Wednesday, July 21, 2021

A Lap of Magical Namibia (Retrospective from May-June 2018)

Golden late-afternoon light on the dry grass in northern Kaokoland

 



Lipah, Bali, July 21

 

An Unexpected Return to Namibia

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

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.

The fine, dry grass catches the afternoon light in Damaraland

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.

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.

 

A lovely landscape for a stroll

Damaraland Days

 

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.

Check out this korhaan's amazing eyelashes!

Stanley, looking tiny in an immense landscape 

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.

Hartmann's mountain zebra

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.

San rock painting at The White Lady 

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.

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.

The Save The Rhino anti-poaching patrol in Twyfelfontein Conservancy


Gibbous moon


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.

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.







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.

Another perfect night camped in the desert beside the fire

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.

A gibbous, nearly-full moon

If this is what the roads look like, you're driving in the right place!

 

Into Kaokoland

 

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.

Milky Way


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.

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.

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.

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?” 

Desert flower


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.

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!

Full moon rising over Kaokoland


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.

Lovely desert flowers


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.

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.

Wonderful patina of vegetation on the desert 

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.

Desert chameleon beside the track

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.

Terri's ingenious double oven for baking scones over the fire

The happy baker!

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.

Marienfluss scenery

The track down to the Angolan border


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.

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.

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.

More desert flora

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.
Yours Truly by the campfire

 

The Hoanib River At Last

 

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.

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.

The track along the Hoanib

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.

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.

Southern Cross long exposure

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.

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.

The centre of the Milky Way in Sagittarius

 

A Return Visit to Etosha

 

Secretarybirds


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


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


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.


Elephant's trunk

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.

A persistently mischievous honey badger in Halali campsite


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.

 

One of my favourite elephant photos


The Long Drive South

 

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.

Another pleasing night shot

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.

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.

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.

Exploring the Richtersveld on our folding bikes


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.

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.

 

Another dramatic moon

The End

 

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.

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.

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.

A coppery sunset and heron, Lead Wood Campsite

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

The University of the Open Road

 I recently found an article I first wrote in 2003 for the Lakehead University student newspaper, The Argus, and then touched up again in 2007. It's a manifesto for why I travel so obsessively, and I think it still holds true. In these days when travel has become so difficult, it's important to think about why we miss something that is so important to so many people. Hope you enjoy it!


Contemplating eternity on the shores of Tso Moriri, Ladakh



The University of the Open Road

 

   Three kinds of men die poor.  Those who divorce, those who incur debts and those who move around too much.”

   Senegalese proverb

 

   Not travelling is like living in the Library of Congress but never taking out more than one or two books.”

   Marilyn Vos Savant

 

   I have led a fortunate existence so far.  Much of it has been spent wandering the more remote corners of the globe with my backpack, or on an overloaded touring bicycle, seeing for myself the human and natural diversity of the world.  When not travelling, I have worked at a succession of meaningless jobs in various countries, saving money for the next  travel fix.  There are people, my father among them, who wonder what I get from such an itinerant, nomadic lifestyle, and why I spent so much time obtaining science degrees which I seem destined never to use professionally.  I do occasionally think about the question myself, and it occurs to me that I am pursuing higher education at the University of the Open Road.  It is a liberal arts college, stressing breadth of learning across any numbers of disciplines.  The syllabus is as follows.

 

History

           

Palmyra, Syria (in its pre-ISIS days)

For a history aficionado like myself, travel has offered a plethora of pleasures.  From the dawn of hominid history at Olduvai Gorge, past the cave paintings of Lascaux to the rock art of the Central Asian mountains, I have seen prehistory come and go.   I have camped amidst the gold-filled burial mounds of Scythian kings in Kyrgyzstan and in the shadow of the tumulus of China's greatest emperor Han Wu-di.  I have picnicked on the Great Wall of China and recited the words of Ozymandias amidst the melancholy rubble of the Ramesseum.  The endless sweep of ruined cities in the Middle East—Petra's splendid facades, Baalbek's bombastic scale, the perfectly preserved theatre of Bosra, Palmyra's vast extent set alight by the sunset, the Roman cities around Aleppo which now house shepherd families, the mountain fastness of Termessos—have taught me more about ancient history than any  course ever could.  I have savoured sunrises and sunsets over ruins from Macchu Picchu through melancholy Merv and marvellous Mandu to sublime Angkor.  Retracing the Silk Road on bicycle has impressed on me the magnitude of the accomplishments of great travellers and traders like Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and my hero Xuan Zang, the intrepid seventh-century Chinese Buddhist monk. 

