Namibia is extraordinary. It's population density is about 3 per square mile. Just to put that in context, the population density of England is over 1,000 per square mile and London has tens of thousands of people per square mile. Here you can drive for miles, apparently on the well-beaten tourist route, and not see a soul.
The expansiveness, the sheer loneliness of the place, notwithstanding its arid, often Martian-like beauty, make it, deeply fascinating to someone born and brought up in the lush, green UK and the populous hubbub of London. It's also surprisingly well developed, with decent roads and reliable electricity and water supplies. It speaks of political stability I suppose but it was not always this way, indeed Namibia was the last African country to gain its colonial independence (from South Africa) and its currency (the Namibian Dollar) is still tied to the Rand (you can use the notes interchangeably here). But the country seems to be thriving now, despite the continuing devastation by HIV/AIDS. It has the biggest uranium mine in the world and uranium, other exotic elements, and diamonds, are a big part of its export repertoire. Namibia doesn't seem to conform to the westernised stereotype of Africa, except perhaps in the Caprivi strip. It is a true desert country for me and a distinct contrast to the lush and exotic Madagascar.
Our first stop was at the Ai Ais natural springs resort at the southern end of fish river canyon in the south of Namibia. It's a true oasis, surrounded by arid desert, but here you can sit in a naturally heated swimming pool and camp a stones throw away. It's about the first place I've been to where it is actually too hot in the pool for it to be in any way refreshing from the stultifying heat outside of it. That said it was nice in the morning, when it was much colder outside (the temperature can rise and fall by as much as 30C during a 24 hour period here). It's typical of places to stay in Namibia that you have a place with high end rooms that cost a lot of money (typically from £100 a night and up) and then in the same place camping spots where you can pitch your tent for a tenner. There's very little in between this although you do find backpacker hostels in the main towns and they make a welcome relief from sleeping in a tent, especially when your mattress has a puncture. The camping spots are really good though. Every one we have been to so far has a power point, water and decent ablution blocks (I love that word. Ablution. As in, "I am going to perform my ablutions." It's one of those words where the sound of it in some way feels like what it describes. Like some sort of weird synaesthetic onomatopoeia. Genius :-) ). Plus you're usually in a larger complex with a restaurant/pool etc. so it's all pretty civilised if you want it to be. They also invariably have Braai pits. Braiis are just barbecues really, except they will often cook with firewood here rather than charcoal. They're really popular, amongst this very heavily meat-laden cuisine. I don't think you could realistically be a vegetarian/vegan tourist in Namibia unless you cooked for yourself.
So we pitched our tent and spent a pretty comfortable night in Ai Ais then the next morning set off up the dirt track (no jokes please) to Fish River Canyon. Having been also to the Grand Canyon in north America I can say the two are equally majestic but I enjoyed Fish River canyon more because there were less people there. In fact at times we were the only ones :-). If you want to be alone with the sights when you travel, come to Namibia.
I mean this is one of their main tourist attractions and when we visited we spent 75% of our time entirely alone with the canyon and the rare sound of absolute silence. I can count on the fingers of one hand when I have heard absolutely nothing for an extended period of time outside of a recording studio or some other artificially silenced place. This was one of them. Looking out over the vastness and majesty of something naturally formed over the last 2 billion years in complete quiet was magical, and also quite profound. For a brief moment I occupied a space where I seemed to dissolve into the vastness of the place. Then the ego kicked back in with all its chatter. But that brief moment was awesome, as far as I remember it...
Driving in Namibia means getting to grips with dirt or gravel road driving. I find it fun but it's anxiety provoking at first if you're used to driving on tar. You have to cede control to the road to a certain extent, let the car slide and not get flustered when it doesn't immediately respond when you turn the steering wheel. It can be stressful at times, especially when you have a puncture a long way from anywhere with no one going past on the road. We discovered our first puncture when we tried to leave Ai Ais the next day. Fortunately the place has a little garage with helpful chaps who repair tyres. But it does all make you aware of the possibility of losing two tyres in one journey, which given that the roads are classed as busy if they have more than one car per hour (most have much less) and given the temperature regularly hits 40C, isn't a pleasant prospect. You see lots of people driving 4x4 vehicles probably mostly in mitigation to the anxiety surrounding the state of the roads. I doubt it helps really. In fact I think having a 4x4 here just encourages you to get into situations you're less likely to be able to handle. The only cars I saw that were stuck in Namibia were 4x4s, probably because their drivers were inexperienced. Anyway we managed fine on the gravel tracks in our 2wd Hyundai, although we did have pretty spectacular puncture in the middle of the desert about 100 km from anywhere on a very bumpy dirt track. We proceeded with extreme caution after changing the tyre, and breathed a sigh of relief when we reached Sossusvlei, our next destination after Ai Ais.
