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| Golden late-afternoon light on the dry grass in northern Kaokoland |
Lipah,
Bali, July 21
An Unexpected Return to Namibia
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| Tiny desert flower |
When
Terri and I first bought Stanley in Johannesburg over five years ago, the
southern African country we were most excited about exploring was Botswana,
with its incomparable wildlife reserves. When we talked with other overlanders
and with South African tourists in the various campsites we stayed at, though,
there was another country that brought a dreamy look to the eyes of our
interlocutors. "Namibia: now there's a great country!" We ended up
leaving Namibia for last during our year-long exploration of southern Africa, visitingit between January and March 2017, and we ended up agreeing with the other
overlanders. By this point, we had started to appreciate the finer points of
camping in Stanley: a good campfire, a freezer full of frozen meat and vegetables,
our awning spread out against the glare of the midday sun, a view of sunset
complemented with sundowner drinks and aperitifs. More or less by accident, we
came across a stretch of nearly uninhabited land in Damaraland where we camped
for a few days, and we always wanted to return to explore this region more
fully. On that 2017 loop we made it up to Epupa Falls, right up against the
Angolan border, but we knew that further to the west lay the Marienfluss,
another area of incomparable beauty, and we decided to save that for our
next installment of Stanley's Travels. In March 2017 we parked Stanley at
Trans Kalahari Inn outside Windhoek, a popular place for overlanders to store
their vehicles between trips. I flew back to Thunder Bay to help care for my ailing
father, and Terri headed to New Zealand. We weren't sure when we'd be back, but
we thought it might be in a couple of years, and when we came back, we would
return to Namibia.
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| Cool desert flower |
In March
of 2018, after seven months in Bali, Terri and I found ourselves in New Zealand
on a two-month exploration of the North Island. We had just finished a lovelyovernight hike near Cape Reinga, the northernmost point on the North Island,
when I received a couple of unexpected e-mails. One was from the QSI school in
Tbilisi, Georgia, offering me a teaching job starting in August, 2018, an offer
that I accepted.
The other
was from Trans Kalahari Inn telling us that Namibia's Customs Service had
conducted a raid looking for South African-registered vehicles, and that they had
impounded Stanley and several other overlanding vehicles. When we had driven
into Namibia from South Africa, there had been none of the usual formalities we
were used to from other borders; we hadn't had to apply for a Temporary Import
Permit, and somehow we had acquired the mistaken impression that Namibia and
South Africa operated as one big customs union as far as cars go. We were
gravely mistaken; we had overstayed the six months that we were allowed to keep
the car in Namibia, and we were now liable for serious fines and possible loss
of our vehicle.
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Welwitschia plant
|
After a
lot of back and forth with the folks at Trans Kalahari who were negotiating
with the Customs folks on our behalf, it turned out that our best option was to
pay an import fee and a moderate fine; the import fee (about US$2000) would be
returned to us if and when we brought Stanley back to South Africa. We decided
that it would make the most sense for us to fly to Namibia once we were
finished with our New Zealand trip, do another lap of the country, and then
continue down to Cape Town to leave Stanley in storage there. That way we could
reclaim the import fee and have a great trip at the same time.
Thus it
was that, sooner than expected and under a certain amount of bureaucratic
pressure, Terri and I found ourselves rendezvousing in Johannesburg airport on
May 14th; Terri was coming from a week's work in Livingstone, Zambia, at OliveTree Learning Centre, the school she has been running in an impoverished
neighbourhood since 2006, while I was coming from our home base in Bali. (Oh,
those long-ago pre-pandemic carefree days of being able to flit from continent
to continent without a care in the world....) We headed off to Trans Kalahari,
checked into indoor accommodation and fell soundly asleep to the nocturnal
sounds and smells of the African veldt. It felt good to be back!
The
Road to Damaraland
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| Flower and beetle |
If you look at a map of
Namibia, it looks pretty empty and vast, and for the most part it is. However, there are differing degrees of emptiness
as you move across the landscape. Along the coast, the Namib Desert is
waterless and essentially uninhabitable, except in a couple of spots with
springs. The Skeleton Coast is bleak, windswept and salty. As you move inland
and uphill, though, there is a strip of country running parallel to the coast
that has a tiny bit more moisture. Not enough for people to live in any great
numbers, but enough for there to be scattered hardy vegetation like the
ancient-looking welwitschia, along with crickets, lizards, chameleons and even
a few desert-adapted big mammals like elephants, black rhinos, lions, oryx and
springbok. They survive along seasonal watercourses and around waterholes. This
landscape isn’t useful for farming or ranching, so it’s unfenced for the most part,
just a huge unbounded barren landscape that makes you feel tiny, insignificant
and vulnerable. The part of the sweet spot strip north of Swakopmund and inland
of the Skeleton coast is Damaraland, and it was here that we decided to head
first.
It took a while to get
ourselves out of Windhoek. We had to get Stanley ready for the rigours of the
road, and do our paperwork for the eventual re-export back to South Africa. It
took us two and a half days in total, including one day where we left Stanley
at a garage to get some work done, cycled off on our folding bikes to a
shopping mall, returned and found that with all the gear packed into the back,
Stanley was too heavy for the 4-ton lift at the garage. We unpacked most of the
stuff (including the fridge and its contents), scattered it on the ground and
sat there watching over it while the garage staff worked on it.
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The essence of camping!
|
We finally drove off at
3:00 pm with Stanley mechanically sound and fully stocked up with food, and
drove off north towards Swakopmund. The highway, usually in excellent shape,
was undergoing extensive construction work, and at one point where we had to
bump off the pavement and onto a dusty track beside the road, a huge truck
coming the other way came flying along far too quickly, took the turn far too
wide and drove us off the road. It all happened very quickly, and I was lucky
that there was enough space to dodge, because the truck was huge and heavily
loaded and wasn’t stopping for anything or anyone. I don’t know if the driver
was drunk or on drugs, but it was amazingly bad driving. It was all over in the
blink of an eye, with us stopped on the very edge of the detour track and the
truck disappearing behind us in a cloud of dust. We stopped to let our
adrenaline levels return to normal; it was unpleasantly reminiscent of our
accident in South Africa in May, 2016. Many folks who hear about our travels in
Africa ask me “Is it safe?”, probably worrying about crime and terrorism and warfare;
the truth is that, as in most places in the world, the most dangerous thing we
do in Africa is to drive.
We got back on the road
and continued driving. Along the way, we saw a couple of ambulances racing past
us in the opposite direction, and wondered whether the truck driver had caused
an accident somewhere behind us; he certainly was driving recklessly enough for
that to have happened.
With a few new gray hairs
and with dusk descending, we made our way into the town of Okatandjo, where we
found a pleasantly deserted campground behind a hotel to spend the night. It
felt like liberation to be back in our beloved camper under African skies
again, and we had perhaps a bit more South African wine than we should have in
celebration, both of being camping in Namibia again, and of still being alive
after the excitement of that afternoon.
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The fine, dry grass catches the afternoon light in Damaraland
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The next day, after a
long, lazy, late getaway in anticipation of a short drive to Ameib Ranch, where
we had camped the previous year, we arrived at the end of the bumpy track to
find a sign saying that Ameib was closed until further notice. We contemplated
going on towards Spitzkoppe, a local scenic spot, but ominous dark clouds on
the horizon, plus some concerns about Stanley’s electrical system (we had
problems starting him that morning in the campsite) made us decide to head
straight towards the coast at Swakopmund where an electrician could have a look
at him. We made the right decision; as we approached the coast, we drove
through steady and increasing rain, highly unusual at any time in the Namib
Desert, but particularly at that time of year. We found a place to sleep
indoors out of the rain, had a delicious Italian dinner and then turned in,
tired from travel and jet lag.