            Despite my pacifist leanings, battlefields have exerted a strange fascination on me, perhaps because, except for the accident of being born when and where I was, my bones might now be lying there among so many others.  Xanthos, where the men killed their women and children and burned their city before marching out to certain death in battle not once but TWICE (against the Persians and then the Romans) brought tears to my eyes for its fanatic, futile heroism, as did Masada.  The Crusader and Assassin castles of the Levant, with their air of bygone bloodshed and treachery, exuded sinister charm.  More modern battlefields, from Waterloo to Ypres, Verdun and Gallipoli, along with the killing fields of Cambodia, Auschwitz and Dachau, filled me with revulsion at the industrial killing machines that have benighted recent history..

 

Geography

           

K2 at dawn, seen from the Concordia Glacier, Pakistan

All those childhood mornings staring up at the world map on my bedroom wall, wondering what sort of places those far-off romantic-sounding names—Bolivia, Patagonia, Tibet, Borneo, Everest—denoted have been rewarded over the years.  Our planet's incredible variety of landscapes never fails to delight me.  Mountains have always had pride of place in my heart, the high ranges of the Himalayas and Central Asia chief among them.  Panting breathless on lookout points below Everest, K2, Nanga Parbat and Annapurna, admiring the superb vertical, glacially polished rock, is an experience I can never get enough of.  Other, lower, peaks such as Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya, Semeru and Fuji have provided an opportunity to measure myself against them on foot. 

            Of course there is more to the world than just mountains.  Drifting down the Nile in a felucca, crossing the gorges of the Yangtze and Mekong in Yunnan province, following the infant Oxus through the Pamirs, swimming in the Indus or cycling past castles along the Rhine, rivers have been another collectible in my peregrinations.  I have brought rain to the driest deserts on earth—the Atacama, the Taklamakan, the Sahara, the Australian—leading to speculation that I should hire myself out as a rain god to drought-stricken areas in Africa.  Forests, from Japan to Chile to Nepal to Malaysia, all too often being felled in unsustainable quantities to make way for farms and ranches, have provided an glimpse into the endless struggle between competing species of plants and animals.  And glaciers, those epic rivers of ice, have provided many a photogenic moment of deepest blue and sheerest white from Argentina to Pakistan.

 

Physical Education

           

Cycling into China from Pakistan, 1998

I came back from my first long backpacking trip unhappy at how soft and sedentary I had become in eight months.  It was then I vowed to incorporate exercise into my wanderings, and haven't looked back since.  Long bicycle tours have become my favourite means of seeing the world, and I have logged over 35,000 kilometres over the years on three continents.  When I'm not in the saddle, I like nothing better than taking to my heels in the hills, hiking my way through remote mountainous areas.  European cities are another perfect venue for walking, searching for architectural gems and scenic backstreets.  Even when I'm travelling by public transport, just lugging my bulging backpack in search of a hotel provides a full-body workout. 

 

Architecture

           

Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Isfahan, Iran

Seeing great buildings in flesh is the only way to appreciate them fully.  Europe provides some of the great cityscapes of the world:  the Gothic spires of Prague, the Renaissance elegance of Siena and San Gemignano, the gingerbread facades of old Amsterdam.  Chefchaouen, Morocco is a cubist vision of dazzling blue- and white-washed adobe.  Arequipa, Peru boasts some of the most distinctive Spanish colonial buildings in the New World, stately edifices cut from the local gleaming white sillar stone.  India contributes the elegance of Rajasthani haveli mansions, the exuberance of Khajuraho's erotic Hindu temples and the austere Mughal grandeur of the peerless Taj Mahal.  Perhaps my favourite, though, are the blue-tiled Central Asian Islamic masterpieces of Samarkand and Bukhara, the legacy of beauty created under the patronage of the bloodthirsty destroyer Timur.

