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Published: September 14th 2007
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Southern Namibia
How like Australia is this?? After bushing it for so long it was nice to get into a nice small town and wander around a bit. Swakopmund was really nice - clean and tidy and on the beach! What more could you want? Probably some hot weather so we could actually go to the beach, but you can't have everything! And we definitely didn't have everything when it came to our campsite. It was classic. Just a massive area of beach sand divided into tent sites, but there was only about 5 lots of people staying there, including us! To top it off, the night was freezing! We actually had to sleep with our thermals on. Thank god we bought them before we left home.
Following our pattern of changing campsites every night in Namibia we packed up and got going the next morning. We drove through the Namib Naukluft National Park, lots of mountains, trees and beautiful mountain passes. It was like driving through a canyon and the rock was very unusual. Another freezing night, this time in the mountains. The thermals came out again and it was still cold. We woke up in the morning to find ice on top of our tent
Southern Namibia
The road just disappeared from view.. and encrusted all over the car. Completely different to the north of the country.
The next day we had an early start and got to Soussevlei - it was amazing. Everyone talks about these amazing dunes, and they really are. The orange and red colours are phenomenal - completely different to the usual white dunes I tend to imagine. We climbed up Dune 45 - the view was phenomenal. And it was more than enough for us, we had no real desire to climb the bigger dunes - Big Mama and Big Daddy could wait as far as we were concerned. Evan did some crazy ass running down the dune so I was happy not to see him trying the same on the bigger dunes. He was tipping sand out of his pockets for quite some time after.
Then we did the walk out to Dead Vlei. We didn't want to pay for the shuttle bus for the last 5 kilometres where you can't take 2WD cars, and were lucky enough to get a lift out there. Unfortunately we had to walk back. But the trip was worth it. Dead Vlei was amazing. The reason why the whole
The south
was cold!! area is so dead is because no water has flowed into it for about 600 years. And it definitely wasn't going to be flowing this year - the place was completely dry.
Our next major stop was Fish River Canyon. The drive down there was amazing (I think I have said that about everything in Namibia!). We passed the awesome Tirusberge Mountains and the Rooirand and then came into mining territory. The bonus of that was a beautiful bitumen road - which is in short supply in Namibia. Then we ended up on the road which follows the Oranje River - the border between Namibia and South Africa. It started off really twisty between the mountains (more like gorges) and then it opened up and started to follow the river. Beautiful. To top it off, that night we had our first free camp, right along the river. We built a fire, swam naked in the river (well Evan body surfed down the mini rapids - it was too cold for me!) and watched the stars. Another nice pleasant change - it wasn't too cold. No thermals! Then we got up in the middle of the night and realised we
Soussevlei Dunes
This place was amazing - and hot (finally)! were in camp dusty. It was everywhere! It slipped under the fly and through the tent mesh and was all over everything including our sleeping bags. Needless to say, it didn't make for a pleasant morning. Lots of clean up.
But the day turned out ok - we got to see the famous Fish River Canyon. Absolutely devoid of water of course. So lacking in water that they wouldn't allow anyone to go down and walk into it this year. With no walks to do we got back in the car and headed out to see the Quiver Tree Forest. They are really amazing trees. After a day spent exploring the trees and the Giant's Playground - massive rocks just stacked up everywhere like a Giant stopped playing blocks in the middle of a game - we headed back to Windhoek. But not before we also had a bit of up close and personal time with our camp site owners pet cheetahs and warthogs! The end of our self-drive trip. It was awesome - I would recommend it to anyone.
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