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Skeleton Coast: Uninhabited and uninhabitable
Posted by daveb on September 24th, 2008
Namibia is the size of France, yet has a population of only two million. That’s two people to every square kilometre and most cluster in the capital, Windhoek. Which means there are going to be large areas of the country that is uninhabited and in fact uninhabitable. Meet the Skeleton Coast region, where for hours we would drive and see nothing. Literally nothing. Which explains why we were so excited to find a shipwreck to photograph!
Along the way we stopped to see the “smelly seals” (about 250,000 of them) and happened upon a former–now collapsed–oil rig, complete with vultures scouring the baron wasteland.
Just outside the park we had our first puncture in our now suitably dirty and thus rugged-looking 4×4 car, which unfortunately happened after dark and so made for quite a “he’s behind you” scary moment whilst changing the tyre. Eventually, we found a campsite in the wilderness to which elephants visited the next morning.
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Spitzkuppe: Nestling amongst boulders
Posted by daveb on September 23rd, 2008
We had been recommended a stay at Spitzkuppe, a collection of imposing rock formations puncturing the otherwise flat (completely flat) Namibian landscape. We had a lot of fun climbing the boulders and taking photographs of the odd shapes that nature had created. After which, we set about finding a camping pitch to give us a suitably isolated location from which we could enjoy stargazing the night sky.
Within half an hour of setting up camp, we were approached by a bushman (i.e. a man, who lives in the bush) selling gemstones. As is quite normal for locals touting their wares, he was drunk. But where on earth did he come from? Politely, we all declined his persistent offer for stones and off he trotted. Only a few dozen footsteps away, he turned around and came back with an altogether different tactic.
“If you give me some food, then everything will be OK tonight” he offered.
Was this a plea for his wellbeing, phrased in questionable English, or, rather more tersely, a threat towards us? In that moment, we realised how isolation had turned against us. Quick-thinking Jasmin gave the man some freeze-dried food in an attempt to quell him. “I need money”, came the next response and we firmly indicated that we would not give him any money. Off he trotted again.
We all glanced at each other trying to assess the risk of staying-put versus moving to another pitch, under the relative safety of the overland truck groups with their twenty tents. I made the unpopular decision to move camp; in my brain it wasn’t worth the risk staying. So we packed-up and backtracked to a previous pitch, inhabited by a couple of overland groups who kindly let us share their area. On speaking to the tour leader, it turns out that she had been approached by a [different] bushman also.
The park’s, no-doubt hastily thrown-together “security team” became aware of the incidents and paid us a visit to get a better description of our annoyer. I couldn’t resist taking a photograph of them; quite probably a bunch of vigilanties from the local village brandeshing whatever they could find to look somewhat official. Of the five, one had a pair of handcuffs and a headtorch, two were armed with wooden batons and the remaining two would presumably administer a sound shoeing upon finding the nuisance bushmen. (The photograph of the security team is the last one in the gallery below — notice the headtorch-handcuff man’s thumbs-up expression in eager anticipation of finding the troublemakers.)
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Swakopmund: Sandboarding the dunes
Posted by daveb on September 22nd, 2008
Ever since arriving in Namibia I’ve seen people proudly sporting their “Sandboarding, Swakopmund” t-shirts, so I thought that we should give it a go. After our disappointing windless land-yachting experience, I was pretty confident that we’d have more luck falling down a dune on a stretched tea-tray.
Chatting to past participants it appeared that the struggle was not so much about the coming down, but rather in getting to the top of the dune in the first place. In fact, in a four hour sandboarding session, the average person managed only three 15-30 second runs down the sandy slopes because walking up the dune took up so much time and energy. From my experience of walking up Dune 45 at Sossusvlei, I knew that having to walk up the dunes prior to getting on the board would completely kill the experience for me. Rather than miss-out on altogether, we set about finding a man with a number of sandboards and, importantly, a quad bike. Unbelievably, in Swakopmund there was only one man who would deliver me to the top of the slopes without me using any personal effort and I print his details here in the hope that fellow Googling travellers come across this page and use him too. I was really pleased with the experience that Wayne at DuneSeven.com provided to us and would not hesitate to recommend him — he’s a bloody nice bloke and, as I’ve already mentioned, he’s the only one with a quad bike to save you struggling to the top of the dune on foot each time you want to board down it!