 

Linguistics

           

Syriac script, southeastern Turkey

Nothing quite matches the thrill of communicating successfully in a new language.  The first purchase in a shop, the first directions to the train station, the first telephone call, are all significant milestones. I can say “hello”, “thank you”, “where is”, “how much does this cost?” and “that's too expensive!” in any number of languages from Thai to Farsi.  Travelling has also allowed me to use the languages I did study in high school and university, French and Russian, to work in real-life situations.  Having wine-fueled ethical debates in French during the Burgundy grape harvest or discussing in Russian the intricacies of Kyrgyz corruption in a warm yurt in the Tien Shan mountains added another dimension to my superficial tourist's impression of those countries.  Learning to decipher new scripts, from the elegant calligraphy of Arabic to the rounded runes of Thai, the modernistic angles of Korean and the maddening pictographs of Japanese, gives the satisfying feeling of being another Champollion, unlocking the hieroglyphic secrets of a long-lost writing system.  The triumph of puzzling out my first bus destination in Arabic in Morocco remains vivid in my memory.

 

Biology

           

Young leopard in the Khwai River Conservancy, Botswana

I never had much time for biology when I was a student.  It all seemed too vague and imprecise compared to math and physics.  However, visiting the Serengeti Plains and seeing a million wildebeest and zebras migrating past, I regretted not having chosen zoology as my university major.  Coming face to face with mountain gorillas in Congo, wild chimpanzees in Uganda or orangutans in Indonesia makes you keenly aware of how little biological difference there is between all of us primates.  Exploring the kaleidoscopic seascape of coral reefs is possibly the most breathtaking experience available to earth-bound humans.  Hiking through a tropical rainforest is eerie, hearing a universe of birds, animals and insects but rarely being able to see them through the perpetual liana-enshrouded gloom.  Even birdwatching, an esoteric pursuit whose appeal I never could see when I was young, has forced itself on me after seeing so many colourful, exotic birds crossing my path while cycling and hiking.  A pocket bird guide and small binoculars are now a permanent fixture in my luggage.

 

Anthropology

           

Kalash children in the Birir Valley, Pakistan

I am no Margaret Mead, but no-one can spend time far from home without indulging in doubtlessly simplistic observations of the people and cultures around them.  The strict code of hospitality in Central Asia, from Kazakhstan to Iran, made me feel ashamed of my own culture's  relatively unwelcoming air to strangers.  I was constantly invited into houses, yurts and shacks for meals or to stay the night, with the poorest people often being the most welcoming.  Mountain peoples such as Tibetans, Ladakhis, Aymaras, Kyrgyz, Sherpas and Berbers impressed me by the sheer physical toughness required to survive in such harsh environments.   India seemed chaos incarnate, and yet somehow the country worked:  trains ran, tea was prepared, shops did a roaring trade.  Living in South America, the essential cheerfulness of the culture brightened my spirits on even the gloomiest days.  And I knew it was time to leave Japan when one of my students explained that he didn't use most of his vacation days because “I wouldn't know what to do with all that free time!”