On the way to Sossusvlei, we stayed overnight at a town called Mariental. It was a Sunday so there was nothing open and nothing going on. We were forced to eat at a Wendy's attached to a petrol station. The burger we both had was decorated with various sauces, the colours of which wouldn't look out of place at a psychedelic festival, or a uranium mine. Fluorescent. I'm thinking that food additives currently banned in Europe are still allowed here. This is confirmed when I spy tartrazine, a long banned additive in the UK, included in the list of ingredients in a can of lemonade.
Sossusvlei is as deep into the Namib desert as you can go without being foolish. It is an oasis of sorts insofar as it is the end of a river that is rarely seen above ground. When it does flow (after rare rains) it naturally ends at Sossusvlei where the dunes simply swallow the incoming water up. Extraordinary. From here there is nothing but vast sand dunes for 100s of kilometres until you reach the Atlantic ocean. The word Vlei means a flat, potentially water bearing area of land. The term desert is actually not really defined. But this certainly was by anyone's standards.
We arrived in the searing (40C+) heat at the Sesriem campsite. Our spectacular tyre puncture ended up being quite pricey as we had to buy a new tyre for the car. It's amazing really, given the distances, that there was the facility to do this at all. This place is 100s of kilometres from anywhere of significance. Hats off to the Namibians for making it all work. The Sossus oasis petrol station was mental. You could buy everything from freshly made sandwiches, a Mr. Whippy, fresh meat, veg and cold beer, to silicone sealant, rawl plugs, bra wire and an ironing board. I made do with some all purpose glue and some gaffer tape to try and repair a puncture in my air mattress.
The camp site was set just within the border of the Sossusvlei reserve. The advantage of this is you can get up early and go and watch the sun rise from the top of a dune. Each camping spot is set up under a camelthorn tree (a kind of acacia) for shade and has its own power and water supply. There was even a swimming pool about 20 metres from our spot. Lugshurry! That evening we made our first braai, drank beer and went to bed early. We were up at 5:30 to watch the sun rise from the top of dune 45.
You drive from the campsite 50km further into the desert down an inexplicably good, tarred road (none of the roads within 200km of this place are tarred). The dunes start to rise up and encroach on you as you get deeper into the desert. Dune 45 is just the 45th dune from the start of the road but it's advantage is that you can walk up it relatively easily (bare feet is best) and you get a great view of the sun rising from behind the hills in the distance. It's COLD around this time. Maybe 10-15C. Walking up dunes is surprisingly hard work though so you warm up. Your feet sink down the side of the spine of the dune so it turns into a bit of a breathless scramble.
It was all worth it. This amazing Martian landscape behind and in front the sun rising over the dunes. Wonderful.
And afterwards you get to run down the dune whooping like a small child. It's a surprisingly awesome experience actually because as you run down your heels sink into the soft sand just enough to cushion your impact and propel you down the slope so it feels a bit like you ate floating or flying. So cool :-) Unexpected bonus!
You have a window of about 4 hours before it becomes unbearably hot to see Sossusvlei. So we set off down the road to the shuttle point where you buy a ticket to be ferried by 4x4 down the sand track that leads there. And you're greeted with the true start of the Namib desert and the end of the underground river, all vegetation petering out into petrified trees and then unending dunes of fine reddy-orange sand constantly shifting and reforming in the interminable wind, all the way to the sea. It's hard to describe the majesty of it really. The views from the top of the dunes are spectacular. You feel insignificant in the face of it all. Your footprints are covered up by the sand by the time you retread your steps. Geckos and beetles skitter across the dunes. There is a surprising amount of life here, although I expect it ends shortly after the dune I can see in front of me.
By about 9:30 it was getting seriously hot. It's like having a hair dryer pointed at you all over your body all the time. Relentless dry heat. You don't get sweaty. You can see it form on your skin and almost instantly evaporate. And this is only springtime. It must be an inferno in the summer. The sand quickly heats up until you can't walk on it barefoot. 70C apparently. We had plenty of time to appreciate the splendour but then had to retreat back to the campsite where we spent the rest of the day in the little swimming pool next to our campsite. Surprisingly cold. Very refreshing! We met three cool Aussie girls who called each other Tubby, Lardy and Fatty. Good value. They pointed us to a good hostel on our next destination, the bizarre town of Swakopmund, on the Namibian coast and we in turn recommended they head to the backpackers we'd been in in cape town.
