Crrossing Namibia November 25 - December 9/2010 Windhoek and the West

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Windhoek
The road from Marienthal to Windhoek is boring, but Windhoek itself is a nice modern city with wide boulevards and big shoppimgmalls. We put our tent in the garden at the Cardboard Box Backpackers. At the bar I hear music from the sixties and seventies. I feel like an old hippie. We meet Steffie Presske ([e-mail]). She is director of a travelagency in Bostwana. We hope to meet her again once we are there.
We arrange permits: one for Sestriem and one for the Moonlandscape near Swakopmund.
We are 4 months on the road now. Sometimes we are terribly tired, but we enjoy it. We learn a lot about nature and we also learn to be flexible.

Sesriem
It is evening. We sit near our tent under a big camelthorn tree at the campsite of Sesriem in the Naukluft Namib Park. It took us 6 hours to come here from Windhoek. The sun is going down behind the horizon of the endless sandplains. There are some rocky outcrops. We see herds of springboks in the fields. The fire on which we made our dinner is still glowing. This is the Africa I always had in mind. We drink a glass of wine, while we talk about the things we have seen today.
About the amazing dunes in Sossusvlei with their soft colours from red, via orange and yellow to white. Some are higher than 300 meter. The red/orange colours are on the higher parts. It consists of the smaller and lighter grains. The white parts are down in the lower parts. These are the bigger and heavier grains. The shapes are wonderful. As if a painter drew some loose but razorsharp lines over a virginal white paper. From the top of dune number 45 we recognize the parabole dunes. Their direction proof that the dominating winds come from the south west, the so called tradewinds. The dunes migrate by them to the north and landinwards. Parabole dunes can move with a speed of one kilometer annualy and they take their whole ecosystem with them: plants and animals. We wonder where all this sand comes from. In a local brochure we read that it comes from the Kalahari, that it is transported to the sea by the Orange river, that the Benguale current brought it to the North, that the sea brought it ashore and that the tradewinds blew it landinwards. A long way for some sandgrains.
The sun is under the horizon now. The sky has all colours. We take our last glass of wine.
Sossusvley is part of the Namibian desert. It is the oldest desert in the world, about 12 millions years old. Sometimes there are floodings followed by years of draught. Thanks to these torrential rains some plants can survive here. But not in Death vlei, about 60 kilometers from Sestriem. It is a fascinating spot in the desert with trees starving from lack of water. They look like a statue of Zadkin in Rotterdam with their branches in a cry pointing to the sky as if they are petrified monuments, still begging for water.
In the past the floodings were heftier. You can see it easily at the gorge near the Sesriem camsite. On top there are layers of conglomerate of about 10 meters thick. The boulders are cemented together in a calcrete material. It means that the river was able to transport such big boulders. And under it lies a layer of sandstone of 10 meter, which means that before there was a desert again: a proto namib. Inside the gorge we finally find the tree we were looking for so long in Africa, the holy tree of the Masai, the stair to heaven as they believe, the Sycomore fig. It brings water. And indeed we see some water in the gorge.
It is dark now. We have finished our wine. The sky is full of stars. In the moonshine the rocky outcrops and the camelthorntrees form dark silhouets. We go to bed in our little tent. The campfire is still glowing.

Swakopmund
It takes us all day to come to Swakopmund. We drive across gravelroads and that limitates our speed to 80 km/h. We have to cross the Namibian desert all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The landscape becomes drier and drier. Finally we drive over endless gravelplains. Nothing is here, no humans, no cars, no trees, no brushes, no grasses. Maybe some lichens and micro-organisms. It scares us to cross such a distance. Suppose something happens with the car.
Then we enter the so called Moonlandscape. It is breathtaking beautiful. If Armstrong and Aldrin were not on the moon in 1969, they could have planted the American flag here and everyone would have believed they were on the moon. The landscape is formed during the last ice age, 30.000 years ago. Sealevel was low because the water was stocked as ice. As a consequence rivers had to flow further to meet the sea, meanwhile making gorges in the landscape.
Further we go and then we see a haze over the horizon. Suddenly it becomes cold. It is caused by the cold Benguale current. It reminds me of the coast of Peru, where the same takes place. Because the earth spins to the east the oceans lag behind, causing cold upwellings. In Peru it is the cold Humboldt current. Here it is the Benguale current. And like in Peru it causes a desert, because the vapor enter warmer air when it goes upwards. The dewpoint becomes higher.
Finally we reach Swakopmund and put our tent in the garden of the Desert Sky Backpackers Lodge. Swakopmund is a nice touristic town with a lot of facilities. We walk to the Ocean and we see seals. Also pelicans, dolphins and whales live here. Again it reminds me of Peru, the same animals. The sea is rich of food, all caused by the upwelling: it returns dead food material in the foodchain, which otherwise would have sunk to the seabottom. In the town we find a nice fish reataurant: the Ocean Basket to celebrate Linda's birthday.

