Namibia

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Namibia
We arrived in Namibia after disembarking from our hitched ride with a trucky in Windhoek, got the hostel owner out of bed to get a room and then went to pick up our car complete with roof tents, camping gas cylinders and spade (more useful than you might think) before heading off north towards one of Namibia's most famous attractions, Etosha National Park.

Etosha
Etosha was zebra-tastic but, did as it promises provide us with 3 Rhino sightings one of which, we only noticed because as we were rushing back to get into the campsite before it closed at sunset and Vicky so surprised could get her words out and sounded like she was having a fit in the car! We all looked round to see a rhino trotting alongside the road with a calf! It quickly scarpered and we absolutely didn't go off roading trying to find it! ;-) We then spent the evening by the waterhole at the camp and were lucky enough to see a Rhino rock up while there was elephant there and they had a bit of a stand off before the elephant left nonchalantly pretending he was going to leave anyway. Rather less exciting was a jackal v African Wild Cat head to head (which is akin to a jumped up fox and domestic cat without a collar) fido v's puddles the rematch if you will! They sniffed about a bit and then both went on their merry way! Thrilling! We spent the second day grass watching in the hope of spotting cheetahs, being disappointed by the salt flats and managing to lose half our bags out of the back of the car before heading further north to Epupa Falls.



En Route To Epupa
On the way to Epupa we stopped off at a place called Ondangwa aka 'Den of thieves' where some cheeky scamp had the audacity to steal vickies day bag through a marginally open window when there were three of us stood around the car! We are convinced the 'security gaurd' was in on it but, there was little we could do and so went to the police where we were given the Mzungu treatment and sheparded to the station comanders office to give a statement! After the unpleasant brush with kleptomania central we continued on our planned route to Epupa Falls on the Angola-Namibia border.

Epupa Falls
Understandablly slightly iritated by the day's events Vicky and I amused ourselves on the way to Epupa Falls on the very bumpy untarred road by hanging out the windows and drinking our way through a box of wine! Well we drunk some of it, rather a lot ended up sprayed up the car! Epupa Falls were definately worth the somewhat arduous journey; the small village that had developed at the top of the falls was very local, you bought bread from peoples houses that you had to order the day before and the predominant tribe were the Himba people (the main tribe in the Kaokoveld area) who wear traditional leather mini skirt-esque garments, and ornate jewellery and paint their bodies red to protect themselves from the sun. We met a few locals in the local bar, one of whom we ended up giving a lift to the next day and who took us up to the falls and let us know which of the pools it was safe to swim in without being swept over into the cascading waterfalls! We did contemplate trying to cross the river to stick a foot in Angola but, thought there might be a very real chance of getting shot by some unseen border gaurd so decided against it!



Back to Outjo
After the incident in Ondangwa we had a slight change of route and as such decided to head back to Outjo (a place we'd stayed on the way to Etosha) where the friendly owner had said to come back for a braai (south African BBQ where all burger paties are banned) if we were passing by. So we did! We travelled through attractive Damarland and ditched a visit to the petrified forest (a decision that was endorsed by Hugo and Haneke when we met them - apparently concrete trees are about as spectacular as they sound!) and arrived early evening in Outjo and Kia Oms Hostel for a brilliant Braai. We all tried Kudu meat for the first time which was delicious and proceeded to devour the made-on-the braai bread, home made tomato jam and mustard and tastey Gemsbok biltong. We then proceeded to make our way through all the rest of our wine and beer and retire to the owners bar to play 'sharky,' a drinking game of his own invention and stayed there until the owner fell asleep at the bar which we took as our cue to leave!




Swakopund
After a brief stop in Windhoek to get a new passport sorted for Vicky we headed to Namibia's 'adrenalin Capital', Swakopund. A somewhat strange town on the coast with very German and very un-African feel. That could possibly be a good thing as it was here that we all felt the need to jump out of a perfectly good plane while sitting on someone's lap who you'd met about 20minutes before hand. It was awesome! Especially when you got to guide the parachute yourself on the way down and send it into alsorts of spins! We also went to see the salt flats which, if you pardon the pun, really weren't worth their salt! It was actually a salt mine and all the flamingos had bugg@red off to Etosha! We managed to miss our slot for quad biking and so spent an hour or so hurling ourselves off and sliding down sand dunes in various silly poses...we were finding sand for days afterwards!