We arose to a very
soggy-looking Swakopmund and got ourselves to the auto electrician at opening
time. He diagnosed a short circuit in our trailer plug which he fixed before we
set off at 11:30 north up the Skeleton Coast. The rain had softened the road
surface (made of a mixture of mud and salt), and ongoing road construction had
us on and off the road through very muddy detours. Windhoek residents as well
as South African overlanders often love the Skeleton Coast, particularly for
fishing, but I find it bleak, windy and unattractive. We kept trundling north
until turning off towards the interior around 3 pm.
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| Ruppell's korhaan |
The scenery very slowly
became less featureless and lifeless as we headed inland and uphill. We spotted
a few hardy springbok in the desert shortly after turning uphill; it was hard
to figure out what they ate to survive. The dirt road was heavily corrugated
and rough in places, and we were glad that we had let a lot of air out of the
tires to make for a softer ride. By 5 pm we had arrived at the place that we
had camped the year before, a spot in the middle of nowhere not far off the D2303.
We moved a bit further off the main road, found a level spot on the hard gravel
and set up camp for the next few days. It felt good to have arrived back in the
wilds of Damaraland! We started up a charcoal fire and Terri rustled up a bean
stew. The late afternoon light caught the sparse blonde grass and set the
desert aflame, while kori bustards, Ruppell’s korhaans and Temminck’s coursers
patrolled the ground, looking for snakes, reptiles and insects to eat. As
daylight faded from the sky, the awe-inspiring night sky began to reveal
itself, with a brilliant Venus, a crescent moon and Jupiter in the west while
the Southern Cross, Centaurus, the Large Magellanic Cloud, Orion, Gemini, Ursa
Major, Sirius and the Milky Way filled the rest of the sky. With no manmade
light for a hundred kilometres around and dry desert air overhead, it might
have been the most perfect night sky we had ever seen. I brought along a tripod
for the trip expressly for astrophotography, so after dinner I set my Nikon
D7200 on it and tried my hand at astrophotography, a pursuit that would keep me
busy most evenings in the desert over the following weeks. We had a whisky
nightcap in our camp chairs, staring up at the stars and down at our campfire,
then crawled into Stanley for a night of perfect stillness and uninterrupted
sleep.
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A lovely landscape for a stroll
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Damaraland
Days
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| The artist, her creation and her inspiration |
We ended up spending
three nights at our campsite, relaxing, hiking, cooking, taking photos and
absorbing the perfect stillness and isolation of the Namibian desert. On the
first morning we awoke with the dawn to 11 degrees and heavy dew. We
breakfasted outdoors at our camp table and then set off for a long walk through
the desert. A heavier-than-usual rainy season had left the desert far greener than
on our last visit fifteen months earlier. My new camera, bought after the theft
of its predecessor in northern Namibia the year before, was compatible with an
old macro lens that I had had kicking around for the previous decade, and I
spent a lot of time taking photos of the colourful wildflowers poking up in the
grasslands. We weren’t the only ones wandering through the grass; a well-worn
game trail led along the bottom of the shallow valley, dotted with gemsbok
(oryx) and springbok droppings and (much more exciting) what seemed to be
rhinoceros footprints. Although rarely seen, this desert region of Namibia is
home to the largest population of black rhinoceros living in the wild anywhere
in Africa, and we were mildly hopeful of spotting one, as the previous year we
had found lots of rhinoceros dung up in the Palmweg concession. (Our hopes went
unfulfilled, sadly.) Eventually the sun raised the temperature from chilly to
broiling, and we retraced our steps back to Stanley for lunch and an afternoon
of reading and sketching in the shade of our awning.
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Check out this korhaan's amazing eyelashes!
|
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Stanley, looking tiny in an immense landscape
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| My first photo of Jupiter and its 4 largest moons |
Our second day, May 21st,
was what my diary describes as an A+ day. We were up with the sun again, and
after breakfast we went for a longer hike along the dry valley and then up onto
a steeper, rocky rise studded with wildflowers and intriguingly eroded rocks.
From the top we had expansive views down towards the haze of the Skeleton Coast
and inland into the labyrinth of rocky canyons that stretch to the northeast.
Stanley appeared as a tiny white dot, barely noticeable in the vast landscape.
We wandered downhill again for a leisurely lunch and then a few chores, fixing
a leaking gas line on our stove and topping up the oil in our transfer case.
Then it was time for juggling, pushups, reading and a pea soup that Terri had
prepared over the fire in our new potjie, a cast-iron pot/Dutch oven that every
South African couple seems to carry on camping trips. The soup was almost a
religious experience, sopped up with delicious German bread from Swakopmund. We
sat sipping South African pinotage wine and watched the sunset paint the desert
red. As darkness fell we lit a campfire from the bits of dry wood we had found
lying around in the desert and sat gazing up at the heavens. I was able for the
first time to take a photo of the 4 Galilean moons beside the disc of Jupiter,
a good first accomplishment in my astrophotography career.
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Hartmann's mountain zebra
|
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| Terri whipping up lunch beside the track |
The next morning we got
up early again, breakfasted and packed up, ready to move onwards after our two
days of delightful desert isolation. We drove onwards to the junction with the
Brandberg West Mine, then along lovely plains towards the tiny town of Uis,
There was lots more golden grass and plenty of welwitschia, the
prehistoric-looking plant that had entranced us the year before. As we proceeded,
we gained altitude and started to see some wildlife: kori bustards, a couple of
ostriches cantering across the plain, a lone springbok and a herd of Hartmann’s
mountain zebras silhouetted against the skyline. As we approached Uis, the
landscape became a bit drier and drabber, rather like the town itself. We
stocked up on fuel, wine, beer, phone credit and water, then continued towards
the White Lady, a San rock-art site. After days of complete isolation, it was
jarring to see so many Damara villages, and we wondered how they scratched a
living from such unpromising terrain. The scenery at the site was striking,
with giant boulders and steep cliffs that had fractured off over the centuries.
Our guide, a young Damara woman, showed us a series of galleries daubed with
ochre (for the oldest paintings, dated to 3000 BC) and a mix of ochre and white
pigment (for the more recent paintings from around AD 1). I would have loved to
have stopped and sketched the art as we had done in 2016 in Zimbabwe and in
2017 in Botswana, but our guide was on a strict schedule and wouldn’t let us linger.
It was hotter than Hades in the canyon, with the rock faces re-radiating the
sun’s heat at us, and we were parched by the time we made it back to the
parking lot. Terri and I were impressed by the paintings, but both of us wished
we had been able to take our time to drink in the details. Instead we drove off
to a commercial campground at White Lady Lodge, where we luxuriated in hot
showers and electricity for a night.
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San rock painting at The White Lady
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It was mild when we went
to sleep that night, but at 5 am a searching cold wind was blowing through our
open tent flaps, chilling our feet, so I had to wake up to close the side
flaps. We awoke to a chatter of birdsong and found spurfowl and speckled
pigeons (a new species for us) hopping around the campground. By 9:30 we had
breakfasted, packed up and started driving. The track, at first excellent
graded gravel, slowly deteriorated and then completely disintegrated as we
entered the Twyfelfontein Conservancy with a steep climb in 4WD low range
around the Organ Pipes. The previous year we had taken an interior track from
our previous campsite to Twyfelfontein and it had been rough, right at the edge
of Terri’s abilities, featuring a shredded tire, hair-raising hills and an
uncomfortable river crossing. This year we had avoided most of that track, but
even the “easy” option made for some grim concentrated driving. For some reason
a swarm of bees started following the car, making it impossible to get out when
we stopped. Finally the bees left us and we had a delightful roadside picnic.
