Namibia-Rock Paintings, desert Rhino and Skeleton Coast

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Namibia-Rock Paintings, Desert Rhino and the Skeleton Coast

We headed south from Puros and continued through stunning scenery and across several more mighty river beds such as the Huab that also hold populations of desert Elephant. We visited a place called Twyfelfontein which is a site full of intricate rock engravings done by the San people or ‘Bushmen’ when they inhabited the region thousands of years ago. The engravings are mainly of animals including many that are no longer present in the area due to climate change or over hunting. The local people the Hama or Damara are relatives of the bushmen and they speak with a ‘click’ language which was 4 distinct click sounds. The bushmen language has 6! It is incredible to hear them speaking using all the different clicks.

Our main concern at this point in time was finding a place with satellite TV to catch the RWC quarter finals. We eventually found a place further south near Namibia’s highest mountain at a place called Brandberg on the Ugab river. This is still serious wilderness although there is a higher human population here. We arrived at this camp right at the bottom of the mountain just in time for the England Australia game which was a huge upset given Englands recent form. We were watching with some of the biggest Afrikaners you have ever seen-classic short shorts and two tan shirts galore! Namibia despite being traditionally German is overwhelmed with Afrikaners who have made their way North from their South African heartlands. They are interesting characters to say the least!

They had a tame meerkat that lived around the house. I had never seen a meerkat before and am still yet to see one in the wild but it was so cool to meet this particular one. He was delightful and would sleep on your lap quite happily. However when you picked him up he made a hell of a noise and would try to bite your finger gently. He took a serious liking to Rich-so much so that he started following Rich everywhere even to the point that he climbed up a hill with us behind the camp! We had to rip him away from Rich’s foot when we needed to get in the car and then run with him into the house and dump him there before running back to the car. He was so determined that he would high tail it after you out of the house in a bid to get back to Rich who was now safely in the car. It was all a bit bizarre. We also saw the French upset the All Blacks that day which was an incredible result-one had to feel for New Zealand when you saw how devastated they were after the game. We had yet more desert eles come through camp that evening and we moved on next day.

We stayed in a small ex-mining town called Uis which is now completely dead following the closure of the tin mine. Before Uis we visited an exceptional set of San cave paintings at Brandberg which was interesting. We saw more rugby at Uis before heading back up North. We got to a place called Wereldsend which is where Flip the lion man is based and where we actually met him.

We were staying with a lady called Karen Nott who is a botanist who does a lot of teaching of field studies there at her research centre. It was fascinating talking to them both about Namibia and conservation there as both have huge amounts of experience in the area. Karen was kind enough to lend us one of her field staff-a real ruffian called Philamon-to take us out to try to track desert rhino on foot in the barren rocky wasteland that surrounds Wereldsend. These rhino are amazing from an African conservation point of view because they do not live in small highly protected areas-they run free across huge areas of community land with very little protection. Despite this they are thriving and there are about 200 in the desert stretching around wereldsend. There is very little for them to eat and they survive on a few poisonous succulent plants called euphorbias that grow in small clumps as well as on small woody commiphora bushes. It is difficult to understand how they eek out a living in such a barren environment.

We were up at 5am to get out to try to find fresh spoor. We drove to several very small springs where the rhino come every second night for water. We were searching for spoor of a rhino that had watered overnight that we could then follow up and track on foot and hopefully get up really close. We did find one fresh set of tracks but lost them in some rocky terrain. We also saw yet more fresh lion tracks! We drove around for a few hours looking for tracks and then took to our feet and walked up into the hills across very difficult terrain looking to find rhinos foraging out on the hills. We saw lots of middens where they deposit dung to mark their territories aswell as old spoor but nothing fresh and no rhinos. Dames the desert dweller was not in his element! The weather had changed-the day before had been bitterly cold with a westerly wind off the atlantic. The night had been freezing but in the morning the wind changed and was blowing from inland. The change was remarkable and temperatures soared to what you would expect for the desert!

