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Published: March 5th 2007
So from Stone Town to
Windhoek, Namibia with a 2day shopping stop in Johannesburg.
We went from one side of Africa to the other - hot and humid to hot and extremely dry. It was so dry that walking in the streets in the direct sun, moisture zapped right out of you and before long, you can feel the sinuses and lips beginning to crack.
Chameleon backpackers is a cosy hostel housed in 2 buildings with a pool and a reed roof bar in the middle. The prices are good for the type of rooms that you get - well decked out and very comfortable. Perhaps the best we have stayed in so far (national park
campsites are about the same cost!) Namibia is very easy to travel in with a large market of efficiency expectant German tourists but as a result, it does not come cheap in comparision with the other places in Africa - more on a par with South Africa. Before even the (luxury) shower, San made a quick dash to the phones to call 4x4 rental companies that kit up the vehicle with full camping gear. This urgency was based on earlier feedback that many
vehicle hires and national parks places had to be pre-booked. The write-ups in the travel books also indicated the need to wait for days before getting an available vehicle added to San's little trip down panic lane of feeling unprepared! It turned out that during the off-season, there is a marked decrease in activity which was a blessing to both availability plus prices. These are NOT indicated on the websites so bookings through these will be peak prices year round. We were not only able to get a good rate on the vehicle (about Namibian $840 per day inclusive of tyre and window insurance and zero excess) but we were able to leave anyday we wanted to. Our fears of not getting camp sites were also allayed upon being told we could roll right up and pitch up with no hassles nor bookings.
Before slamming on the gas and rushing out of town, we decided to spend a day in Windhoek to rest up, take a look-see at the city centre and stock up on provisions for the 2 week journey ahead. The city is a bigger version of a developed town so walking around is easy. Namibia on
the whole is very modern although very sparse. The yellow pages for this vast piece of land is about 1/3 the size of the yellow pages in Singapore!! We wonder whether there is more Springbok here than there are sheep in NZ.
2 days later, we headed off in a very clean and well maintained 4-seater Toyota 4x4 with a collapsable tent screwed down tightly to the roof. As a little luxury we even had a tiny box fridge to throw in all the meat and veg for our cook-ups under the stars... that is if there was still enough space after the beer and wine had been stored! A great stop for needs other than the bottle shop are the nicely stocked 'Fruit and Veg' stores dotted around.
We chose to do the popular tourist route of Waterberg-Etosha-Brandberg-Swakopmund-Spitzkopf-Kuisep Canyon-Sossusvlei-Spreethoogte Pass-Windhoek in an anticlockwise manner.
Early evening on the first day we arrived at
Waterberg Conservation Area, most of the journey on tarmac road. We pitched up in a lovely grassed campsite that had good ablutions. Since setting up only takes about 15 minutes, we had time with the remaining daylight to head off on one of
the many trails from the camp area and finished off with a walk to the top of the berg itself. Together with the resident dassies, we sat at the top to admire the superb views of the valley below as the sun made its way down on the West. The quietness was loud and humbling and we fooled around taking silly pictures of our shadows with Matrix kung fu poses. We had no problems cooking under torch light and had a comfortable night's sleep in what was to be our shelter for the next 2 weeks.
We squeezed in an early morning stroll catching sight of the baboons, ground squirrels and guinea fowl amongst the alien flora and fauna and then packed up to move onwards to the Etosha National Park. We had hoped to catch glimpse of others like some cats but all we caught were a whiff of their freshly laid dung along the route. On the way to Etosha, we visited the
Hoba meteorite site north of Grootfontein, which is home to the biggest alien rock known to man. At 60,000kg and all metal (Iron, Cobalt, Titanium...) it was just way too heavy for anyone to
cart off to their private collection which is fortunate for us non-collectors to appreciate this vast rock that had once upon a time had been hurtling through space perhaps for millennia. Now that's well travelled! As there is nothing other than this metal blob in the area (which cost us about NMB$20 to look at) it was not difficult, under the searing afternoon heat, to let the mind drift and ponder the deeper questions in life, like: 'Was there an animal unfortunate enough to have been crushed when it landed?' ... our next stop was a large sink-hole lake which was so impressive that we can't remember the name of it nor are really bothered to look it up at this point. Maybe we were spoilt by the cenotes in Mexico.
