Namibia
12th June 2006
We’d spent enough time in Maun so it was time to leave, and head up the western side of the Okavango Delta and across the border into Namibia. It was a hot, dry day in a sizzling bare landscape of scrub and grassland. We spent the last of our Botswanan money on filling up with cheap diesel, and then proceeded to the Namibian border post at Mahembo around 4pm, which is the latest we’ve crossed a border since Europe. The border post was deserted, no hustlers, moneychangers and so on, we were stamped out of Botswana and into Namibia in minutes - very boring! Even the carnet didn’t need stamping (as both countries are members of a customs union). We did have to pay 140 Namibian dollars for road tax (there’s about 12 to one pound) and as we had no Namibian money we paid with a small amount of Botswanan money we had left, even though the exchange rate wasn’t great.
We then headed to Ngepi Camp, which is a few kilometres beyond the border, where we camped on the banks of the Okavango River. This campsite is famous for it’s ablutions, it has ‘open air’ toilets with views out over the hippos in the river, and best of all (for Sam), an open-air bath!
13th June 2006
We spent the morning doing laundry and other chores, and in the afternoon headed out on a mokoro trip up the river. A mokoro is a dug-out canoe, which is either paddled or poled through the water by a poler, a bit like a punt is on the river at Cambridge.
Our mokoro trip took us up the Okavango River past hippos (you could tell when hippos were around because the guy paddling went very fast!), birds and through reed-beds. We didn’t see any crocodiles, but they are around because one of the campsite owner’s dogs was eaten by one not long ago…
14th June 2006
We headed west out of the Caprivi Strip, to Rundu, where we picked up some Namibian money and provisions, before camping overlooking the Okavango River to Angola, just a few metres away.
15th June 2006
We drove further west to Tsumeb, on what was quite possibly the most boring road for us yet in Africa - over 100km of straight, flat tarmac’ed road, no curves, and not much in the way of hills or anything to look at. Namibia certainly is very empty, the vast flat land split up into huge ranches which were granted to white settler farmers back when the country was a German colony.
On the way we stopped to look at the Hoba Meteorite - the world’s largest meteorite, which must have made quite a thump when it hit the ground 80,000 years ago. It was about as exciting as a lump of rock can be…
On the way back we came across a confusing road sign…
Tsumeb was a pleasant little town, looking very orderly and Teutonic, and we stayed at Mousebird backpackers, where it was nice to be able to cook in their well-equipped kitchen, eat off proper china plates at a proper dining room table, and then settle down on the sofa to watch a DVD - it was just like being at home (complete with cat on lap, but don’t worry Lettie, there’s only one cat for me!). The only difference was at the end of the evening we had to retire to our chilly tent outside…
16th June 2006
We headed off early from Tsumeb to spend a couple of days in Etosha National Park, Namibia’s most famous national park which is set around a huge, dry, white salt pan. The park is a little different to most in that because it is such a dry and arid place, rather than driving around looking for the wildlife, you park up by a waterhole and wait for the wildlife to come to you.
Anyway, we were shocked on arriving at the park at how much they had increased the park fees for ‘foreigners’ (i.e. non-Namibians and non-South Africans). It was now N$80 per day each (about 7 pounds), and camping was an amazingly expensive N$240, or 20 pounds a night, which is the most we have paid for camping anywhere (even in Italy!).
Still, we were impressed even upon entering the park as herds of zebra, wildebeest and many more were everywhere, this was more like what we expected the Masai Mara to be like. We drove 140km through the park to the Okaukejo campsite, where there was a floodlit waterhole, and during the evening we relaxed with a glass of wine or two at the waterhole, and we watched four black rhinos, including a baby, a number of elephants, and even a female lion appeared at the waterhole.
17th June 2006
Another day in Etosha - we decided to stay in the campsite and sit at the waterhole and watch the comings and goings. If you wanted to see zebra, wildebeest and more, this was the place to be as we must have seen thousands of zebra, great processions of them coming down to the waterhole, taking a drink, and then heading off into the savannah again. It was like the Discovery channel, packed with animals, in Panorama-vision, right in front of our eyes. Sam was in her element and must have taken several hundred photos!
In the evening we met Marcus and Tanya, a Swiss couple who had bought a ‘bakkie’ (pick-up truck) in Cape Town and were driving around Southern Africa. We shared our campsite with them which saved on camping fees a little. We also met a British couple called Andy and Esther (their web site is www.africancruiser.com, who have driven their prehistoric Land Cruiser down the western side of Africa.