We’ve got some brilliant videos to show you also, but I still cannot upload to Youtube from Africa. Once I get the bandwidth (probably in the UAE) then I’ll let you know. Obviously, in the photo gallery below, I’ve picked the best shots of me standing-up (there was only one) and the of Squifter eating sand. On the forthcoming video, Squifter’s falls are even funnier! I’ve got a video of nearly running over 20 Africans who, unbeknown to me, decided to climb the slope of the dune as I was coming down; the look on both my and their faces is priceless.
Claire adds: Of course, I only fell because I got up soome speed. I had to edit Dave’s video as he took 4 minutes to come down the slopes ;o)
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Swakopmund: Sailing the oldest desert in the world
Posted by Squiffy on September 19th, 2008
Being a lover of watersports, and sailing in particular, I’ve been intrigued for a while to branch out and experience land yachting. And what better place to try it than in Namibia, the oldest desert in the world.
Take one French man, a huge flat desert, four land yachts and some willing participants and you have all you need for a perfect day racing across the sand. Ahh, but wait, there was something missing. The wind.
When we first arrived at the designated site the wind was up and I put in a few practice laps in my yacht, a cross between a bath tub and a dinghy which you steer with your feet. It was definitely fun. Unfortunately the wind soon dropped and we were left to push oursleves around by the wheels. The hilarity of the situation kept us giggling and we had a fun hour or so despite mother nature’s lack of compromise.
We’ll defintely give it another go when we get the chance… perhaps Dubai will have deserts large enough.
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Swakopmund: Night naughtiness
Posted by daveb on September 18th, 2008
We’ve been in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly three months now and have never been out at night later than about 9 o’clock. In fact, we’ve only been out later than sunset (between 5:30-7:30pm at this time of year, depending on country/timezone) once or twice. Swakopmund is a really nice seaside town. Our guidebook describes it as being more German than Germany. (Namibia is a former German colony.)
After taking advice from our friendly campsite reception staff, Squiffy and I ventured out after sunset to eat at one of the many fine tourist restaurants. The walk from the campsite to our chosen restaurant was just fifteen minutes and, in a safe town, surely not worth taking a taxi for (and not that we saw any if we did want one)?
On the way to the Italian, we noticed how romantically empty the misty streets were. We listened to the waves of the ocean lap onto the beach. We had a fine meal at the Italian, which in stark contrast to the empty streets, was absolutely packed with people eating, drinking, cavorting.
The walk home was unfortunately a different story. My dear Mum called on our mobile phone and, given that it’s not often we get to successfully connect a calls, I picked-up. Even in London, I’ve become a bit weary of conducting a public mobile phone conversation at night and usually try to avoid it. Just one street away from the restaurant, we passed a stationary man, standing between a wall and a bus. He was wearing a ballaclava, which was not massively unreasonable, given the temperature. I should point out at this stage, that it’s quite normal to see men standing still outside buildings and even buses in the parts of Africa that we’ve travelled. These men are in fact security guards. I made clear eye contact with the man and said hello as I passed. He met my eyes, raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Again, not so weird as not everyone can speak English here.
Even before we passed him, both of our Spidy-sensors were on high-alert. About 25 metres after we passed the silent, still, balaclavaed man, he started to run for us. Squiffy noticed a split second before me and shouted “he’s running at us”. I turned around and, true, he was indeed running at us. I pulled her across to the road, to test whether he was indeed running for us and told my Mum to call back in 20 minutes. As glorious luck would have it, a carload of Italian tourists came around the corner. We jumped in front of the car and pleaded with them to give us a lift to the end of the road. Meanwhile, our would-be attacker immediately slowed his sprint back into a walk and disappeared into another street.
One can only imagine that he was either planning to snatch only the mobile phone or my initial ‘hello’ eye contact threw him at first — otherwise why would he have waited until we had passed him before beginning his charge?