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| Another perfect Damaraland campsite |
We followed our GPS to a
waypoint from the previous year close to a waterhole where black rhinos are
known to come to drink. We thought that we had read that we had to keep more
than 300 metres from the waterhole, and set up camp accordingly. At 5 pm an
anti-poaching patrol from the Save The Rhino Trust showed up and told us that
we actually had to keep at least 1 km from the waterhole. Since we had already
set up camp and were cooking, they let us stay that evening, but we had to
promise to move in the morning, rather than staying three days as we had
intended. According to the rangers, they had already seen 5 black rhinos that
day, a promising statistic for such a highly endangered, highly poached
species.
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The Save The Rhino anti-poaching patrol in Twyfelfontein Conservancy
|
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Gibbous moon
|
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| The golden afternoon light |
We made the most of our
single night near the waterhole, dining on sosaties (skewers of meat and
vegetables) and sweet potatoes cooked over a raging fire, washed down with a
good South African red wine. Giraffes came to drink at the waterhole, while we
could hear zebras somewhere nearby in the darkness. No rhinos showed up (they
probably smelled us and stayed away), but the night sky was beautiful, with the
moon having filled out into a gibbous shape, and we were alone under the stars
on the African veldt, as contented as it was possible to be. This, we thought,
was exactly what we had been missing for the past fifteen months.
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| Terri out for a careful walk in Damaraland |
The following morning we
awoke, had tea and coffee and rusks and moved camp, ending up on a small knoll
surrounded by grassy prairies with red bulk of the Doros Crater rising on one
side and the distant peak of the Brandberg filling the horizon on the other. En
route we stopped in at the camp of the anti-poaching patrol and chatted with
them, giving them some meat and potatoes for their pot in gratitude at not
having rousted us out of our campsite the night before. Once we were
established at our new homestead, we had a more substantial brunch of boiled
eggs on toast and then settled in for some walking, birdwatching and reading
under the awning. By 3 pm the thermometer read 38 degrees and we were content
to read in our camp chairs in the shade.
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Breakfast anyone?
|
The next day saw more
unplugged relaxation, with a morning walk along the jagged ridge extending from
our campsite, then lots of reading (a hilarious novel entitled Creative Truths
in Provincial Policing, and my copious notes for my Silk Road book), some yoga
and pushups, lots of juggling, a giant lunch of leftover pea soup, a nap to
beat the heat, and then another star-filled evening beside the campfire, with
me playing around with trying to capture the Milky Way on the camera.
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Another perfect night camped in the desert beside the fire
|
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| The road out of the Twyfelfontein Conservancy |
On Saturday, May 26th
we were up early, heading back along the track we had entered on, passing 3
herds of mountain zebra, several springboks and a pair of ostriches as we
headed back to Aba Huab. Terri found the driving much easier than on the way in
(familiarity breeds contentment?) and by 11:00 we were stopping in at a
commercial campground where we paid for showers, water for laundry and drinking
water for our tank. It was hot and dusty and we struggled with internet connectivity
until we gave up and drove off. We were headed into the unknown, towards the
Skeleton Coast (here closed to casual visitors) in search of another spot to
wild camp. The scenery was dramatic, with lots of mesas, but also scattered
sparse settlements. As we dropped towards the coast, the scenery was rocky
(making off-road driving tricky) and still had scattered settlements. To our
right (the north) we could see the line of the veterinary fence that divides
Namibia into zones of commercial farming and ranching (to the south) and more
densely settled subsistence farming (to the north). We kept looking for
promising spots and striking out, but eventually we found a small fishing hole
at the end of a long dusty track. It was obviously used as a campsite by local
fishermen, but there was nobody around, and we had a delightful evening
surrounded by chestnut-backed sparrowlarks who were coming in to drink at the
waterhole. It was an unbeatable location for our last night at large in Damaraland,
under an almost-full moon.
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A gibbous, nearly-full moon
|
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| If this is what the roads look like, you're driving in the right place! |
Into
Kaokoland
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| Yellow-billed hornbill |
We awoke a bit chilled
from the night air (we were sleeping under a sheet and blanket, rather than
under our down sleeping bags, and they weren’t quite up to the task) and found
a riot of birds outside. There were dozens of Namaqua sandgrouse, about to fill
the spaces between their feathers with water before flying up to fifty
kilometres off into the desert to give water to their chicks. There were also
the chestnut-backed sparrowlarks we had seen the night before, a couple of
feisty blacksmith plovers, white-breasted
crows and some mousebirds with their long tails. We breakfasted, packed
up our possessions into Stanley and started driving east.
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Milky Way
|
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Double-banded sandgrouse
|
The names Damaraland and
Kaokoland are both a bit out-of-date in modern Namibia, as they refer to administrative
districts in the days of South African control of the country, but they’re
still used extensively, especially by tourists. The border between the two
regions is the Hoanib River, one of the biggest rivers in the north of Namibia,
and we were about to head north of that river into Kaokoland. We backtracked as
far as the main Palmwag road, and then along through dramatic mesas to the
checkpoint where the road crossed the vet fence. At Palmwag Lodge we got out to
stretch our legs and walked around the beautiful grounds (we had camped in
their campground the year before). We continued north along the main gravel
road, past more mountain zebras and some fresh elephant dung. The Hoanib River
is well-known for its resident groups of nomadic desert elephants, and a group
had evidently just crossed the road. On a half-remembered recommendation, we
stopped in at the Khowarib Lodge campground and loved it, so we checked in and
ended up staying for two nights.
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| Blue agama lizard |
The scenery in this area
is striking, with steep-sided canyon walls above the waters of the Hoanib
River, an unexpected and welcome sight after so long without flowing water.
That afternoon I went out for a long run along the jeep track leading up the
canyon, then returned to camp to read the end of Creative Truths and the
beginning of Cutting For Stone, a beautiful novel set in Addis Ababa. Dinner
that evening was particularly splendid, with two thick sirloin steaks seared
over a raging fire complemented by potato wedges, corn and peas and a glass or
three of our boxed Overmeer wine. It was an idyllic evening.
We had a quiet day the
next day, reading, running, juggling (I was finally making substantive progress
towards juggling 5 balls, after months of struggle), doing yoga and rewriting
two chapters of my Silk Road manuscript. Across the river pale-winged starlings
and louries squawked at us from the cliffs, while the moon, only a day from
being full, bathed the campsite in soft silvery light.
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Giraffes wandering past our canyon campsite, Kaokoland
|
Our plan was to make our
way north through Kaokoland towards the Cunene River and the Angolan border. We
made a great start that day by driving north to Warmquelle, a tiny settlement,
for more phone credit and some basic groceries. From there we continued to
Sesfontein which was much smaller and more desolate a place than we had thought,
aside from a picturesque German fort. The road out of town was in terrible
condition as it climbed over a low pass, but it improved as it dropped onto a
broad blond-grass valley. As we drove along, we saw a group of ostriches
trotting along, making faster progress than we were. Once we were 15 km past
the last settlement, we started looking for a place to camp, and found a
perfect spot down in a small canyon, completely hidden from the main road. We
set up a roaring campfire with the top-quality mopane firewood lying around and
first of all cooked up grilled-cheese sandwiches in the potjie before settling
down to enjoy the views. An hour before dusk a group of five giraffes showed up
across the river, giving us great views as they browsed their way methodically
through the thorn trees along the river. We banked up the fire and grilled a
mixed braai pack we had picked up in Warmquelle; it was somewhat indifferent,
but the potatoes and beets that we cooked in the potjie made up for it, as did
the cheap but tasty Tassenberg wine we had also found in Warmquelle. It might
well have been the single best campsite of the trip, and we went to bed happy
and full.
