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Tag: landscape

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Seventy – Swakopmund

    Hentiesbaai is another fishing spot but it does have a sort of quaint character, (compared to Terrace Bay everything has character) with a decent looking beach and some ‘beachy’ looking houses with palm trees and lots of liquor shops. Hennie found us a cheap apartment next to his garage and the shopping centre.

    We had the luxury of a TV in this place and as it seemed like years since we had watched any, we just crashed in front of it.

    It was cable TV too except there was nothing much on. Most of it came from South Africa and watching South African TV is most disconcerting. They have this habit of changing languages continuously. We were watching their rugby equivalent of the footy show when the interviewer began to interview a rugby player in English. Problem was we could understand the interviewer’s questions but didn’t have a clue as to how the player answered as he was speaking in Afrikaans. Weird!

     

    Cape Cross is smelly. Not just a bit smelly but it stinks. The 100,000 Cape fur seals that call this home really know how to put visitors off. I’ve never seen so many seals! Big ones, little ones, dark ones and grey ones, old and young, male and female, some on the rocks or beach sunbaking, others in the water. Just a huge mass of blubber and seal shit! The Cape fur Seal is distinguished from other seals by the fact it has ears (with all the noise they were making I think they would be better off without them!). They are only found on the West Coast of Southern Africa, as they don’t migrate as a rule. They are quite big in size, the average male weighs around 187 kg but increases its weight to as much as 360 kg at the beginning of the breeding season due to the accumulation of food reserves in the form of blubber. It was for this reason that there are warning signs everywhere not to disturb the seals and cause them to stampede. These huge males can easily crush a small ten kg pup and it’s one of the main causes of the 27% mortality rate.

    Cape Cross itself was named after the cross that the Portuguese Diego Cao, the first European to set foot on the coast of Namibia, erected in honour of the Portuguese king. The original cross is actually in the Berlin museum but there are a couple of replicas erected in the same spot.

    This weird Namibian coastal climate played tricks with us all day. When we left Hentiesbaai in the morning and headed north it was really hot but as soon as we got we got to Cape Cross it cooled down about fifteen degrees. Driving back down through Hentiesbaai it was hot again and then as we approached Swakopmund (or Swako as it’s known by the locals) it cooled right down again

    Swako is a bigger more up market version of Luderitz. It’s a mixture of German, Western and African culture forced together onto the cold Atlantic and carved out of the desert. Its flat featureless topography has been brightened up by some colourful buildings and lots of German Bakerae’s and Bearhaus (bakeries and pubs) on almost every street. Along the promenade there’s these huge date palms on either side of the walkway with houses of varying colours and beach architecture sandwiched between the palms and the beach. German architecturally historic buildings were dotted along most streets in between the many restaurants and trendy curio shops. It felt good to back in western culture for a time. We didn’t camp here either. Why camp when you can stay for in a small, well equipped and centrally positioned self contained unit for N$100 (US$10) per night. Yup! We were going to like ‘Swako’!

    Cape Cross in Namibia is a colony of Cape Fur Seals
    Cape Cross in Namibia is a colony of Cape Fur Seals

  • African shoestrings – Namibia Day Sixty four – Waterberg Plateau Park

    Our destination was the Bernabe de la Bat Resort in the Waterberg Plateau Park  (which sounds a lot more romantic than it is) some 300 kilometres south. We planned to see a couple of sights on the way, Lake Otijikoto and the Hobo Meteorite. Lake Otijikioto is one of the only two natural lakes in Namibia.
    This important fact didn’t really make it any more interesting. It’s just a collapsed limestone cavern that later filled with water and the only things of interest was its aqua blue colour and the fact that at its deepest (estimated to be 55 metres) lived some rusting ammunition and artillery. In 1915 the Germans were retreating from the South Africans and decided that dumping their weaponry into the lake to prevent those nasty South Africans having it was a master stroke.