Skeleton Coast
From Swakopund Vicky headed back home and Jimmy, Pats and I all headed for the Skeleton coast. They have an odd rule in the Skeleton coast national park where you can't enter and leave through the some gate which put a bit of a spanner in the works. So after some off roading along the coast and a quick peek at the hundreds of very smelly seals at Cape Cross we headed inland through the pitureqsue red Brandberg mountains to the a Save the (desert) Rhino park which we found out when we got there had no rhinos! The drive was cool nonetheless as was the campsite and after a pleasant evening there we headed north on a dried up river bed with a hand drawn map featuring two landmarks, one being a tree which wasn't there and the second being a circle and a rectangle whatever that was supposed to be!! Miraculously we managed to emerge in Twyfontein and at what must have been a tourist attraction dreamt up during a drunken night out at the Namibian Tourist board. 'Burnt Mountain' which is a brown hill and 'the organ pipes' which are just rocks that look slightly like organ pipes and were no different to most of the rock faces we had just driven through! Amused by how poor these genuine tourist 'attractions' were we headed for the skeleton coast and wanting to be as close to the entrance of the park as we could so we could get an early start and be back in Swakopund for Sunset quad biking on dunes we decided to bush camp a couple of kilometers outside the park entrance.



Bush camping was cool, if not somewhat windy and with questionable toilet facilitied and we were on course for completing the skeleton coast - assumably so-called because of its desert-like bleakness- in time to get to Swakopund. That was until the car ground to a halt in the middle of said bleakness having managed to run completely out of petrol despite the fuel gauge still saying we had a quarter of a tank left! We'd bumped into Hugo and Haneke earlier that week who said they'd seen one car the whole day they were here...it could be a long day! But within 20minutes a car went past, it was diesel but, agree to take Jimmy 100km up the road to the nearest petrol station, then 20 minutes later two more cars turned up! They carried Francois, the Captain Birdseye look-a-like who ran all the National Parks in Namibia! He siphoned off 25l of petrol for us, we filled up and we were on our very merry, very lucky way! We were just about to run out of petrol for a second time when coming the other way, carried by a guy who wasn't even going in our direction but helped up out anyway, was Jimmy with another 25l of petrol! FAte clearly wanted us to go quadbiking! We filled up again and rocked up in Swakopund with enough time for a beer before quad biking!




Back to Swakopund
There were three other people on the dune quad biking at sunset and who should those three people be but, our old pals from Zambia Jez and Amanda! We then spent a good few hours hooning around, over, up and down the dunes on quad bikes albeit with a guide who seemed to think that all girls were completly incapable of driving a quad bike and spent most of the time implying such, even when Jimmy drove into the back of me! It was great though and we all enjoyed a drink from the top of the dunes at sunset before heading back and out for a reunion drink!



Soussevlei
As if that wasn't enough sand we then headed for Namibia's other main tourist attraction, Soussevlei, the access point to towering expanse of red sand dunes which make up a large part of Namibia's SW and the Namib desert. We headed via what should also be labelled as a tourist attraction (from our experience at burnt mountain the qualification criteria dont seem to be that astingent) Solitare, purely for it's apple pie! The dunes were almost picture perfect and were also extremly knackering to climb! We headed off over one to see what we could see (apparently there is no problem with just wandering off into the middle of the desert on your own) and we of course could see more sand! 'Vlei' apparently translates to lake which was somewhat odd in the middle of the desert and was even more odd when Sousselvlei and Dead Vlei were both dry expanses of cracked white mud with strangley stark trees in the middle of mounds of red sand! It was strangely impressive (for cracked mud) and made for a good photo if nothing else! We once again met up with Jez and Amanda and arranged to meet them in a random town we'd picked near Windhoek later that evening. We of course stopped for more apple pie on the way back!



Rehoboth
The road to Rehoboth left a lot to be desired and with killer dips on blind bends with no signs lead to us actually managing to take off in the car as such we were glad arrive in Rehoboth in one piece! We were also glad to find that we were the only ones staying at a campsite we had found which had a spa that we could use for free and which they opened for us to use all night! Jez and Amanda turned up later and we all proceeded to get hammered in the spa for the princely sum of 2.50 GBP a night!



From here we returned back to Windhoek, returned our trusty (albeit not when it came to fuel gauges) 4x4 and I said goodbye to Patsy once again before the rest of us continued out adventure via the intercape to South Africa....

Full photos are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/JimmahW/Namibia2008

Recommended Accomodation
Kia Oms, Outjo - owner Dion was amazingly hospitable and the kitchen is superbly equipped
Chameleon, Winhoek (preferred over Cardboard box). One of the nicest dorms we've stayed in.
Onguma, just outside Namutoni Gate, Etosha - 100 N$ pp for camping but, cheaper than inside the park and each site has it's own beautiful rustic bathroom. (also is part of a private reserve and has a water hole)

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