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Our homestead on wheels, down in the Kaokoland canyon.
|
The next day we had
anticipated continuing north to Purros, but fate had different ideas. We
breakfasted on maize porridge (mealie pap to South Africans; I liked it but
Terri was not a fan), packed up Stanley and got ready to depart. We climbed in,
turned the key and…..nothing. Stanley’s engine gave no indication of life, and
after opening the hood and peering around cluelessly, we decided that we would
have to get some help, not an easy prospect where we were. We tried
jumpstarting the car from our storage batteries, something we had heard about
but never tried. We got electric power from the process, but the engine still
refused to turn over. Suddenly we heard the sound of engines, and I sprinted up
out of the canyon and across the grasslands towards a convoy of 4x4 vehicles
that was zipping along the main track. I ran as fast as I could, shouting and
waving my hands. Eventually the lead vehicle stopped and I ran up to them to
ask for help. I heard later that they had been talking amongst themselves on CB
radios, saying “There’s a white guy running across the veldt! What the hell is
he doing? Should we stop? Or is he a crazy man?”
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Desert flower
|
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South African tourists trying to get Stanley started
|
I explained our predicament to
the convoy of South African offroad enthusiasts who were coming back from the
Skeleton Coast, and they agreed to come have a look. I arrived back in camp and
several of the drivers repeated my routine of staring knowledgeably into the
engine, although they did know a lot more about mechanics than either Terri or
I. They were able to diagnose the problem (no diesel reaching the cylinders),
but weren’t able to fix it. They agreed to give us a lift back to Sesfontein
(they had a schedule to follow), so we locked up Stanley, took our money and
valuables and rode back in search of a mechanic. Terri and I rode in separate
vehicles; I had a long and illuminating conversation with a father and son team
who ran a school teaching commercial technical divers in Hermanus, outside Cape
Town.
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Magnificent giraffes
|
In Sesfontein, after some
waiting around, we managed to find a mechanic named Petrus and a driver named
John to take us back out to Stanley and (we hoped) fix the problem. It took
forever to get going; there appeared to be no diesel for sale at the pump in
Sesfontein, so we had to drive around in vain in search of someone with diesel
to sell. We started driving at last around 3:15 and by 4:50 we were back at
Stanley, having passed a group of 7 giraffe cantering across the grasslands.
John, who had worked as a driver for years both for tourist operators and for
NGOs in the area, had never been down into the canyon where we had parked, and
in fact didn’t even know that it existed; he was surprised at how idyllic it
was down there and how easy the access was. The fix was relatively easy, a
loose wire leading to the diesel pump. Terri cooked up dinner while I watched
Petrus, trying in vain to absorb some knowledge of engine repair. John,
meanwhile, was agog at the amount of top-quality mopane wood lying around on
the ground, and spent his time collecting firewood and piling into the back of
his Landrover. We siphoned ten litres of fuel from our tank to get John and
Petrus back to Sesfontein, then waved them a grateful goodbye. Terri and I
wolfed down some boerewors, potatoes and peas, then carried our camp chairs up
out of the canyon onto the plateau to watch the full moon rise, keeping a wary
eye and ear cocked in case a lion or elephant happened by. There were no big
predators, but a couple of nightjars swooped by low in the dark, startling us. We
couldn’t have picked a better place to be stranded for one extra night!
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Full moon rising over Kaokoland
|
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An ostrich striding past us in Kaokoland
|
The next morning the
engine started effortlessly, to our great relief. We were up early and saw a
plethora of birds flitting around the canyon: larks, pipits, sparrows and
red-eyed bulbuls. By 9:30 we were on our way, driving along an improved track
into Purros, a surprisingly large settlement. We looked in at Canyon Campsites
(a nice location, looking out towards some coastal mountains, but we were in
the mood for more wild camping), bought wine and peanut butter in a tiny shop,
and followed directions to the shack where Colin the Diesel Man sold fuel out
of a clutter of diesel drums. We filled up our tank to the brim, winced a bit
at the price, then drove out of time to the posh Oshikongo Elephant Lodge to
top up on our water supply.
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Lovely desert flowers
|
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The washboarding that made part of the Kaokoland drive painful
|
The road out of Purros
was very scenic, along a broad, gently sloping ramp that kept climbing for many
kilometres. The scenery around us was dramatic: at first relatively lush
grassland grazed by springbok, then slowly dessicating and becoming much
rockier. We stopped beside the road for a peanut-butter sandwich break, gazing
out over the gentle golden wash of the dry grass punctuated by the heads of
distant springbok. The road sloped gently down to a river crossing where we
camped amidst the sparse trees, trying to shelter from the scouring wind. The
wind, the gravelly grassland and the rocky mountains in the distance all
transported me back to the Aksai Chin Plateau between Xinjiang and Tibet which
I cycled across back in 1998. The road surface was just as corrugated, but at
least now we had enough water, wonderful food, red wine and a tent that
wouldn’t blow away if you let go of it. More pea soup from our potjie and a
white “perle” wine bought in Purros warded off hunger, while our fire burned
quickly in the gale-force winds. The stars were out, but it was actually
unpleasantly cold sitting outside, and we were tucked into bed much earlier
than usual, where I read through many pages of research notes for my Silk Road
book; I had taken the notes a decade before, and had forgotten many of the
historical details that I had noted down then.
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Cooking in our potjie over an open fire
|
We had taken the
precaution of breaking out the heavy down sleeping bags that night, and as a
result we slept uncommonly well, not waking up chilled at 5 am. It was only 11
degrees when we awoke, and a thin dew covered all outdoor surfaces. We
breakfasted on cornmeal porridge (to Terri’s distaste), rusks, cocoa and tea,
watching lots of larks and Cape sparrows flit about the vegetation. The drive
started out over desolate gravel plains that offered sweeping views that seemed
to reach to the ends of the earth. As we climbed gently and tortuously along a
deeply corrugated gravel track towards Orupembe, we entered into ethereal white
grasslands. Large herds of springbok grazed on the plateau, with a surprising
number of ostriches and a few gemsboks thrown in for variety. We bypassed the turnoff
towards Orupembe and from here the road conditions became really dire, slowing
us to a crawl. We climbed again across a broad grassy valley and slowly gained
speed as the washboarding became a bit less pronounced.
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Wonderful patina of vegetation on the desert
|
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| A slightly hideous cricket |
The scenery was dramatic,
with more bleached-blond grass and many more gemsbok, lines of trees marking
ephemeral watercourses, thousands of larks, pipits, chats and sparrows
fluttering around the vegetation and dozens of new wildflower species speckling
the ground with pinpricks of brilliance. It was one of the most beautiful days
of the entire trip, and we were constantly stopping to take photos or stare
through binoculars at distant birds. We spotted an unfamiliar species of
chameleon basking on a quartz boulder beside the track in the afternoon and
watched fascinated as he crossed the ground with infinite slowness, swaying
backwards with each step before extending his Muppet-like hand in front of him,
his exquisite eyes rotating in all directions as he watched us for signs of
danger. We also spotted a couple of new bird species: the double-banded courser
(a small ground bird) and a pririt batis (a small charcoal-and-white flycatcher
with tinges of amber). The dominant creature in the grasslands seemed to be a
somewhat hideous purple and white cricket that teemed in great profusion all
over the flowers and grasses. It was, in short, a perfect day.
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Desert chameleon beside the track
|
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Our campsite near Blue Drum
|
The perfection was added
to when we stopped to camp close to Blue Drum, a waypoint (with a blue-painted
fuel drum) dating from the days of the South African military campaigns against
SWAPO in the 1970s and 1980s. (Red Drum and Orange Drum mark other trail
junctions nearby.) We had a perfect spot, shaded by trees beside a small dry
riverbed. Within moments of arriving Terri had kindled a fire and started
making scones, baked inside the potjie with a few charcoal briquettes on top of
the lid. They were absolutely delicious, and showed how much our back-of-beyond
cooking skills had advanced since we had first set off from Johannesburg two
years earlier. The moon was now rising much later, and until 9:30 the sky was
perfectly dark and clear, with the Milky Way flowing across the sky. As we sat
out under the stars we could hear voices in the distance and realized that we had
camped just short of a Himba village, just far enough away that we weren’t noticed by
passing herders.