    At least the lake was just off the main road.
    Not so the Hobo Meteorite! According to the Lonely Planet it was about 25 kilometres west of Grootfontein, which was 63 kilometres east of Otavi making it 38 kilometres from Otavi and a 76 kilometre round trip for us as we passed through Otavi.
    Easy! Well no, it was not! In fact the turn off, which was extremely hard to find, is a 76 kilometre round trip but the Meteorite itself was a 160 kilometre round trip!
    I guess we could have accepted that had this great artifact from the sky been a sight that would change our lives or at least been mildly interesting. It looks just like a rock (its mostly iron) partially buried in the ground with a little bit of landscaping to make it look pretty. Sure there was some interesting information on a board nearby but nothing we couldn’t have looked up on the internet.
    “So what did you expect?” I hear. I’m not sure but it was a long way to go for a lump of iron. If it had been green kryponite that glowed and changed colour, or throbbed like something from Star Trek, I would have been happy. But this thing just looked like something that had been found in another part of the country and brought here to make some extra cash and piss tourists like me off!

    The Bernabe de la Bat ‘Resort’ is nestled in the shadow of the 50 by 16 kilometre sandstone Waterberg plateau that stands around 150 metres high.
    The campsites were sheer luxury, grass. We hadn’t had grass since Daan Viljoen. No dust to find its way into your sleeping bag at night or blow into the tent by day. It was terrific.
    We actually spent the afternoon of our only full day there cleaning the dust out of the car. Considering how small it was, it seemed to hold an awful lot of sand.

    In Australia a big proportion of retirees, buy a caravan and do the round trip around Australia, sometimes for months, sometimes for years. In South Africa they head North to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia. Namibia is generally favourite amongst those from the Cape Town area. Here at Waterberg, we met three couples up from the ‘Cape’ travelling in convey. They were extremely friendly and helpful (even hanging up our washing whilst we were out walking).

    Speaking of walking we followed the only decent length walk trail, outside of the couple of long distance trails, in the park to a spot called mountain view at the top of the plateau. It was not a long climb but it gave us a bit of a workout after the day of driving we had the day before. The views at the top were certainly worth it, we could see for miles across the scrubby plains interrupted by the odd decaying sandstone hill but probably the best view was of the plateau rim with its sheer sided red, orange and green rock and vegetation.

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    An elephant strolling through the scurb at sunset in Etosha national Park, Namibia
    An elephant strolling through the scurb at sunset in Etosha national Park, 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 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 Fourty eight – Keetmanshoop

    We got back to Upington in the early afternoon and were ‘treated’ to a wimpy!
    A wimpy for those of you who don’t know, is the British equivalent to McDonalds and just about serves up the worse hamburgers you can get from a fast food restaurant (well at least this one did). Mind you as far as I’m concerned most fast food places are like that. The first two or three bites taste pretty good ’cause your hungry the rest resemble cardboard and have you thinking why did I bother? Because you’re hungry of course!

    We set up camp in the local Caravan Park, where the others were sleeping the night. We had a bus to catch to Keetmanshoop in Namibia that night and Hannah and Si were catching one to Cape Town. But we had enough time to rest up for awhile and watch the locals set up their caravans and crack open a few tinnies.
    This was, according to Roland “duchy country”. Duchy refers to the ‘real’ Afrikaners, people who had ancestry back to the first Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century. I had tipped Roland to be a ‘duchy’ but he apparently was not from that stock.

    A couple of them came up and started chatting to us. These guys were big bulky blokes who had tinnies almost disappearing inside their massive hands. They were the archetypal beer swilling rugby and cricket mad South Africans that most of the world recognises as the white South African. We had a bit of banter over rugby and cricket and they asked us over to the local bar to watch a rugby super twelves game with them. I was hanging out to do something like that but our bus departure time wouldn’t allow that and Michelle and Alex rightly felt it was not a good idea for them to go alone.

    The Intercape Mainliner to Keetmanshoop was 45 minutes late leaving, which allowed us plenty of time to say our good-byes. Roland was like a mother hen with our bags, making sure that they were loaded on carefully and near the front, as our stop was one of the first. We had all given him a generous tip in foreign currency, which he collects, so he was happy as a lion rolling in the Kalahari sand!

    The bus ride itself was an another overnight job and would have been pretty uneventful except for South African customs wanting everyone off the bus so that their sniffer dogs could sniff around presumably on the possible scent of weapons. We eventually got to Keetmanshoop at 3 am and were met by George from the La Rochelle B&B our overnight stop. We had booked a night here, figuring that arriving at 3 am in a strange town, without a place to stop the night was not a good idea.

