us that they had run out of water at one spot and with a raging thirst drank from an old open livestock tank.
    Yuck!

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    Fish river Canyon, from a lookout, Namibia
    Fish river Canyon, from a lookout, Namibia