Namibia Dull Days!

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Our first couple of days in Namibia have been quite relaxing & involved short drives and lots of time spent in our camp sites, therefore I don’t feel they deserve a whole blog to themselves or you’ll all give up reading! We reluctantly left Felix Unite and its luxuries and headed towards Fish River canyon. Amongst the barren mountain landscape, grape farms become visible. The farms are for table grapes and during harvest employ up to 20,000 workers but there are around 8,000 people who work there permanently & they have a small straw village and a store. A short drive later we arrived at Fish River canyon where we had a few hours to enjoy the sun, write our postcards and watch a movie! In the afternoon we were driven to the rim of the canyon & set off to walk to a viewing area around the rim. This canyon is the 2nd largest canyon after the Grand Canyon & offers remarkable views into its chasm that stretches out to the horizon. The only vegetation around this rocky area is the Kokerboom tree which is an aloe and has many cells in the trunk which absorb water so it can survive during the harsh summer in the desert. Along with this tree is a green bush which is poisonous and only the rhino can eat. So, in short, this wouldn’t be a great area to break down! We were excited on our walk as we were all sure we had spotted a meerkat but our guide promptly let us down by telling us that it would have been a mongoose as meerkats could only be seen in South Africa. I guess if I’d ever watched Meerkat mansion I would have known this! After this walk around the rim we settled in at viewing area to watch the sunset over the canyon and enjoy yet another delicious meal cooked by our lovely guides.



That evening as we were lying in our tent Megan and I heard a dripping noise outside the tent, only to realise we had set up camp under a tree that spilled sap! We then began our ‘sap laps’ to assess how bad the damage to our tent was, luckily we were right in the middle of the tree so we just had sap around the tent and not on it!

We left Fish River and headed to our next campsite which was just to break up the journey. There wasn’t much to report about this day as we once again arrived early and had time to relax in the sun. During the afternoon there was a steady flow of cyclists coming into the rest camp. These cyclists were cycling from Egypt to Cape Town in 16 weeks. Many of them were burnt to a crisp as apparently every day they have a nudie mile (which none of us needed to know or envisage)!



Another 300km’s down the road finally brought us to a sight we had been looking forward to for days, sand dunes! The Namib desert is the oldest in the world and stretches more than 2,000km’s along the west coast of South Africa, Namibia & Angola. Within the desert is the Naukluft National Park which is home to Soussusvlei & the Dead Vlei. Many years ago a river ran through this area from the Orange River to the Atlantic Ocean, however as the years passed the dunes moved & blocked the river flow . This created small waterholes or soususvlei within the desert. After a short climb up some dunes we came across the Dead Vlei, which is the remnants of a soussusvlei (except the trees are dead, and there is no water!)

The following morning began at the reasonable hour of 4:30am! We were off to do a sunrise climb of dune 45 within the national park. It is called dune 45 because its 45 km’s from the entry gate & that’s about how special it is! Its not the biggest or any different to the dune next to it but someone decided this is where people can slog their guts out in the coldest hours of the morning in order to confirm that the sun has risen that day! So yes, we set off on this climb & struggled as the cold air hurt our lungs and our half asleep muscles spasmed but soon we found a rhythm of small steps using other peoples footprints for steps an made it to the top in plenty of time for the sun to pop over the horizon. The dunes within this park have iron in them, so they are a familiar sight of red sand! As the sun rose, the red become very vivid & looking around the surrounding dunes there was a sense of peace & eerieness.

We headed down the dune (some idiot may have run, jumped and generally thrown herself around in the sand!) only to discover that a lovely breakfast of French Toast, bacon and hot tea was waiting for us. Invigorated from our early morning efforts we packed down camp and set off for Swakopmund (possibly THE most boring drive yet), crossing the Tropic of Capricorn. We are here for 2 full days and its a weekend of activities. Sadly Megan & my tour did not go ahead this morning for dolphin spotting as the lady forgot to phone it through. We know we should be annoyed and angered by this but considering how many times I’ve done it to a guest I can understand! So were are relaxing and sorting everything out before quad biking this afternoon. I will sign out now & dedicate a full blog to Swakopmund as I feel I might be able to come up with quite a lot to bore you with!

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Photos

Grape Farm Huts
The huts the permanent and casual workers live in at the table grape farm just outside Felix Unite.

Fish River Canyon
The canyon has a gigantic ravine, in total about 160 km long, up to 27 km wide and in places almost 550 metres deep.

Rob & Aloe
Our guide Rob telling us about the Kokerboom tree and the harsh Namibian landscape.

Dead Vlei
An old tree from where water used to gather

Some idiot who ran down the dune!
What more needs to be said!