18th June 2006
We decided to stay another day at Etosha as we were having such a good time, and seeing so much wildlife. We moved across the park to the Halali campsite, which the Lonely Planet (recently re-named the ‘Lonely Liar’ by Sam) said had the best wildlife viewing at the waterhole there. Unfortunately they were wrong, and we didn’t see much except a few elephants at sunset. Even Marcus, who stayed up until nearly midnight, said a few bats were the most exciting things he saw!
19th June 2006
We had to leave the park by 11am, so headed off early. As seems to be the way when we have to get out of a park by a certain time, we saw a female lion padding alongside the road on our way out… after a few pictures we had to head off.
Heading out of the park we saw the usual high-speed convoys of South African 4x4s, almost all towing trailers with roof tents, heading into the park, speeding along at 120km/h in close convoy, headlights on full-beam… apparently they do this because it’s Africa out there, and it’s dangerous…! Never mind that they’re probably from Johannesburg, which is probably far more dangerous than anywhere else on the continent…
There were also some unusual road signs on the way…
This was a suitable warning as soon afterwards we nearly flattened a warthog which came charging out of the long grass alongside the road straight into our path…
We stopped in Outjo, for provisions and for a divine coffee and cake at the german bakery there. Namibia used to be a German colony and they seem to have left behind some excellent cake chefs. Picking up a few provisions in the supermarket, we see a number of Herero women, who wear 18th century style dresses with three-pointed hats, quite unusual.
We then attempted to find the ‘cheetah park’ mentioned in our ‘Lonely Liar’… we arrived to discover that they don’t allow day visitors, don’t open the campsite to only two guests, and didn’t seem to want to let us in at all. A little dejected, we headed 100km back the way we had came, found a campsite for the night, and by chance picked up a leaflet that advertised the right ‘cheetah park’, which is, of course, not mentioned in the Lonely Planet at all! So we’ll go there tomorrow…
20th June 2006
Finding the right cheetah park, we met a group of six campers in three Land Rovers who had been up to the north-western corner of Namibia and apparently nearly broken their cars driving the extreme roads up there. I don’t think we’ll be following that route…
In the afternoon we firstly met the owner’s three ‘pet’ cheetahs, who live in and around his house. They were extremely tame and we were able to get very close for photos and even to tickle them behind the ears…
We were then able to go into a large reserve area where there are 20 untamed wild cheetahs. These have been acquired from local farmers who have trapped them because they were attacking livestock, and moved to the cheetah park. We clicked away on our cameras as they were fed bits of dead donkey…
Best of all however, was the separate enclosure where there was a female cheetah with her two cubs…
21st June 2006
Heading south from the cheetah park, we visited the Petrified Forest, a large area of fossilised trees, nearly 200 million years ago, some of which are pretty large.
Then we headed to Twyfelfontein, an area which has a large number of Bushmen rock paintings, among the expected giraffes, lions and elephants, we were surprised to see paintings of penguins, seals and flamingoes - apparently the Bushmen visited the Skeleton Coast, 150km away, to collect salt.
Bushmen Carvings - that’s a seal on the right…
22nd June 2006
We headed further west into the stark, beautiful desert landscape of the Damaraland. This is normally bare desert but the large amount of rain that Namibia has received this year means that all the desert valleys are carpeted in golden grass.
We entered the Skeleton Coast National Park, and started to drive towards the coast. The area is so named because it is so dry and barren that those who were shipwrecked here faced almost zero chance of survival.
We were only 10km or so down the gravel road to the coast when we came across a rental car with a shredded tyre - we offered to stop and make sure they were able to change the wheel OK, and soon discovered that the driver was called Nick and ran a travel bookshop in Notting Hill - yes, the travel bookshop that was used in the Hugh Grant film ‘Notting Hill’! We assisted him and his wife changing their tyre (they needed our big breaker bar to get the wheel nuts off) and soon we were both on our way again.
We reached the coast and turned on the salt road south along the coast, which is possibly the most windswept barren landscape we have seen yet. The coast is peppered with shipwrecks and we visited a couple - there’s not much left of them though as the sand, salt and water rusts them away pretty quickly.
After 100km of driving down the coast we exited the national park proper, but the landscape didn’t change much. We visited the huge seal colony at Cape Cross, which you can smell before you can see, where there are over 70,000 seals living on rocks at the edge of the water.
We watched the seals for a while, and Sam noticed a baby pup that appeared to have lost its mother, and was sniffing around other seals trying to find one willing to give it milk, but without success.
We continued to drive south, and ended up coming into Swakopmund just as it was getting dark. After checking into the very homely ‘Desert Sky’ backpackers, we walked up the road to the ‘Cape to Cairo’ restaurant, which we thought was appropriate as we had almost done the reverse trip now, ‘Cairo to Cape’. We indulged at the restaurant with some southern African game, Oryx in filo pastry for starters, and Sam had a lovely springbok steak for her main course.