A big thanks to the Italians who actually drove us all the way back to our campsite. We were a little shaken, but not stirred. Lesson learnt: Swakopmund, beautiful as it is, is probably not safe to walk at night — drive, get a cab or walk in larger groups. At least don’t yap on the telephone on a dark street like I did!
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Swakpomund: This is SWAKOPMUND
Posted by Squiffy on September 17th, 2008
As we arrived in Swakopmund we stopped at the first hostel/camp site that we came across, called Dunes Sky Lodge. It was my turn to run to reception to check facilities and prices. As I approached the counter, a rather sullen looking lady asked me if I wanted to camp here. I replied that, yes we wanted to camp, but I had a few questions about facilities first. She hurrumphed, “Yes?”
I asked a few quick questions about prices and cooking facilities, then ended with our usual questioning about showers. The conversation went like this:
Me: “Do you have showers?”
Her: “Yes”
Me: “Are they hot?” (Usually the staff umm and ahh at this point)
Her:”No, they’re icy cold” (no hint of a smile or sarcasm on her face)
Me: “Really?” (A little taken aback)
Her: “Of course they’re hot”
Me (slightly confused): “Oh, it’s just we’ve been travelling Africa for 3 months now and have rarely found a hot shower”
Her (still no break in her sullen expression): “This is SWAKOPMUND”
Me: “I’m quite aware of where I am but as I’ve never been here before I don’t know if Swakopmund has hot showers”
Her: Angry glare
Me: “Thanks for being so helpful, we’ll be going elsewhere”
And we did just that. We left the rudest woman I have ever met and went instead to the nicest campsite in Africa, the Alte Brucke Resort. Our pitch had lovely green grass, power sockets, a BBQ area and a private bathroom that was well furnished and spotlessly clean!
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Sesriem: Sossusvlei and climbing Dune 45
Posted by daveb on September 16th, 2008
It was a long drive on gravel roads from Windhoek to Sesriem, the gateway to Sossusvlei (a desert pan) and the apricot-red sand dunes, including the famous Dune 45 — so-called due to it being 45km from the camp. Along the way, we stopped off for apple pie at the ‘village’ (read: petrol station and cafe-bar) of Solitaire. I don’t know how Moose, the owner, got to become the apple pie king of Africa–he’s in all the guidebooks–and yet there’s really nothing else around for miles. Along the desolate roads, we were lucky enough to pass a small convoy of top-secret disguised Mercedes cars being testing on the otherwise empty desert roads. Car manufacturers often test their forthcoming models in extreme environments around the world, presumably to confirm their reliability and durability before public launch. The motoring press pays good money for candid photos of test cars, but unfortunately, none of us could get to our cameras in time as they zoomed past.
As far as I can tell, Sossusvlei, Hidden Vlei and Dead Vlei are basically desert lakes of old, now completely dry, but nonetheless picturesquely nestling within the sand dunes. The last 5km prior to arriving at Sossusvlei made for an interesting drive as the road became completely replaced by pure sand. I’d never driven on sand before and really enjoyed the effect. In the pan, we saw a snake and lots of curious, running, burrowing desert bugs before having picnic under the shade of a tree, away from the burning sun. Once the heat had calmed down a bit, we walked half-way up a big dune to watch the purple sun set.
The next day, we arose at some ungodly hour to drive, along with everyone else, at nearly double the park speed limit to have a chance of scaling Dune 45 to watch the sunrise. Honestly, it’s so silly: There are two gates to go through to get into the national park. The outer gate opens at 06:30 (after sunrise) and the inner one at 05:30 (just before sunrise). Naturally, in between the two gates is a single campsite, owned by the national park which charges a fortune to stay there, because staying there provides the only chance of seeing the sunrise from the top of a dune. It’s really cheeky — by staying at their campsite (at double the cost of external sites) you get a one hour headstart on the masses. But what you don’t get is enough time from the time the gate opens to drive at the speed limit to get atop a dune!
With Claire’s skillful driving we got to the base of Dune 45 with just a little time to spare and so started our ascent up the mountain of sand. I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt so exhausted. Imagine climbing up steep sand–two steps forward, one step back–before having breakfast and adequate water. By the top, my heart was pounding so strongly, my lungs were so dusty and, sitting slumped on the knife-edge of the top of the dune, I could hardly lift my head to take in the sunrise that I had fought so hard to see.