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Terri's ingenious double oven for baking scones over the fire
|
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The happy baker!
|
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| Heading towards the Marienfluss |
June 2nd found
us off by 9:00 am, worried about how long it might take us to traverse the
tracks of the Marienfluss down to the Cunene River. As it turned out, the track
was rough and rocky as far as the Red Drum junction, but then it became
smoother, softer and sandier. The scenery was dramatic all day, although the
landscape was far more densely populated than I had thought, with small Himba
settlements all over the broad valley of the Marienfluss and small herds of
goats and cattle grazing everywhere, making for a noticeably less grassy
landscape than on previous days. It also made for very little wildlife, other than
a cluster of ostriches in the distance. The Himba were as striking in their
appearance as I had remembered, with many of the women barebreasted and with
ochre-tinged mud caking their hair in a striking hairdo.
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Marienfluss scenery
 | The track down to the Angolan border
|
|
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The Milky Way
|
We arrived at Camp
Synchro, a commercial campground down by the Kunene River, by lunchtime, having
made much better time than we had feared. We scarfed down more scones for lunch
and then loafed in the extreme heat; our altimeter showed only 280 metres above
sea level, and our thermometer displayed a harsh 42 degrees. I read and juggled
under the trees and struck up a conversation with a large group camped next to
us. It turned out they were a group of adventurers who got together every year
for an extreme endurance expedition which they then turned into a short film.
This year they had walked across a large swath of Namibia, dragging their
equipment behind them on handcarts. They had a film crew and a group of local
guides and support staff with them and were unwinding and relaxing at the end
of what had proven to be a more challenging undertaking than they had
anticipated. It was good fun to talk with them and pick their brains about
great places to visit in the country. That evening after I had cooked up a
tasty stirfry, we were invited over to play in the adventure crew’s quiz night
and to partake in some of the amazing grilled steaks and sausages that they had
cooked. It was a wonderful end to a memorable day.
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Looking across the Cunene River towards Angola
|
The next day the
adventure crew disappeared in a cloud of dust, leaving us alone at Camp Synchro
except for the Swiss couple who owned the camp. It was a relief not to have to
drive, and I spent the day doing exercises, juggling and finishing the second
draft of my Silk Road manuscript, which was an enormous weight off my mind. I
finished reading Cutting For Stone and ate some of the amazing fresh bread that
Terri baked on the fire in the potjie. We walked along the Cunene River, gazing
across at forbidden Angola (I managed to throw a rock right across into Angolan
territory) and dreaming of future adventures in Stanley. Angola looked like
Namibia here: dry, hot and thinly populated. I had heard and read good things
about the scenery as you drive north towards Luanda, but it would have to wait
for the next installment of Stanley’s Travels. That evening we ate a
wonderfully tender lamb shank stew for dinner, concocted once again in the
always-useful potjie.
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Lovely lizard
|
The drive out of the
Marienfluss proved to be much harder than we had anticipated. Rather than
retreat the long, round-about way that we had come, we elected to drive south
over the Otjihaa Pass. The classic route out of the Marienfluss is over VanZyl’s Pass, a steep, challenging and often dangerous off-road route beloved by
South African 4x4 enthusiasts. We had no desire to test our equipment and
driving abilities, so we chose what was supposed to be an easier option. At
first it was easy, cruising up the sandy valley, at least until the wires that
Petrus had installed to repair the diesel pump shook loose. Luckily a passing
South African family who had spent the night at Camp Synchro happened by
shortly afterwards and the father proved to be a skilled mechanic. A spot of
Super Glue and some electrical tape proved to be enough to keep the wires
firmly attached, and soon enough we were back on our way, grateful as ever for
the help we kept receiving from passing motorists.
The climb over the
Otjihaa was brutal: steep and boulder-strewn, with a very narrow cleft
between rock faces that made us nervous that we would bang into the stones as Stanley swayed side to side while bouncing over the boulders. Terri was in
tears as we contemplated the crux of the climb, but she managed to get us
safely over the top. It was an unspeakable relief to reach the bottom on the
other side and resume bumping along track that was merely slow and rough rather
than death-defying. We stopped in at a tiny liquor store in the settlement of
Orupembe for beer and wine, then continued until we found a place to camp near
a river crossing, between areas of intensive Himba settlement. We were both
shattered by the stress of driving the Otjihaa and incredulous that it was
considered the easy option, and that the Swiss family at Camp Synchro regularly
drove this route to Opuwo for supplies in one day.
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More desert flora
|
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Chameleons are so cool!
|
The drive to Opuwo the
next day was easier, although there was still a very rough section to navigate
over the Giraffe Mountains, and lots of ups and downs after that. The final 60
km into Opuwo was on really good road, and it was a bit of a shock to drive
into the largest town we had seen since leaving Swakopmund two weeks earlier.
We nabbed a campsite at the Opuwo Country Hotel, located on a hill above town,
then headed into the downtown to restock our depleted fridge and pantry, our
fuel tanks and our phone credit. We braaied up delicious sosaties and went to
bed happy with our two weeks in Damaraland and Kaokoland.
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Yours Truly by the campfire
|
The
Hoanib River At Last
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| The Khowarib Gorge |
After a day off in Opuwo
spent doing admin (including trying in vain to get my fingerprints taken as a
requirement for my new job) and planning out the next stage of our trip, we set
off on June 7th for the Khowarib Canyon, where we had previously
stayed before setting off into Kaokoland. The Hoanib River, beside which we had
camped, flows downstream and dries up into the sand not far from where we had
stayed. The dry riverbed of the Hoanib is one of the iconic 4WD adventures of
Namibia, beloved by South African tourists and anyone hoping to catch a glimpse
of some of Namibia’s desert elephants who wander the canyons in search of
ephemeral water sources and greenery, hearing the sound of far-off thunder and
rain from a distance of up to 100 kilometres. We had previously decided not to
drive the Hoanib because it sounded rough, with very challenging driving
and a real chance of getting stuck. Chatting with the film crew at Camp
Synchro, though, we had learned that it was definitely less demanding driving
than we had already done over the Otjihaa, or in Zambia’s Liuwa Plains. With
Terri’s driving skills freshly honed from our adventures in the north, we
decided that we should take the opportunity to explore the area.
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| My first successful long-exposure star trails photo |
It was a long drive
southeast along the main C43 road, still gravel but delightfully smooth and
easy after the tracks of Kaokoland. The road climbed quite high, up to 1650
metres above sea level. Here, a little further inland, there were actual
forests lining the road, but no visible wild mammal life to be seen. Khowarib Lodge
had no riverside campsites available, so we decided to move a couple of
kilometres up the river to the Khowarib Community Campsite, where we had a
beautiful site with good facilities and only one other pair of guests at half
the price of the lodge’s campsite. Terri and I had a lovely pre-dinner walk
along the river, even wading out into the stream at one point. The rocks were
alive with birds, there was a cooling breeze blowing along the river and the
scenery was magnificent. Terri concocted a delicious tender beef stew in the
potjie, and we sat outside a long time under the stars after dinner. I tried my
first long-exposure photos, trying to capture the rotation of the night sky
while also capturing the orange glow from the campfire.
