Exploring Southern Namibia

Driving on to Swakopmund and our hostel, Gruner Kranz. On arriving in Swakopmund, I have to say, it is a very odd town, I’m not sure if it’s because it is the most westernised town I’ve seen in a while, or if it’s the mix between German and African, bang in the middle of the desert. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and almost everything was closed till Monday morning… One thing that was open was the adventure activities centre!

In the morning we drove out of Swakopmund (and immediately left the wall of cloud (and cold) behind) to the sand dunes, where we went stand up sand boarding, much like snowboarding, but your feet feel much heavier and you have to lean back a lot more to stop your tip digging into the sand. Then we had a go at lie down sand boarding, basically lying facedown on a piece of waxed plyboard, hurtling head first down the sand dunes! My fastest run was 66km hr, the fastest that day was 76 km hr!! The fastest ever has been 80 km hr!!! But each day is different as the sand dunes move and the run is never the same. Difference here being, there are no tows to whisk you back to the top, lots of walking up the dunes after every run.

In the afternoon we jumped on quad bikes and headed out into the dunes again. Once I’d gotten over the fear of riding a quad bike for the first time, I was whizzing about the dunes at full throttle! Taking an interesting direction “off road” at times and fishtailing round corners. We were out for an hour and seemed to cover quite a distance, the landscape of the dunes was just amazing, such smooth rolling lines and undulating, sloping ground, it was so much fun!

Onwards inland a bit through the Namib-Naukluft Park, we passed Kuiseb Canyon, which stretched for miles, just a sandy river bed as no water was running through it at this time of year, then we went over the Kuiseb Pass and Gaubb Pass before stopping for lunch on the Tropic of Caprciron. We stopped at a rest stop in Solitare, where we had the most delicious apple crumble! We arrived at our camp in Sesriem, the only campground within the 32,000 sq km park. We were up early to visit Dune 45, so called because it is 45km from Sesriem, its 150m in height, but running up it to get a good spot for sunrise is harder than you might think! After sunrise on the dune and breakfast at the foot of it, we drove a further 20km to Sousevlei, we had a half hour walk through more sand and pink dunes to a pan surrounded by dunes reaching 300m in height, in the pan there are lots of dead trees trunks, giving great silhouettes and shadows on the cracked mud ground, the colours here were beautiful!

We had a long straight drive south, towards the South African border, we stopped off at Fish River Canyon and took a walk along the canyon rim. Fish River Canyon is second only in size to the Grand Canyon, it is 160km long, 27km wide and 550m deep, it late in the day and the colours of the canyon were pink and dusty orange. Our camp for the night was at Ai-Ais Hot Springs, sitting beneath the mountains at the southern end of Fish River Canyon, there was an outdoor swimming pool which had been filled with the hot water from the springs, it was a lovely way to start the next day, with a dip in the pool.

Exploring Northern Namibia

Crossing the border into Namibia and we were straight into a small park, with elephants and giraffes wandering across the road. Our first nights camp was on the banks of the Kavango at Rainbow Camp. The following day we drove the last of the Caprevi Strip and headed into mainland Namibia, to Roys Camp, just outside of Grootfontein, it was a characterful camp, with old morris minor shells dotted about, lots of sculls, and the funniest internet cafe I’ve seen yet, it consisted of a power socket attached to a fence post and a bunch of logs to sit on, with a wooden sign hanging above stating “internet cafe”!

Our next stop was Etosha National Park (20,000 sq km), Etosha used to be part of a 99,526 sq km reserve, where animals could follow their normal routes, but over the years it has reduced to it’s current size. The landscape is very flat, dusty and barren and in the middle of it all sits the Etosha Pan, a saline desert which turns into a shallow lagoon after the rains.

There are a number of watering holes dotted around the park, where we saw giraffe, elephant and zebra drinking. At one of the watering holes we visited there was a lion chilling nearby, there were lots of animals, zebra, impala, gemsbok, round the watering hole keeping a close eye on him as they tried to get a drink, and every so often he would move, causing all the animals to make a run for it, only to return a minute later.

We stayed two nights in the park, the first night at Namutoni Rest Camp, the second night at Okaukuejo Rest Camp. At Okaukuejo, there was a floodlit watering hole surrounded by a wall and benches so you could sit and watch for thirsty animals. I stayed at the watering hole till around 11pm and saw giraffe, rhino and an elephant come to drink. The next morning I was woken around 5am in my tent, by a lion roaring! I quickly went to the watering hole to see if I could see him, but he had passed through already.

After leaving Etosha we headed to Kamanjab and our camp at Cheetah Sanctuary Park, the park is a family run home to orphaned, troublesome (killing cattle) and injured cheetahs, which have been brought in by locals or rescued by the sanctuary. There were a few cheetahs very used to humans, so we were able to touch them. Most of the cheetahs now live in the park, they get fed once a day and the rest of the time they are left to fend for themselves, catching impala, warthogs, etc that pass through the park. There were two females with cubs kept in smaller areas to save the cubs being killed by the male cheetahs, they will be returned to the main park once they are old enough. Unfortunately none of the chetahs will be released back into the wild.

In Kimanjab we visited a local Himba tribe village, where the women showed us how they wash their hair every day, it takes them two hours! The Himba people wash twice in their lifetime, once when born and once when they die. The women use butter mixed with red ochre on their skin every day, this is what gives the red colouring.

We visited a curio stall selling dolls made by Herero women, the dolls wear the same traditional dress the women do, with large head dresses and colourful dresses. The dress comes from colonial German and Belgian settlers and is still worn by women today.

The landscape in Namibia is spectacular, flat barren dusty plains, lead into moonscape like valleys, huge rock formations, mountains and granite cliffs. The drive from Kamanjab to Spitzkoppe took us through some of this land scape, and then on the horizon I could see a pyramid like shaped mountain, which got bigger and more prominent as we approached it, it turned out to be the location for our bush camp that night. Spitzkoppe (1728m), known as the “Matterhorn of Arica” due to it’s shape, sits surrounded by rolling rocks and boulders, of beautiful pink granite, we scrambled to the top of one of the rocks for the sunset, which just bounced off the rocks and they gave off amazing colours. Our camp was in the base of one of the gullies, we didn’t put our tents up, instead we slept out on the rock and watched the stars!

As we left Spitzcoppe in the morning, there was a huge cloud, like a flattened dome, over the entire area, it was very interesting! It was a beautiful sunny warm morning, but as we drove towards the coast, I could see the cloud approaching and we drove straight into it, like a wall, and it soon became cold, quite like Scotland actually. We visited the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, the only place in the world you can find the Cape Fur Seal. There were thousands of seals on the beach and in the water, in November and December there can be up to 210,000 seals at one time, they were so noisy and quite smelly!