Once my body had returned to a somewhat normal condition, we got to admire mother nature’s morning theatre and made a running descent — which took all of about 30 seconds taking large jumps straight down the slopes. We’ve got some brilliant videos to show you of our descent, but alas Africa is not quite up for us uploading to Youtube just yet! (I’ll let you know once I can get videos working, of course).
By the way, the last photo that you see in the gallery below is not of the sun, but the moon. Neither of us had ever seen it so close before, it was amazing — I wish you were there to see for yourself.
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Windhoek: A 4×4 car. With tents. On the roof.
Posted by daveb on September 15th, 2008
Today was a very exciting day. For today was the day that we collected our rugged Nissan 4×4 off-road, modified for African camping roadtrips, complete with two roof-mounted pop-up tents! For those who care about cars, the features and gadgets are as follows:
- Nissan 2.4l Hardbody high-clearance pickup truck with hard-enclosure over the boot-thingy.
- Two roof-mounted tents, sleeping four in total.
- Two-high, four-high and four-low wheel drive.
- Main and reserve fuel tanks to go the extra mile. Oh, and a jerry-can too. (Total 2WD range about 1000km.)
- Two spare wheels and loads of tools which I haven’t the foggiest idea how to use.
- Camping water tank to help with the washing up.
- Two gas canisters with cooking and lighting attachments.
- Fridge/beer cooler.
- Indicators and windscreen-wiper controls in the opposite position to every other car we’ve ever driven (causing amusing moments at every junction — thank god there’s no rain here).
- A spade mounted on the exterior for rugged looks and desperate recoveries from failed 4×4 excursions.
- Stickers on the side saying “4×4 Off-Road” — to assure onlookers that we are really hardy campers.
And the four of us (recall that we’re travelling with Chris and Jasmin, a German couple) set-off south towards the desert. Our twelve day road trip will take in Dune 45 at the Sossuvlei desert, the quaint German seaside town of Swakopmund, the desolate Skeleton Coast, shipwrecks and all, finishing with a self-drive safari in Etosha National Park.
Namibia is a large country, perhaps the size of France, but only has two million residents — that’s about two people for every square kilometre. On the more remote sections of our trip it’s unlikely that we’ll see anyone or anything for hours on end — a large helping of wilderness coming up!
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Windhoek: Time to relax
Posted by daveb on September 12th, 2008
After returning the Mercedes to Windhoek, we’ve had a few days in Namibia’s captial city whilst we wait to pick-up the 4×4 and start our tour. We’ve made good use of the well-stocked supermarkets, fast internet and cafes in town, and relaxed in the sun at the hostel where we are camping. It was a welcome relief from the desert of the Trans-Kalahari Highway to bob about in an inflatable ring in the pool, complete with travel magazine and cuppa.
We were reliably informed by a number of locals that we hadn’t been to Windhoek unless we’d been to Joe’s Beer House, so last night we treated ourselves to the experience. Due to the reported dangers of the city at night, we took a cab which turned out to be a Yoko-mobile – there are loads of VW campervans here, must be due to the old German influence on the city. They look very out of place amongst the hunking Toyota 4x4s.
It’s hard to describe Joe’s. Some say it’s like a more individual TGI Fridays or Hard Rock Cafe, but it’s much more atmospheric than that. It’s a huge place with lots of adjoining spaces, big candle-lit tables and tonnes of artefacts from around Africa. Despite its size and our early arrival, we were told the restaurant was fully booked. After a little begging, we were accommodated at the bar where we ordered a cheap pink sparkling wine to toast our trip so far. I chose a light dinner, leaving room for the widely recommended chocolate mousse, which was delicious. Dave, after enjoying the Oryx steak at Zelda’s, furthered his game tasting and ordered Springbok, served the Namibian Way and reports that it was even better than the Oryx.
A lovely night was had by all and on our way out we met an English Aussie who said she’d put us up for a few nights in Perth when we finally arrive there – you never know who you’re going to meet next.
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Windhoek: Broken tent, no more
Posted by daveb on September 11th, 2008
Thanks Riaan, kudos man.
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