    George was the first of many ‘Germans’ that we met in Namibia. Even though Namibia was only a German colony for thirty-one years from 1884 until 1915, its influence in certain areas is still very strong amongst descendents of that era. George was we were later to find out a typical example. He had been born in Namibia but still spoke with a fairly strong German accent and the B&B itself was very central European in its style and ambience. All dark wood and German style trinkets and furniture.

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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
    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
    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 – South Africa Day Fourty six – Kalahari

    A night drive is a game drive, obviously, in the dark; well it was really in twilight as we set off just before sundown. The idea is to see lots of animals big and small as they cruised around in the coolness of dusk and then stop for a sundowner in the middle of nowhere. As it got darker so our reliance on the two spotlights grew and of course the obvious happened one of them blew. So the ten of us on the drive all had to squint into the dark to spot anything.
    We did actually see quite a few animals. But of course we didn’t see any of the more popular ones like lions, cheetah’s etc.

    Back at the camp we ate one of Roland’s culinary masterpieces under the light of plastic drink bottle covered candles.
    Now was the time for that beer as we got to know each other better.
    Simon & Hannah had just left school and were doing a bit of travelling before starting University in England. Alex, was visiting rellies in J’burg and I got the impression that they had shunted her onto this tour to get her out of their hair, she certainly was a little temperamental. Michelle was the quiet one. She had finished her Peace Corp stint in northern South Africa and this was her last days in Africa. Despite her quietness and the fact that she was American she had a great sense of humour. Well I think she did, she laughed at all my jokes.

    The tour kept rolling on, our next stop was the camp at Mata Mata, 127 kilometres north on a gravel road. The idea was to take it slow, have brekkie and lunch on the road and do a game drive at the same time.

    Well we saw heaps!

    Cheetahs and lions in the distance, black backed jackals, cape foxes, steenbok, gemsbok, wildebeest, springbok (these last our all from the antelope family) and the quaintly named long legged big bird, kori bustard.

    The park was named after the Gemsbok, being quite common in the Kalahari. It’s a big animal at around 1.2 metres tall with striking fawn grey flanks, black legs and tail and metre high pointed horns. In my humble opinion, this is the most beautiful of all the antelope species found in Africa.

    The next day was pretty much the same format, as we drove on to Nossob, the last of the three camps, except the little critters must’ve sent out the message via the desert telegraph to hide when ever we came on the scene, because we saw virtually nothing.

    Nossob like Mata Mata was more basic than Twee Rivierien, but it did have an animal hide. Once again the animals didn’t read their scripts properly and forgot to come and see us. So we had to gain our entertainment from Roland who was busy being his industrious superhuman self. He was cooking spag bowl and fixing three punctures all at the same time. That night he told us stories of rangers cutting off their limbs to save their own lives after a predator attack in the bush. How he caught tick bite fever and was hospitalised for 9 weeks and how he had just recovered from a bout of Malaria which was really bad that year and had resulted in many deaths in central and eastern parts of South Africa. I think he has the philosophy of “never bugger up a good story for the facts”.

    Fortunately he told us these stories after we ate!

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    A Gemsbok in the Kalahari national park
    A Gemsbok in the Kalahari national park

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Fourty five – Kalahari

    The Kalahari Gemsbok Park is the South African section of one of the largest protected areas in Africa. The other section being the Gemsbok National Park in Botswana together they contain two million hectares of dry semi-desert and desert land. Incredibly this area supports nineteen species of predators, 215 species of birds, countless antelope and the odd bushmen.

    Like most we had heard of “the Bushmen of the Kalahari” mainly through that crazy movie “The Gods must be Crazy”. To actually come across one, in fact a family, living (to a certain extent) how their ancestors did over many centuries was somewhat sobering.
    We came across them on our way to the closest and biggest of the three camps in the park, Twee Rivieren.
    Roland stopped and got out of the minibus, and in almost Crocodile Dundee fashion started a conversation with them in a mixture of San (Bushmen) and Afrikaans. I was impressed Roland knew his stuff. He crouched down with head of the family who wore nothing but a Springbok loincloth. His wife and his brother too wore loincloths and his small son was happy to wear nothing at all.
    Their home was a Tepee style grass house by the side of the road with just dirt floors and no other protection. To one side hung the family name in a small basic frame made from branches of one of the few trees that grew here. Against this frame rested a bow and arrow and the skull of a Gemsbok. To one side sat the shell of a Pangolin, a rare small animal that is almost entirely covered with brown, horny, overlapping scales and slightly resembles an Armadillo. According to the Bushmen they’re insides are really tasty and the shell if left outside their ‘house’ will bring good luck. The thought of catching one is enough to be put me off, I’m not sure I liked the look of those sharp scales and I’m certainly not into eating its insides, good luck or not!