 

 

Economics

           

Moneychanger, Hargeisa, Somaliland

Earning money in countries like Canada, Switzerland and Japan, I can travel well, cheaply and at great length in much of Asia and Africa.  The abstract principles governing exchange rates dictate that the prices of food, transport and lodging, expressed in dollars, differ wildly, from the hideously expensive (Tokyo, London, Switzerland, Germany) to the laughably cheap (India, Nepal, China, Egypt), with all shades inbetween.  A month in Tajikistan cost me less than $100, and much of that occurred on one night of expensive hotel and food.  In fact, I would have gladly paid more, if there had been more to eat in the poverty-blighted pockets along the Afghan border.  Comparing salaries and prices between much of the developing world and the first world, one of the most common topics of conversation with local people, shows the obvious economic incentives driving so much migration to the rich West.  There seems little justice or logic in a teacher earning a hundred times as much in Japan as in Uzbekistan, far more than the difference in purchasing power can account for.  It's easy to see what fuels the pervasive petty corruption that merely annoys the tourist but oppresses the local villager in the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the ex-Soviet Union.

 

Law

            Being arrested in a foreign country focuses one's attention on the arbitrary nature of laws.  In China and Tibet travel restrictions, often obscure and unpublished, beset the individual traveller, and falling afoul of them can result in fines and being sent back to one's starting point, or, an even worse fate, being confined overnight in a grubby hotel room with five chain-smoking Tibetan cobblers addicted to loud television.  Ex-Soviet states offer a taste of venality, with policemen, border guards and customs officials inventing regulations and law on the spot.  A request for $20 parking fine for my bicycle in Dushanbe left me giddy with laughter as I rode off at high speed.  A two-hour attempted shakedown by a drunken off-duty border guard in southern Tajikistan ended in victory for my patient obstructionism against his aggressive bluster. 

            Sometimes I have found myself the victim of crime rather than the supposed perpetrator.  Pickpockets in Nice, Istanbul and Indonesia could have lived well for a few weeks off their takings from me.  An Aussie con artist laughed his way south to Sydney in my old Holden car which he had taken for a test drive, leaving me with a walletful of worthless collateral.  However, when a professor of mine asked me after a slide show whether I ever felt afraid of crime in remote corners of the world, I could truthfully answer that I worried more about it in North America, a point borne out when two audience members emerged to find their bicycles had been stolen.

 

Religious Studies

           

Tibetan pilgrims near Mt. Kailash (photo credit: Serge Pfister)

I will never forget standing on a rooftop in Skardu, Pakistan, watching the culmination of the Shi'ite festival of Moharram.  Thousands of men marched into town from outlying villages, thumping their chests in thunderous bass unison, bewailing the death of Imam Hussein.  A handful of young men then flayed their backs with a flail tipped with razor-sharp blades, spraying blood as they flagellated themselves into a frenzy of devotion.  Equally blood-soaked was the Filipino Easter parade I saw near Angeles City, with penitents marching with crosses on their backs, wearing crosses of thorns; some would go on to have themselves crucified.  I much preferred the Tibetan pilgrims at Mount Kailash, barreling cheerfully around the sacred mountain to expiate their sins.  The handful of prostrator-pilgrims I came across in Tibet impressed me enormously with their tenacity; measuring their length on the ground at each step, they inchwormed their way either around a single temple in a long day, or across the breadth of the country in a journey that could take years.  The Kalash of northern Pakistan, whose ancestors entertained Alexander the Great's troops, offered the sad spectacle of a milennia-old polytheism being swept away by the twin tsunamis of tourism and Islam.  Japan's Shinto, on the other hand, a practical and business-like polytheistic nature worship, thrives on the sale of good luck charms, mostly for school examinations.

 

Philosophy

           

Meditating on eternity on the shores of Lake Pangong, Ladakh

Many an evening on the road is spent swapping tall travel tales and waxing philosophical over what we've seen.  I won't claim that Wittgenstein or Nietzsche would have been impressed by any of the insights I've come up with, but the words of an American tourist whom I met in Corfu have stuck in my mind.  Before he set off on his 14-month odyssey around the world, his parents mortified him by telling all their friends that he was going to Europe “to find himself.”  His reply was indignant: “I'm not going travelling to find myself!  I know who I am; I'm going travelling to enjoy myself!”  When asked how he could afford to spend so much time travelling after graduating from college, he came up with perhaps the best response possible:  “At this age, how can I afford not to travel?”  His answer holds true at any age, and deserves to be the motto of my University of the Open Road.