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The track along the Hoanib
|
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A million-star sleeping spot!
|
With only a short day of
driving in front of us, we treated ourselves to a sleep-in the next day, not
getting going until 10:00. We drove downstream to Sesfontein, treated ourselves
to a boerewors lunch at the Fort in a vain attempt to get some internet, and
drove out of town around 12:30 to the Hoanib River turnoff. The beginning of
the drive was unpleasant, a series of dust bowls that coated everything in fine
grey powder. We got through this and into a much sandier section that was
relatively easy to drive once we had let plenty of air out of our tires to
increase our surface area. After a while we passed through the entrance gate to
the Hoanib, where we parted with a fairly steep N$300 per night for camping
fees before entering into the Hoanib River concession. The driving was moderately
challenging, a mixture of deep sand, rocks, water (from the occasional
surviving waterhole in the riverbed) and dust. We were turned back by a hill
that was too steep to climb, but managed to find an alternative track around
it. There were extensive reedbeds along the watercourse, full of hundreds of
redbilled queleas and African quailfinch. We arrived at a campsite in the
middle of nowhere, up above the river on a small knoll, around 3:00 and set up
camp. We did some birding, walked around to stretch our legs and then did some
route planning. The scenery was striking: stark stone mountains, white powdery
sand and dust, green shrubs and a sense of almost monastic isolation slightly
reminiscent of the Sinai. There were piles of fresh elephant dung along the
track and even around our campsite, but no sightings of live elephants. Instead
I contented myself with photos of the same purple crickets that we had seen in
such profusion up near the Marienfluss.
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| Hoanib River valley |
June 9th is
described in my diary as a 5-star day, and with good reason. We started with a
delicious oatmeal porridge breakfast, then broke camp and drove up to a nearby
river junction viewpoint, up a precipitous track that we might not have
attempted had we not watched another vehicle successfully climb it the day
before. The views from the top were spectacular in all directions, into the
maze of canyons that dissect the rocky mountains. After taking photographs, we
descended and continued downstream on the Hoanib, peering around the drooping
leafy branches of enormous river trees in hopes of spotting elephants.
Eventually our searching was rewarded when we spotted a lone elephant loping
along the track, followed shortly afterwards by a mother and youngster. We sat
and watched them for quite a while, admiring their long, slender legs
(apparently an adaptation to dry desert conditions) and the tender parental
care that the mother lavished on her baby. There were probably other elephants
around nearby, but they had likely dispersed in search of food and were nowhere
to be seen. We drove onward pleased to have seen such rare animals surviving
and thriving in such a harsh environment. Further down the track we spotted
several giraffes before turning around and returning to a turnoff up the Onias,
a tributary of the main Hoanib River. We soon spotted a luxury tented camp
hidden in a side canyon, then found a perfect piece of nowhere for our own
campsite, in the shade of a cluster of trees. I cleaned our radiator, which was
so full of grass seeds that it had almost caught fire earlier, then did some
yoga, read and relaxed before collecting some sizeable chunks of mopane wood
that were scattered around on the ground. Our campfire that evening was
roaring, providing us with perfectly roasted potatoes and onions and slightly
charred steaks. We lingered beside the campfire for hours as I did more
long-exposure photos, before climbing into bed perfectly content.
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Southern Cross long exposure
|
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We just missed these elephants
|
The next morning marked
the beginning of a three-day period of frustrations with Stanley. We awoke
pre-dawn, had a relaxed breakfast, packed up, put the key into the ignition and
were greeted with silence. The battery seemed to be dead, and we wondered if it
was because we had run our inverter the previous day while driving in order to
charge computers and camera batteries. We tried (again) boosting from our
storage batteries, but it didn’t provide quite enough oomph. After much
fiddling and trying and problem-shooting, we decided that we needed the
assistance of the folks in the luxury tented camp. It was about three kilometres
away, so I set off on one of our folding bicycles, only to find that the sand
was too soft for cycling. I switched to jogging, and ran easily along the
track, looking down at the sand to see what sorts of wildlife spoor there was.
I saw a couple of elephant footprints and then, halfway there, joining from the
side, there was a long line of fresh prints of a large cat. It looked much too
big to be a leopard, and I quickly surmised that I was running along the trail
of a lion who might be hours or mere minutes in front of me. I definitely felt
a surge of adrenaline, and only relaxed when I turned off the main track to
enter the tented camp and left the lion spoor behind.
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Desert-dwelling elephant along the Hoanib River
|
The staff at the tented
camp were surprised to see a tourist jog in, but were very helpful. One of
their vehicles was headed to Sesfontein in half an hour, and agreed to give me
a lift back and jump start the car. It was a relief when Stanley started first
at the first try, and we waved a grateful farewell to the camp staff before setting
off ourselves in the direction of Sesfontein. We followed a small but
well-travelled track (obviously the main supply route for the tented camp)
across a lovely uninhabited golden grassland until we rejoined the
Sesfontein-Purros road not far from where we had last been stranded when
Stanley wouldn’t start. We made our way back to Sesfontein through beautiful
landscape, tanked up on diesel (luckily they had had a diesel delivery since
our first visit to town!) and then drove back towards Khowarib. We were in the
mood for wild camping again, and so we consulted the iOverlander app to find
that several people reported camping in a forest just north of the road only a
few kilometres east of Sesfontein. We followed our GPS and found ourselves in
an enchanted glade of sizeable trees, full of birds, including the
golden-tailed woodpecker, Damara hornbill and the southern white-crowned
shrike. Nobody seemed to live nearby or to graze animals in the vicinity, so we
had this magical spot entirely to ourselves. We had lucked out again on finding
an ideal campsite.
 |
Our Belgian rescuers
|
The following morning
Stanley wouldn’t start again. We had to admit that it probably had nothing to
do with the inverter (we hadn’t used it the day before), but it wasn’t clear
why the battery had drained overnight. We walked out through the woods to the main
road and tried to flag down passing vehicles. The first to stop was a Namibian
couple who wanted us to pay them N$300 for jump-starting our car, so we
declined their offer. Next came a rental 4x4 full of 4 Belgian tourists and
their Namibian guide who drove into the forest and got Stanley running again.
We thanked them profusely and then spent the day driving east to Sesfontein and
north to Palmwag along the now-familiar main road. The scenery was beautiful
and we passed a huge herd of springbok along the way. We turned off the main
road after passing through the veterinary fence and immediately the road turned
to a rough, rutted track that soon gave us a flat tire. It took ages for me to
extract the spare tire from its storage place under the back end of Stanley’s
camper insert, and the flat tire clearly was never going to be much use to
anyone anymore, with a long jagged gash running a quarter of the length of the
sidewall. Once we got going again, we ground our way over the steep Grootberg
Pass past a sizeable herd of black-faced impala (just like the common impala,
only with a black smudge down their nose; it was a new species for us) and
eventually ended up at Kamanjab Rest Camp, a slightly down-at-heel place. I
managed to catch my sandals on fire that evening from the incredible heat
generated by our mopane fire.
The third and final
installment of the Stanley-won’t-start saga happened the next morning. When the
ignition wouldn’t fire, we asked Rolf, the old German farmer who owned the
camp, for help. He tried jump-starting us first with his small truck, and then
with his big tractor, both times unsuccessfully. He was very mechanically
minded, and after peering inside the engine, he diagnosed that the battery was
completely dry. He filled it with distilled water and tried jumping it again,
still with no luck. Finally he got us started by towing Stanley with the
tractor and then having Terri put Stanley into third gear, which got the engine
going. We were very grateful to Rolf and drove off into Kamanjab town to see
what the local garage could tell us. The garage owner took one look at the
battery and pronounced it dead thanks to internal short-circuiting. We bought a
new battery and a new tire, had the battery installed, reinserted the tire into
its space underneath and finally set off for Etosha Park, hours later and
hundreds of dollars poorer than we had hoped. It was a relief, though, to
finally have the starting problems diagnosed.
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| The centre of the Milky Way in Sagittarius |
A
Return Visit to Etosha
 |
Secretarybirds
|
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| Dark chanting goshawk |
We had been to Etosha
before, and had originally not planned to return on this trip, but some other
ideas we had had, such as going to the Waterberg Plateau, had proved to be
unfeasible in this season, so Etosha, one of Africa’s great parks, seemed like
a reasonable way to finish our tour of northern Namibia. We were at least going
to see a new corner of the park, the western end, which we hadn’t seen in 2017.