We entered
Etosha National Park at the Eastern side - a place called Namitoni. After setting up tent we experienced San's aluminium pot Chicken rice while watching a warthog and her young wander by. This modication cook up without a claypot was a complete disaster with the rice still powdery and wet while the bottom was completely burnt out. Even the cook could not stomach her own cooking
and gave up halfway. The husband was sweet enough to say that it was ok and proceeded to finish his plate off . San's portion was thrown in the bin and was relished by the visiting jackels who could open and topple the bins with no trouble. They enjoyed that was used to wash up as We could also hear them lapping up the soapy leftover washing up water in the middle of the night - I'm sure they were farting bubbles for most of the following day. Not a grain of the food was leftover the next morning - top quality scavengers. After the cullenary mishap, we strolled down to the floodlit waterhole (a feature of all the Etosha campsites) but saw nothing apart from a few Windhoek beers.
The next day we took a game drive around the nearby Fishermans Pan where we got excellent viewing of giraffe, bull elephants, various antelope and birds. The highlight was the stop we made at a remote picnic/toilet stop as San could not wait to cook some instant noodles after not having much dinner the night earlier. All but 30%!o(MISSING)f the fence surrounding the place
was destroyed by elephants and Richy stood watch with his brand new pocket knife in hand to protect our lives just in case any animal wandering by wanted some of the noodles! Sacrifice my life rather than sacrifice my noodles that had been lovingly carried over from Chinatown london. As if to prove the point of this yummilicious pot of MSG, mid-noodle, a bull elephant that we had seen at a nearby waterhole earlier wandered within 20m of our vehicle - clearly an African Elephant and not Asian as it as quickly wandered away again after a few minutes of granting us a video shoot and interview!
Around midday we headed off to Halali camp situated in the centre of the park. We cut the game driving short as it was getting too hot. The camp here was disappointing. The waterhole was well set up on the edge of a rock outcrop but had few visitors that night. The highlight was a female rhino and her calf that paid two visits.
Instead of staying the 2 nights as planned, we decide to cut Halali short and move on for two nights at Okaukuejo site on the south West
exit of the park instead. This proved to be the right move as the game driving and floodlit waterhole at this site was the best. We soon realised this was the waterhole that Carole and Jason had raved about. In the two days we were there we saw many rhino, elephant herds, zebra, giraffe, many different species of antelope, birds, jackels, hyenas, prides of lions and all the rest to boot. The only thing we saw in Tanzania that we did not see here was leopard. We had a very enjoyable 4 days here and highly recommend it for a self-drive safari.
Leaving Etosha, we headed to
Brandberg as recommended by Judith. This is an area known for its stunning semi-desert environment and amazing rock formations as well as ancient rock art paintings. A mistake in locating the campsite by Rich fortunately resulted in a fun 40km 4WD detour full of spectacular views of the berg and San gripping onto her seat belt and praying that we would not get stuck in the soft sand. Good thing that Richy had 4WD experience through his crazy trips with Greaser and all the outings where he took girls to the waterfalls
in Brunei! We eventually found and settled-in at our camp ground for what had now become the customery home cooking, sunset beer and game of scrabble.
The following morning we made the short drive to the park for a pleasant walk to the white lady cave paintings. On route, we did as the locals would and pulled up alongside a mother and her little boy walking along and offered them a ride. They turned out to be the park attendent and her son. In Malaysia, you would never dream of picking up anyone just in case they turn out to be a
pontianak. We started the walk ourselves through the river valley (this time of the year without the river) and near the caves found Colin !Uiseb (the exclamation spells the pronounciation of a front palate mouth click) a local Bushman returning with an earlier group. He expertly guided us to see several different painting sites, smoothly eroded river beds and waterfalls and , when asked, happily showed us the different types of clicks to give meanings to words. It was amusing to see us try and learn the clicks of the language
and this was an art onto itself as to listen to it was like listening to a musical instrument being played around a fire at night.
Taking the advice of the guys that rented us the car, we avoided most of Skeleton Coast which was not as spectacular as is described by the tourist write-ups. (The most spectacular wrecks were further north in the restricted area where diamonds are still being mined). Instead we headed directly from an inland route to
Hentis Bay - a location mainly for the likes of anglers on holiday. Here, Rich almost got us stuck in the sand with a roaring incoming Atlantic swell threatening to float us back to South America. Many billows of tyre smoke, 4WDL setting and high decibel engine roars later, he managed to get the vehicle out of trouble with a few onlookers amused from the banks above. With sheepish smiles, we went on to
Swakopmund, the second largest 'city' in Namibia, without further detours. Here we treated ourselves to a luxury campsite with its own private bathroom and soon headed into town to search out a few beers and our first meal out for over a week. We
found a great place serving hearty German style food and beer close to the lighthouse. The lighthouse Pub and Restaurant (064 400894) at the jetty is highly recommended.
The following day we took a great 1/2 day tour with Namib Desert Adventures to learn about the abundance of delicate life that exists in the desert - the whole food chain based on grass seeds blown from the savanas inland.