    This though wasn’t poverty, this was people contentedly living life as they found it and were friendly and more than happy to pose for the five or so cameras that appeared with us as we too got out of the bus.
    In the past we have often been approached for payment by the ‘models’ when taking pictures. In this case they seemed so genuinely happy to pose that payment wasn’t an issue. Roland told us later that even though both the men worked for the National Park, money wasn’t really a big thing with them. All I can say is that they must be the only ones in the world!!

    Twee Rivieren was a welcome sight after the 240 kilometre ride from Upington. It’s a sealed road for about 180 and then becomes gravel for the rest. That makes for a hot dusty ride and now would have been a great time to wash down the dust with a tinny or two and a swim (there’s a swimming pool). But the camp had a night drive starting about 30 minutes after we arrived, so we had to rush to erect our tents and then be ready.

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    The San people or Bushmen of the Kalahari.
    The San people or Bushmen of the Kalahari.

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Fourty three – Kalahari

    We got into Upington around 5 am and had planned to sit around the bus station until dawn and then find our way to Yeho’s.
    Trouble was that the bus station was just a kerbside stop and the office was closed that time in the morning. Fortunately the gods smiled on us and a local tour operator, who was actually looking for a German tourist he was there to pick up (she didn’t show), gave us a lift to Yeho’s.
    Livingstone weren’t due until midday so the owner let us catch up with some sleep in the deserted dorm.

    Upington is one of those nothing towns. Situated in the far Northern Cape on the main road to Nambia it’s a purely functional place. So there’s not a lot to see or do in the town itself apart from grabbing supplies from the two well stocked supermarkets there.

    A big majority of the food we had eaten since we left home had come from supermarkets. If you’re going to travel cheaply then one of the first expenses you can cut down on is food.
    Now you can do that either very drastically by eating very little or nothing at all or just by shopping smartly at the local supermarket. The former has a common problem associated with it called starvation and disease, so we elected to be smart.
    In these first three weeks of travel I had been in more supermarkets than I had for the last ten years.
    Actually South African supermarkets are on the whole quite good, well stocked with a good selection of food, refrigerated cold drinks cans and an excellent bakery. Some places like Upington were poor on fresh produce but that’s understandable.

    Yeho’s was a fifteen minute walk away from the town centre and once we recharged ourselves with some food from one of the supermarkets we wondered around the town, checked our email, made a futile attempt at trying to arrange accommodation for our next destination at Fish River Canyon in Namibia and wondered back.

    We got word that Livingstone were running behind due to a reassuring mechanical problem with the minibus and they ended up arriving 5 hours or so late.

    Did we know they had arrived! One minute we were quietly sitting in the garden reading, the next we seemed surrounded by what seemed like a crowd of 20 but was only actually 5! Having picked this tour from a backpackers I guess it was highly unlikely that other members of the tour would be around our age.
    But these guys were babies!
    There was Alexandre (Alex) a German girl from Dresden (around twenty), Hannah, a well-spoken English girl and her boyfriend Simon (Si) who were eighteen and Michelle, an American Peace Corp girl who at twenty five, was a pensioner in comparison.

    And then there was Roland, the tour leader. Roland makes an instant visual impact. A big guy, he had a pot belly, a full beard and tightly cropped hair, with a big round earring and gives the impression of someone normally found on a big Harley Davidson terrorising the local town folk. He had that guttural South African accent and spiels as good a yarn as Wilbur Smith. We could see straight away by Roland feigning to chuck Alex into the pool that all these guys had already clicked together on the journey down from J’burg.

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    An Umbrella Thorn Acacia at sunset on the savannah of South Africa. It's a native to Africa.
    An Umbrella Thorn Acacia at sunset on the savannah of South Africa. It’s a native to Africa.