In the afternoon we again walked into the hills-nearer to camp this time-in the hope of coming across a rhino out in the open. We were lucky to come across fresh spoor of a mother an baby and after about an hour of walking we spotted them across a valley. It was late and the wind was wrong so we were not able to get too close.

Next morning we returned early to find them again. We stumbled upon more fresh tracks of 3 rhino-2 were the ones we had seen the night before and the third was a big male who we spotted up on a hill and watched for about 20 mins. We then went after the other two and followed their tracks round a hill. We came upon them in a little valley on the lower slopes. Philimon at this point left us about 150m from them and said he was going back to the road to try and flag down passers by and charge them to come and see the Rhino! He was a slippery character and we eventually managed to drag him away from the road where he had stationed himself and got him to get us up really close to the pair. We traversed along the hill towards them. Thankfully the wind was blowing a gale and they had no idea we were there. We were protected from them by a very small rocky step which would hopefully deter any attempted charge and so we got up as close as we could. We got to within about 20 m of them and they were still feeding happily. After a few mins the mother suddenly became wary that something was wrong and started looking in our direction. She then heard the click of a camera shutter and got very disgruntled. It is amazing how poor their eye sight is-she was quite literally looking at us from 20m and still couldn’t make us out. Because she couldn’t smell us she had no idea who or what we were. We got some great photos of them staring at us. Eventually after a few heart stopping minutes they slowly trotted off down the hill, occasionally stopping to glance back at us. It was a very memorable experience and a first for all of us.

From Wereldsend the next stop was the skeleton coast national park. Unfortunately we were not able to stay in the park but spent a day transiting south and stopped at the cape seal colony at cape cross which was a interesting if somewhat smelly experience. The skeleton coast is very barren-you would not want to be shipwrecked there. Desert quite literally meets ocean and the wind and waves that batter the shore are freezing! We decided to charter a fishing guide for a day to go out and fish off the shore for sharks. He worked out of a bizarre little place called Henties bay on the coast. We went about 15km up the coast and started fishing amongst a rocky bit of coastline with lots of kelp beds. We were going initially for a small species of shark known as a spotted gully shark. Thankfully we all caught one. All were about 20-25kg each and put up a good fight. It was my first shark and I was really chuffed. We then moved to a more sandy area of beach and put out three big bloody baits and staked a lump of dead fish to the beach in the breaking waves to get the taste of blood in the water to attract sharks. Here we were going for a much bigger species known as the bronze whaler which can reach weights of 200kg. It is notoriously difficult and frustrating fishing. The wind whipping off the sea was absolutely freezing and it made for unpleasant conditions. After about 30 mins one of the rods bent alarmingly and line started screaming off the reel. Nick had been nominated that rod so he grabbed it and hooked the fish. All went quiet and we thought he had missed it but then the line went again and the fish was on. After about 40 mins of fighting he landed a 70kg bronze whaler on the beach which we successfully tagged and released as we had the other 3. It was a very cool experience and we were all chuffed even though we had no more luck thereafter.

We watched the world cup semis in another strange little town further south on the coast called swakopmund. It was equally cold and very quiet although we did have some entertaining nights out and met some very weird locals. We had a great day quad biking in the dunes and the rugby produced yet more surprises when England beat France to make the final. Our time in Namibia was basically over and we headed south stopping at a place called Sossusvlei where there are some breath-taking sand dunes. You get up the dunes at first light and try to see the sunrise-unfortunately we got stuck in some sand and just missed sunrise but we still got some great photos. We then stopped off for a night at the spectacular fish river canyon which is smaller only than the grand canyon in the States. From there it was one long 850km drive to Cape Town which we managed in one day so that we could be there in time for the RWC Final.

Namibia is a spectacular place and has been the highlight of the trip so far in terms of the landscape and remoteness of the places we visited there. It is a very tough place to live though and one starts to miss the green highlands that you get back home. Definitely a place I would visit again but not a place I would chose to live.

To see photos look at previous links that I made at the bottom of the other Namibian travel blog entry.

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