After a spot of shopping to restock supplies in town we headed out to the amazing
Spitzkopft formation - geologically similar to Bandberg but far more impressive. This amazing site, run by the local community, where all proceeds go back to the area, is set amongst the boulders and cranies of the huge Spitzkopf monolith. Secluded basic (drop toilet/no water) camp sites can be found around its base - we saw only 1 other group the whole time we were there. However, when we climbed up a smooth section of the kopf - which just got steeper and steeper with the 45degree + slope beginning to test the grip on Richy's new boots acquired in London! - other groups could be seen hidden amongst the outcrops. San was so
petrified of the steepness that she just sat in this little erosion hole that she had found and stayed there to wait for Richy to get back down. The photos do no justice to the slope believe us... One does not always need to conquer the highest heights to enjoy the view!
From there we drove through the breathtaking open plains of
Namib Desert Park to make our way to the
Kuiseb river Canyon (minus the river of course - rivers only flow here for a few months during rainy season once in a few years sometimes and rarely reach the sea. For our entire trip we drove across riverbeds but never spotted a trickle of water. We were joking along the way that all of them should be renamed on maps "Occasional riverbeds". It was in the south of the Park that we found a real wilderness campsite. We were the only people present, the place was unfenced and had clear evidence of bigcat claw marks on the exposed drop loo! A rat that scurried across the floor during a toilet vist gave a good ol' fright to chicca China. An eventful evening insued with
a sterling beef goulash, veggies and rice and another scrabble game under the light of our petzl head lamps. We went to bed happy and relieved that our tent was 1.7m off the ground - just in case, you understand!
We rose before sunrise the following day and experienced a spectacular breakfast sunrise at the Kuiseb canyon before heading off to Sossusvlei. Upon arrival, the tiredness finally caught up with us and the afternoon was spent lazing under the shade of the tree catching some much needed zzz's. All around, there is sand, sand and more sand. The only time there is no sand on the feet is during the shower... Late afternoon, we headed to Dune 45 to experience the sunset. We managed to walk half way, ankle-deep in sand to admire the view and observe how fast the sand is carried along by the wind across the surface. Going up is harder than down of course and each of us took turns to run down as fast as we could - instead of speedsters we looked like bobbing baffoons. All this against a 360 degree surround of warm sand under foot and views of endless giant dunes
for miles - priceless!
Not satisfied with just a sunset, we got up early to catch the sunrise in the real sossouvlei which is a further 20km from Dune 45. We enjoyed a 4WD drive through to deadvlei (the previous sossusvlei (river end) in years gone by before it was fully cut off by the growing dunes) and around 9am met up with a group tour led by a bushman through the dunes. If any of you head there, try and contact
Sossus on Foot Although Sossusvlei was impressive we felt that we'd seen all we'd wanted to and were tiring of packing up
every day. A change of plan saw us head off to a guest farm to spend our last two nights walking and chilling in the highlands. We headed for
Namibgrens farm in the Gamsberg mountain range as it was conveniently located between Sossusvlei and Windhoek. Before we could get to this wonderful little place for a sought after rest, the 4x4 expertly handed by Richy had to tackle the super steep
Spreetshoogte Pass - a 1km rise over 3km - at one point I didn't know whether to look or to close my eyes - beautiful
views vs sure death at falling. After that little bit of 15 min excitement, we finally made it up and paused a little to let the ticker calm down and gasp at the birds eye view of the arid plains below.
Our next 2 days were rewarded with walking amongst huge granite boulder stewn highland hosted by the very friendly and warm Frank and Suzie's. Oftentime, we would bump into unsuspecting lizards, baboons, and dassies (big fluffy rock rodents - rock hyrexes). On the second walk we took, we walked into grazing klipspringers. At 20 m away, they had no idea that we were there as the wind was blowing the other way and we stood and watched, intruding into their wild space as they grazed fearlessly. After about 15 minutes, the lookout gave a twitch of her tail and they were gone. This was definitely the ideal spot to finish a truly fantastic tour.
After returning to Winhoek the following day we had one night back at Chameleon before heading off on the luxurious, yet well priced over night InterCape bus to Cape town.
With good, plentiful home cooking every evening, embelished with beer or wine
the waist line is spreading. Just fattening up for the hard India and Nepal travelling to come....
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Alex Braga
non-member comment
I can't believe it!
Wow! Awesome pictures! Have you thought about publishing a book after your trip? Take it easy (I feel kind of ridiculous telling you to relax while I am fighting crime in peaceful Rio). Keep in touch ALEX BRAGA