23rd June 2006
We spent the day doing laundry, catching up with our e-mail and generally relaxing after a few days hard driving.!
24th June 2006
We headed out into the huge sand dunes south of Swakopmund to do a spot of sandboarding and quad-biking. We went with Nate and Kelly, an American couple from Chicago who were staying at the same backpackers as us. Sam didn’t fancy the sandboarding so she stood at the top of the dune while the rest of us threw ourselves off… the dune was so steep that it curved away downwards and you couldn’t see all the way to the bottom of the dune.
The equipment provided was a piece of hardboard, which you lay on with your head pointing down the hill, and let gravity do the rest. Nate went first, disappearing over the edge and appearing a couple of seconds later at high speed at the bottom of the dune. He looked to have survived so me next…
After each run you had to climb back up the sand dune with your board, which was exhausting, so we all only had two ‘runs’ - they really should install an escalator!
Next was some quadbiking which was much more Sam’s thing as it didn’t involve too much exertion! We biked around, over, up and down the dunes, powering up the sides of dunes and turning to speed back down them just as we ran out of momentum. We stopped to watch the sun go down with a beer over the dunes and the Atlantic, which was spectacular.
Sam only had the one drink, honest!
Sunset over the dunes
25th June 2006
Swakopmund has an aquarium, which kept us amused for an hour on a damp and foggy Sunday morning, the afternoon was spent watching England moving to the quarter-finals of the World Cup…
26th June 2006
We tried to book camping at Soussousvlei, a little further south in Namibia, but it was fully booked with South Africans on school holidays, so we were told to just head down there and share a pitch with someone. We decided to spend one more day in Swakopmund and did a day drive out into the desert on the ‘Welwichisa Trail’ - Welwichisa are very slow growing desert plants - the highlight of the trail is one that is supposedly 1,500 years old, and is still only the size of a large bush.
In the evening we met up with Tom and Janey of Big Yellow Mog, who have driven down the west coast of Africa, and shared dinner and swapped details about our respective routes (they are heading back up the eastern side of Africa, we are thinking of doing the west coast). They seemed to have a greater liking for mud and shockingly bad roads than us though!
27th June 2006
We left Swakopmund and headed south on the well-graded gravel roads to Sesriem, about 300km south of Swakopmund, where the huge sand dune fields that cover most of the coast from Swakopmund south to the border with South Africa are most accessible. About half way there we were passed by a number of South Africans towing trailers at over 100km/hour, one of which threw up a stone off the gravel road which cracked the windscreen with quite a bang.
Shortly afterwards, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn…
At Sesriem, the campsite was pretty busy, and we were looking for a group to share a campsite with, as it was the same story as Etosha National Park where the campsite was N$240 for up to 8 people. We were lucky to meet Hermann, his wife and his friends who let us share his campsite, and what’s more shared their ‘braii’ (barbeque) with us too!
28th June 2006
The sand dunes at Sousossvlei are apparently best seen at sunrise, so I dragged Sam out of bed at 6am to drive into the dunes. We got to the dunes as the sun was coming up over the horizon…
The heavy rains this year meant that the normally barren desert valley floor was a sea of golden grass, also some of the dunes even had plants growing on them because of the rains.
The valley was beautiful, and the sun illuminated the sides of the dunes as it rose.
We headed further down the valley and walked a short distance to ‘Dead Vlei’, which is a dry salt pan with dead trees in it, this made for some interesting photos.
The wind was starting to get up by this point, blowing sand everywhere, so we decided to return to the campsite, snooze off the early morning and relax for the rest of the day. In the evening we were treated to another fantastic barbeque from Hermann, and we enjoyed their company for the evening.
29th June 2006
We left Sesriem early and drove south through the empty expanses of Namibia, one of the least densely populated countries on the planet. We headed to Luderitz, which is a coastal town, about 120km down a gap in the dunes that extend up much of the coast of Namibia.
We arrived in Luderitz in the mid-afternoon to find every backpackers hostel was full with holidaying South Africans, and the only camping option was on a windswept peninsula. In addition the town seemed to have a faded seaside resort air to it (like Redcar), only with aggressive beggars and loiterers on the streets too. We quickly decided we didn’t like the place and retreated the way we came! In the end we spent the night (which was freezing!) in a slightly decrepit campsite behind a garage near Aus.
30th June 2006
We drove south through Rosh Pinah and met up with the Orange River, which is the border between Namibia and South Africa. There was spectacular scenery as we headed on the road along the river, which cut through deep valleys and canyons.
We camped the night close to the border crossing with South Africa, in a lovely campsite by the Orange River. Tomorrow, we would cross the river and enter what could be the last country on our journey, South Africa…