Surprisingly, on the five hour drive across the Namib desert to Swakopmund on largely gravel roads, we didn't suffer a puncture. We crossed north over the tropic of Capricorn, and stopped to take a cheesy picture. We were both caked in desert sand and grime. Sun cream, wind, arid dust and sand is a filthy combination. But it was nothing compared to the state we were in after dune boarding.
Swakopmund is even drier than much of the Namib and Kalahari deserts. They get, on average, 15mm of rain per year. Some years they get none. The water for the city is derived from the underground river Swakop, and also supplies the nearby Uranium mines. It's surprisingly good to drink ;) Swakopmund is probably the strangest city I've ever been to. A westernised almost American structure and feel, with German place names, where everyone speaks English, in Africa with architecture that looks like a mix between art deco and something out of Alice in Wonderland. What was also notable was that it was actually quite cold, maybe 20C colder than inland. We checked in to the Desert Sky backpackers lodge and met some people we'd met in Sossusvlei so we shared a braai with them on the second night.
The first full day we were there we went sand dune boarding. You can do this standing up, รก la snow boarding with the same gear, or lying down on a thin, flexible bit of varnished MDF. Lying down is definitely more fun. Standing up is more technical. I gave myself a bloody nose standing up. Lying down you just career down the slope helpless to control yourself. Great fun. We were filmed by a deeply good looking young guy called CJ, who gave us a DVD afterwards as part of the price (30 quid for the day). Aside from the fact that you have to walk back up the dune after every run, sand boarding is pretty darn cool.
I'd definitely do it again, although I'd probably concentrate on lying down rather than standing up. If you're a snowboarder then standing up is easier I think. Anyway I had some fairly spectacular crashes, and at the end of the day I looked something like the dune monster, and had sand *everywhere*. I'm writing this two days hence and I'm still finding it in unexpected and unsavoury places.
Over the preceding few days we had had a few conversations with other travellers about the Etosha national park. It's much further north in Namibia than we had expected on going. But everyone raved about it as the best self-drive safari in Africa. Safaris in Africa are often ridiculously expensive. We were tempted momentarily when in Johannesburg to go to the Kruger national park, but the prices are crazy. Hundreds of pounds for even something very basic. In Etosha you pay N$80 for each day you're in the park (£6) then it cost us N$400 between us for each night we camped there (£30ish). Which translated into a self drive safari over two days for less than a hundred quid between us. Bargain. So we were sold, and headed up there the next day after an aborted attempt to visit a Rio Tinto uranium mine (I had no closed shoes). We stayed over in a town called Outjo in a backpackers called Kai Oms, which I had thought might have some sort of yoga connection, but it turned out just to mean 'this house', which was a bit disappointing especially after the owner spent some time enthusing about its history, which wasn't remarkable at all. Anyway, it was an ok place with slightly overfamiliar owners and a disquieting copy of the new testament on the bedside table. This particular touch always strikes me as unnecessary. If I wanted to read the bible, would I not have bought one? Anyway aside from this it was an ok place and the owners were very friendly and had a menagerie of animals, including JRTs, to keep us interested. We slept well and headed out the next day to cover the rest of the drive to Etosha national park in the north of Namibia. It says in the guidebook it is wetter here, but we arrived just before the rains so it was bone dry with evidence of forest fires. Scarcely had we got inside the park than we were confronted with herds of springbok, zebra and giraffe.
But it was nothing compared to what was to come. I think we were blessed with incredibly good luck. We saw, in no particular order, two prides of female lions, a male lion, a cheetah catching a female kudu, black rhino, herds and families of elephants, including babies, impala, and other antelopes I couldn't identify and baby zebra and giraffe.
At one point as we were driving along the road we spied a pride of female lions sprawled out panting in the shade of a tree on the side of the road. Another was off to the left feasting on a kill! We stopped dead, and spent some time watching them and taking photographs.