We entered the park and drove slowly along an atrociously washboarded track towards
Olifantsrus. The landscape was flattish bushveldt, and held a surprising amount of
game: multitudes of both species of zebra (Hartmann’s mountain and plains),
springbok, gemsbok, wildebeest, giraffe. We arrived at Olifantsrus around 6:00,
entered the animal-proof fence and set up camp before hurrying off to the hide,
set up next to a large waterhole. We were hoping for black rhino, but there
were none to be seen, although there were lots of birds (including our
favourite, the secretarybird), a couple of elephants and a black-backed jackal.
We returned to Stanley, ate a delicious chicken dinner, did the dishes and then
headed back to the hide hoping for a late-night show. Sadly, there was very
little new other than a probable sighting of a side-stripe jackal, seen much less
frequently than its ubiquitous black-backed cousin.
 |
Tawny eagle
 | Tiny turtle, Olifantsrus
|
|
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Olifantsrus waterhole
|
We had booked two nights
at Olifantsrus, and so we took the next day completely off from driving. We did
some laundry, read and sketched, and I got in a lot of juggling practice. We
dropped in periodically at the hide and saw
a tiny baby blacksmith plover, several old bull elephants, lots of zebra
and springbok and then, at sunset, the real show began. A group of at least 25
elephants loped into sight and spent an hour or more drinking, playing and
fighting right beside us. There were four impossibly cute babies, but it was
the juvenile males that provided the best viewing, as they locked tusks and
wrestled, half-seriously and half in jest, against the fading afterglow of
sunset. It was a magical experience, and we went to bed early and happy. |
Elephants fighting at Olifantsrus
|
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A very chilly pre-dawn Etosha
|
We were up very early the
next morning, awoken in the pre-dawn by noisily yipping hyenas. Unable to fall
asleep again, we got up in the cold (our thermometer read 5 degrees at
sunrise!) and swaddled ourselves in jackets and sleeping bags to sit out and
watch the sun slowly light up the sky as I snapped more astrophotographs,
enjoying the completely different sky to what I was used to in the evenings.
The hide was bereft of game that morning after the night’s blockbuster show, so
we breakfasted quickly on tea, coffee and rusks and were on the road by 7:20
for the long drive to Okaukuejo. The road continued to be rough, and the
waterholes along the way were either empty or closed to the public. We stopped
at Sonderveld picnic spot (a surprisingly desolate little spot) where we pulled
out the stove and cooked up bacon and eggs, lamenting the fact that our gas burners
were clogged with fine dust and burning slowly. After breakfast we began to see
more game as we got out of the bush and into grassveld. After a great deal of
gemsbok, springbok zebras and wildebeest, Terri spotted a couple of male lions
under a tree, unfortunately too far away to get good photos. We stopped for
lunch at Ghost Tree forest picnic spot, where we were entertained by the
massive nest condominiums constructed by sociable weavers.
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Elephant's trunk
|
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Lion under a tree, Etosha
|
On the way into Okaukuejo
we passed huge concentrations of game in the grassveldt, but there were no
campsites available there so we continued onwards towards Halali. Although it
made for a long day of driving, we were rewarded by a series of great
waterholes. At Nebrowni waterhole we spotted our first black rhino in the wild
after nearly a year in southern Africa. We sat and watched him for quite a long
time, feeling glad that there are still black rhinos that have escaped the
scourge of poaching that has nearly wiped this endearing animal from the face
of the earth. Sueda and Salvadora waterholes gave us a plethora of birdlife, while
Rietfontein gave us lions (and the obligatory gaggle of safari vehicles
clustered around them). By 5:30 we were at Halali (where they luckily had
plenty of campsites available) and within minutes we were braiing up lamb
chops. As we finished eating, a series of enthusiastic hyena whoops called us to
the hide, at the edge of another large waterhole. The waterhole is illuminated
at night, which allowed us to see a black rhino mother and child, some 25
elephants and three very noisy hyenas. We returned to Stanley, sat up talking
over a nightcap, were disturbed by a honey badger rampaging through the campsite, and were in bed unusually late for us.
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A persistently mischievous honey badger in Halali campsite
|
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Our first black rhino of Stanley's Travels
 | Gemsbok
|
|
 |
Feeling pretty pleased with myself out on Etosha Pan
|
We awoke a bit groggy,
breakfasted on oatmeal, and then drove off into the vast emptiness of Etosha
Pan. It was a dramatic spot to stare out into the infinite-seeming white
emptiness of the salt flats, and we took a few self-satisfied photos of
ourselves and Stanley. We were hoping for lots of birds, but we were out of
luck. That morning’s waterholes gave us hartebeest, red hartebeest and
wildebeest in profusion. We stopped in at the easternmost rest camp, Namutoni,
for a delicious chicken sandwich lunch in the deserted restaurant. We still had
a few hours before our 72-hour park pass expired, so we drove along Dik Dik
Drive in search of the Damara dikdik, one of the species that had eluded us the
previous year. We were out of luck again, so we set off for a quick circuit of
Fischer Pan, where we had seen the rarely-spotted aardwolves (a nocturnal
species of hyena that eats only termits) the previous year. There were no
aardwolves to be seen this time, but there were lots of kudu and giraffes at
Klein Namutoni waterhole.
 |
Banded mongoose
|
With time pressing, we set off for the park gate with
me at the wheel and Terri watching for game. Suddenly she yelped in triumph and
I came to a halt. She extended an arm in the direction of a roadside bush, and
there it was: a dik dik! It was tiny, with expressive, elegant eyes, and we sat
and watched it with wonder until we were in danger of being late to the gate.
We turned reluctantly away from the dik dik and sped off to the gate, saying
goodbye for a second time to one of Africa’s foremost game reserves.
 |
Damara dik dik spotted by eagle-eyed Terri near the park gate
|
We weren’t ready to head
too far away from the park, so we followed our GPS to the Onguma Lead Wood
campsite, right on the perimeter of Etosha. It was a spectacular setting, and we
had a memorable sunset looking out over a small water reservoir with herons
perched on a dead tree rising from the water
which looked picturesque, backlit by the burnished copper of the sunset. As we
gazed at this peaceful scene one of the herons flew down to the water’s edge
and speared a Namaqua dove that was busy drinking. I didn’t know that herons
hunted other birds, and it came as a somewhat bloody surprise to see it fly off
with the lifeless dove hanging from its beak. The campfire that evening was
strangely bereft of warmth to fend off the night chill, and we thought
longingly of our desert campfires fed by roaring mopane logs.
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One of my favourite elephant photos
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The
Long Drive South
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| Boerewors over the fire! |
From here on, we were no
longer exploring the wilds of northern Namibia. Our main focus was getting
Stanley successfully out of the country with the necessary paperwork to get our
money back, and then the long drive south to Cape Town. We took two leisurely
days to drive south to Trans Kalahari Inn, stopping in at one of our favourite
campsites at Otjiwa Safari Lodge. We strolled around its duck-filled reservoir
before lighting a blazing mopane fire, grilling boerewors and roasting sweet
potatoes and sitting up under the stars talking over the adventures that we had
had over the eventful past four weeks.
It was a finger-numbing 3
degrees when we awoke the next day, and after a pleasant breakfast, we packed
up and then…Stanley wouldn’t drive. He started well enough, but soon lost all
engine power and started emitting blue smoke. We stopped beside the track and
waited for an hour before we dared try starting him again. We topped up his
almost empty engine oil and his slightly low transfer case oil, and watched his
differential dripping oil. We drove along the main road back to Windhoek with
both of us peering anxiously at the dashboard gauges for signs of further
trouble. Nothing happened, so we headed to Trans Kalahari and grilled up a huge
feast of sosaties to celebrate our successful return from a month of northern
adventures.