"Sossusvlei is female with its soft dunes. Swakopmund is male: it is hard with its dolorites and metamorfical schist layers", says Werner de Hilster, our guide ([e-mail]). We drive in his 4W car across the Moonlandscape, like the Pathfinder on Mars. We pass the old Steamtractor, called Martin Luther. 'Here I stand. God help me. I cannot do otherwise', said Martin Luther. The steamtractor had to replace the ox wagons in the end of the 19th century. They had bovine disease and they ate the scarce desertvegetation. You can still see the old tracks of the oxwagons. They are more than 100 years old. So a German lieutenant brought a steamtractor here all the way from Germany. It worked, but then a problem arose. Water. To get steam you need water. But water is rare in a desert. So the life of the steamtractor was short and he was left alone in the desert: 'here I stand, I cannot do otherwise'.
It is about the same with the plants we see here in the Moonlandscape. They also have to cope with the lack of water. And like the steamtractor they stand still. But the difference is that plants 'though they stand still, can do otherwise'. They have found all kind of solutions for the waterproblem: small, thick and waxy leaves, deep and extended roots. Like the !Nara plant. The ! stands for a clicksound (Miriam Makeba made it once worldfamous with her clicksong). The Toppenaars speak it. The Himba, the mysterious tribe who lives in the Namibian desert eat the fruits of the !Nara. They look like melons. Also the seeds are eatable. Werner shows us how to crack them between our teeth. They are nice. "The Himba make even oil of it", says Werner. You can buy it in Swakopmund.
"The women of the Himba tribe never wash themselves. Instead they have a perfume made out of the Commiforaplant", tells Werner. The plant is related to mhyrre indeed. Some days later we meet some Himba women. They ask if we like to make a picture. For money of course. Linda takes a picture of one of them. I stand next to her. I ask what her name is. 'Bonita', she says. 'Bonita, I smell you feetah', I think, but actually I do not smell anything. The Commifora plant plant works very well.
Another example is the Iceplant. The flowers open as soon they come in contact with the morningdew. Because there is no morningdew Werner demonstrates it with a plantspout. "Quite the opposite happens with the Dollarbush". Werner points out. "The fruit closes as soon there is some dew." Again the plantspout and indeed the fruit closes immediately. "This way the fruit encloses a drop of water, enough for the initial life of the seedling." The leaves look like dollars. They turn the rim to the sun in order to get as less sunshine as possible. 'They are full of water", tells Werner, meanwhile queezing the water out of a leaf like a sponge, "that is why Springboks like them".
Or take the Tamarisk. The leaves produce salt in the afternoon in order to hold their water. When you lick them you can taste the salt. The most famous of all these plants is the Welwitschia of course. Actually it is a tree. The trunk does not grow in the lenght but in the width. "Every 10 cm stands for 100 year. So this one here is 500 years", says Werner. Next day we do a Welwitschia tour in our own car. We find one which is 1500 years old: the mother of all Welwitschia's. It is a female plant and she still has flowers. The Latin name is Welwitschia mirabilis. Though some people call it Welwitschia miserabilis, because of the poor appearance, I would rather call it Welwitschia miracilis. Who else can say to be sexually active on a age of 1500 years? The males and females live apart. They produce nectar. "Here is the pollinator", says Werner, while he shows a beetle under the leaves. "It is the six spotted bug. They pollinate them, but they also eat them. Life and death together." During the day they close their stomata (little openings in the leaves), to prevent evaporation. During the night they store carbondioxide for the photosynthesis (so called CAM-photosynthesis).

Also animals are adapted to the draught. "Look at this beetle", says Werner. "It is the Tok Toki." It looks like a normal black beetle. But then we see that the wingshields are grown together. he cannot fly anymore. "To get some morningdew he stand with his head down (bottom up) and let the water flow in his mouth (no plantspout this time). This way he catch every day about 20 percent of his bodyweight in water. It is the same when you drink each day about 15 L water. That is why chameleons like them so much. Besides the meat, they get a lot of water."
And then we run into a chameleon. He is quicker than the chameleons we saw on Madagascar. "Otherwise he never can catch the beetles", Werner explains. "Look how is colour is changing. The left side is lighter then the right one. This way he reflects the sun better.
There is more life in the desert than we expected. We see spiders, the hole of a antlion, but also traces of Springboks and Ostriches. In spite of the lack of water there is a complete foodchain. "Water is the main item here", says Werner. "When the Dutch talk about the weather, they have nothing to talk about anymore. Here the most important question is: 'have you had rain?' The Swakopriver does not reach the sea anymore. But once in a while he comes very near. People come out of their houses to see the wonder. Maybe next year he will reach the sea. It becomes wetter and wetter here."
Next day we have a look ourselves at the mouth of the Swakopriver. The lake ends just before the sea. It is salty. We see Salicornia (zeekraal), or zeekoraal as the Afrikaanders say at the border and inside the lake are Flamingo's.
The desert is a wonderful ecosystem. "It is a pity that we have open mining here", says Werner. "Since some years they have found uranium. Australians, Russians and Chinese have concessions to drill. Now carbondioxide turns out to be the main ecological problem, the use of uranium becomes an attractive alternative. It is good for the economy of Namibia, but it is a disaster for this beautiful ecosystem." We can agree with that. Every time we think we have seen Africa, but every time we are surprised by new things. "Namibia has a lot of corners" says Werner, "behind every corner you find something new."

Windhoek again
We drove back to Windhoek over the B2, a tarred road, part of the Trans Kalahari Highway and took a room in the Cardboard Box Backpackers. In the Botanical garden we finally found the plant we were looking for so long: The Halfmens (Pachypodia namaquana).

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Andre and Linda
We wish you a merry Christmas and an happy Newyear!