Whilst they watched us go past they seemed to be completely unmoved. I expect they get this all the time. We stopped a bit further on to take a picture of another four females lying under a tree on Ro's side. At this point Ro commented on how he had seen one of the lions cross the road to my side. I hadn't seen this, turned my head to look out of the passenger side and nearly soiled myself when I saw a lion, scarcely more than a metre away, looking straight into my eyes!! Keeping outwardly very calm, we inched forward and on to a more remote viewpoint. Phew! That was awe-inspiring, pant-soilingly exciting and absolutely terrifying all mixed into one. Definitely a life time achievement moment ticked off the list. We were within 2 metres of them, with open windows in the car. If they had wanted to they could've had us for a snack. Leisurely. I won't swear much on this blog, but that was fucking AWESOME!!:-D
A couple of minutes down the road and we spied a family of elephants joining the road ahead of us. They ambled along, ears flapping leisurely, in single file at the side of the road, as though they were allowing us to pass. We followed very slowly.
Another car with a guide pulled up behind and then we saw another bigger herd of elephants behind us on the road, closing in! Trapped!
The guide beckoned us over and told us that if the elephants walk past us we should stop, wind up the windows, switch the engines off and be absolutely silent and still! Scary stuff! But shortly after this the family of elephants in front of us peeled off into the bush and we passed safely. We had no idea where we were at this point, having followed our noses really, but shortly after this we arrived at the Nuamses watering hole and we realised why we have seen so many elephants. They were coming to bathe and drink and play in the watering hole! The two herds we had been sandwiched between in the car both arrive and join some others already there. And playtime in the water begins. I don't know if I'll be able to upload this video (I can't- it's 1GB in size!), but this was another absolutely golden moment. A whole herd of elephants playing and splashing and cavorting in the water. Pure safari heaven. How lucky we were to see it!
At one point something disturbed them and most of them got out, then to spray themselves with dust for sunscreen. About 5 elephants remained, playing and sometimes mounting each other. I couldn't work out if it was sexual. If it was then it was the second of two elephant videos I have taken that have had pornographic elements. Maybe I have missed my calling in life!
After the elephants got out a herd of kudu and giraffes arrived. They drank nervously, and with good reason, as suddenly the herd scattered as a cheetah bounded in and went for one of the female kudu. Both streaked off around the back of us and into the grassland. I shouldn't have thought that kudu was alive now...afterwards another kudu was calling plaintively and sadly at the side of the watering hole. Maybe they had lost their mate, or their friend. It was sad. Life laid bare.
That was it for that day. But what a day! We spent the rest of the day by the pool. Then in the evening visited the Maringo waterhole attached to camp Halali, where we were camping. Here you can walk to the watering hole and take a cold beer with you and sit on a raised up bit of ground watching the watering hole. As the sun set two black rhino came to drink and bathe in the pool.
As night came on a male lion crept up to the side of the by now deserted pool, drank and then crept away again. Too dark for a picture unfortunately. Magical.
That day was pretty spectacular. The next day would have had to have had something seriously special to compete. We saw elephants, a lion more giraffes and zebra and antelopes, including babies, but nothing as exciting as the day before. We wended our way to the eastern edge of the park, stopped for a cold drink at a place where mongoose sniff around your feet looking for titbits, and then exited the park and drove to Tsumeb. This isn't a particularly exciting town, though it had the worlds most varied mineral mine, by which I mean there is a seam of minerals running under the town remarkably rich in rare and and exotic elements. Some are found nowhere else on earth. Weird elements like indium and zirconium and gallium. Notwithstanding this the mine is now closed so there's not so much of interest in the town. We stayed and the mousebird backpackers and then the next day bought some souvenirs in a shop which makes sure the proceeds go back into the communities that produce them, and started the long long road south to cape town.
We stayed in a couple if resorts on the way back to Cape Town. One called Lake Oanob, which was set around a reservoir and was ok but a bit run down and another one on the Namibian border called Norotshama, which was very high standard but with really annoying flies which have a habit of going into your nose, ears and eyes. Then we crossed back over the border, and powered all the way down the N7 (The Cape Namibia highway) back to Cape Town, and the long street backpackers where we had stayed before. It felt a bit like coming home, with lots if familiar faces and a well deserved comfy bed to sleep on.
Namibia was epic. So difficult to describe the majesty of the place. Really, really recommended to anyone who dislikes being part of the tourist crowd whilst also preferring a certain level of infrastructure around them. It's so empty yet the amenities are excellent. You have to drive yourself. There's no public transport. But this is part of the fun. I was really impressed with how comparatively efficient this country was, how well run, especially in contrast to Madagascar, which whilst similarly well-endowed with sights and riches, is falling apart.
Next stop is the garden route. Thank you for reading!
Love
Jim xxx