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Another pleasing night shot
|
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Sundowner at Fish River Canyon
|
We spent two full days
running errands in Windhoek, getting Stanley looked at (it was probably the low
engine oil that caused our failure in Otjiwa, according to the garage; they patched
the leaking differential, replaced the air conditioner’s pulley and belt and
replaced some blown fuses), doing one last big grocery shop, getting new
puncture-proof inner tubes for our folding bicycles, getting Stanley washed and
(most importantly) getting all our paperwork in order for re-exporting Stanley
to South Africa. On June 20th we headed into Windhoek to get the
all-important export document from a customs clearing agent (a simple process
that somehow took two hours), then ran some more administrative errands before
heading south and getting as far as Marental and the delightful Bastion Farm
campsite.
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Fish River Canyon
|
The next day we headed
south to the Fish River Canyon, one of the must-see sights of southern Namibia.
It was a long drive on gravel roads, but at least the roads had been recently
graded and we could zip along pleasantly. We stopped at the Fish River Canyon
viewpoint for sundowner drinks, then set up camp in the nearby Hobas Rest Camp,
where the night sky was especially spectacular, making for good
astrophotography.
We had long talked about
doing the 4-day Fish River Canyon hike, but it proved to be a bit of a bureaucratic
mission to set it up, and so we gave up on the idea and contented ourselves
with another view of the canyon the next morning and a long walk to Hiker’s
Point along the crater rim. It’s a lot like a slightly smaller, greyer version
of the Grand Canyon, and is pleasant, if not mind-blowing. I took lots of
photos, but had problems really capturing the scale of the landscape. I had
more luck with the tiny wildflowers beside the trail. We eventually set off
across a very corrugated road before regaining the asphalt of the main highway
as it cropped down to the South African border. The border crossing was
surprisingly easy, even with the added step of getting our re-export paperwork
stamped in triplicate, and soon enough we were on the South African bank of the
Orange River, searching desperately for accommodation; unbeknownst to us, it
was school holidays, and every campsite seemed full. Finally, with light
failing, we found the Growcery Camp and set ourselves up in a grassy field
overlooking the river before grilling rib-eye steaks for dinner.
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Looking pleased with ourselves at Fish River Canyon
|
We were lucky to stumble
upon the Growcery, as it was a very pleasant place to while away a few days. June
23rd was Terri’s birthday, and I spent the day pampering her, with a
poached-egg breakfast, chocolate birthday cake which I baked myself, a
cheese-and-charcuterie apero with bubbly wine, and then salmon steak for
dinner. It was a wonderful day, and Terri was very pleased with the amount of
planning I had put into the day.
The next two days passed
pleasantly enough, watching the river flow past, editing photos, writing blog
posts, reading, juggling, doing yoga, running and taking our bicycles out for a
spin in the rather desolate Richtersveld desert that surrounded the camp. Terri
had a long chat with the folks running the campsite and was impressed by their
organic produce and microgreen production (the Grow part of their name). It was
the end of our trip, and already we were nostalgic for the wide-open unpeopled
spaces of Damaraland.
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Exploring the Richtersveld on our folding bikes
|
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| Terri's birthday beside the Orange River |
It took two days to drive
to Stellenbosch. On the first day we bumped out to the road and into the tiny “town”
of Vioolsdrift, then south on tarmac to Springbok and a well-stocked Superspar
supermarket. We kept heading south through increasing vegetation and fairly low
altitudes into the wine country along the Olifants River near Trawal. We slept
at Highlanders Campsite where we lucked into a wind tasting being put on for a
tour group who were also staying in the campsite. We braaied sosaties and went
to sleep for our last night on the road and our last night sleeping in Stanley
for 2018.
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Desert foliage in the Richtersveld
|
The drive into Cape Town
was long, grey and rainy. It was the rainy season in Cape Town, and it made us
nervous whether we would be able to put Stanley away in storage perfectly dry so
that nothing would mould. We weren’t sure exactly where we were going to store
Stanley, and in the town of Malmesbury we checked out one storage place that
was too pricey for us at ZAR 1000/month. We also stopped into an auto
electrician to fix two pesky short circuits that had shown up with the rain and
which had killed our dash lights, cigarette lighter per point and exhaust gas
temperature sensor. They found and fixed everything quite quickly and we kept
driving into the built-up area around Cape Town, ending up at last at the
chaotic but friendly confines of African Overlanders near Stellenbosch, where
we splurged on indoor accommodation in a cozy circular rondavel with a thatched
roof.
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Another dramatic moon
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The
End
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| I wish I knew more about southern African botany! |
And that, more or less,
was that for the trip. We spent a couple of days sweeping, washing and drying
out everything in Stanley, getting him ready for a couple of years in storage.
We mailed off our precious re-export papers to Namibia to start the process of
getting our money back. We did our best to put Stanley away dry, but it was
pouring rain much of the time, and we knew how Stanley wasn’t 100% waterproof
in all of his corners. It was a bit sad to put Stanley into storage again after
such a superlative trip, but we were sure that we would be back in two years’
time to start our long-delayed circuit of the continent.
All too soon Duncan, the owner of African Overlanders, was driving us to Cape Town airport
and we were climbing aboard the first leg of a Cape
Town-Johannesburg-Doha-Denpasar journey back to Indonesia, where I would
collect my belongings and head on to Canada a few days later before starting
work in Tbilisi.
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Dancing for joy in the desert
|
It was an amazing trip.
In the thirty-plus years that I’ve spent travelling pretty widely around the
world, Namibia ranks up there in my Top 5 list of transformative destinations.
(The other 4 entries are Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Georgia and Australia, with New
Zealand rating an honourable mention.) Having our own wheels in the form of a
fully kitted-out 4x4 offroad camper opened up so many possibilities for us, and
we got the maximum possible use out of all our equipment. Being able to camp
wild in so many places, completely alone under the African sky, surrounded by
birds, wildlife and the southern stars, warmed by roaring mopane-wood fires,
was the apex of the African overlanding experience. Although the wildlife of
Etosha was great, we found that we preferred the more discreet charms of birds,
occasional giraffes, ostriches and springbok in the sparse grasslands of the
Kaokoveld. Having our own water tanks, a well-stocked Engels freezer and roof-top
solar panels meant that we could live off the grid for days at a time,
exploring remote canyons and really absorbing the almost mystical solitude of
Damaraland and Kaokoland. As we thought ahead to our planned circuit of the
African continent, it seemed as though none of that trip would be able to
compare to the perfection of our Namibian adventures.
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| Neat flower and beetle |
As it turned out, we
haven’t made it back to Stellenbosch yet to pick up Stanley and resume our
peregrinations, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. We are moderately hopeful
that we will be able to do so in 2022, although with border closures due to
disease, war and unrest, at the moment there are no feasible land routes from
South Africa to Europe along either the west or east coasts, so we may have to
modify our plans. As for getting our money back from Namibian Customs, it took almost
18 months, with the Trans Kalahari Inn and another of the overlanders caught up
in the mess working tirelessly to break down the indifference, bureaucratic
sloth and cupidity of the higher-ups of the Namibian Customs Service. It was a
relief finally to get the money paid back to us, and a lesson always to check
the fine print whenever there’s a border, customs and a vehicle involved, no
matter where you are in the world.
So now, as I sit gazing
out at the Bali Sea, wondering when travel will be possible again, it brings me
great pleasure to think back on what might have been the finest month and a
half of Stanley’s Travels so far. If you’ve gotten this far through this post,
congratulations. And if you ever get the chance to explore Namibia in a 4x4
camper, please don’t hesitate: it is a country of complete magic.
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A coppery sunset and heron, Lead Wood Campsite
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