Namibia weblog 2006

8th February 2006

Our sturdy car was packed so that each thing would have its place and nothing would need unpacking - a place for books, for firewood, for water, for mosquito stuff, for cooking, the black plastic box that served as a dry stores, a small suitcase each, the green canvas camping chairs and the slatted wooden table and the battered tin trunk with the spices, plates, kettle, candles, tins, knives. The doors could swing open and reveal whatever was needed. In the front was the essential supply of water bottles, passports, driving licenses, money, books and maps.

We were ready to tackle any problem, surging forward for exploration and adventure. Read more about their holiday experiences.

Rundu. On the map it makes obvious sense to simply head east but we knew that the marked road did not exist, so we started our epic trip on a sand track, weaving our way through small pegged-out fields being ploughed, by hand, by oxen, by a pair of donkeys and when the sand path split we took lucky guesses. We joined a tar road an hour later and got to Rundu in fast time. There we had a chance to meet other volunteers with VSO, also part of the holiday diaspora, before we turned south into Botswana for the Tsolido Hills.

I had infected Michael with a mission to find cave paintings, San rock art, engravings, work of the Bushmen in ochres and terracotta colours, old as the hills……At Tsolido, through sand tracks made nearly impassable with recent rain, we found stunning ancient examples of very simple delineations of animals and the people who depended on them for meat.

We camped quite alone in a soft mist and then saw the rising full moon and in the morning walked around the Female Hill, somehow full of spiritual significance and in whose crags and slabs of rock were beautiful paintings. There was complete silence except for our footfall and the noises of the grasses and shrubs that we pushed aside.

We climbed up onto the top of the hill where apparently there is evidence of pre-stone age dwellings and there disturbed a sleeping puff adder on the path. Michael had leapt back and I had laughed at him, assuring him that to be that flat must mean it was dead and I would kick it out of the way. I was cautioned though, and poked at it with a stick and to my horror it rose up and sped off into the undergrowth, lethal but afraid.

At Makagagadi Pans we were told that rains had blocked all routes to the pans. But at Nata a guide was available and took us on a fantastic trip right into the water filled pan, teeming with pelicans and storks. The sky became blacker and blacker and as we turned back the most savage thunderstorm broke over us. We ate supper crouched in the thatched eaves of the ablution block lit by a wavering candle.

We crossed into South Africa over the Limpopo, how evocative, and were devastated to find it not at all great, grey or greasy, but only a small mess of a river, muddied and weak. By then we had a very effective formula for police checks and border posts when confronted by bored police looking for perks. What have you got for me? For Christmas? they ask and I was initially lost for the right reply until I hit on my perfect solution: my mother had given me a tin of sensible travel fruit drops: take two of these , we say and the police are baffled but appeased, probably wondering if they are superdrugs…

The Soutspanberg is a stunning mountain range in the north of South Africa and here we found a campsite that wasn't. The riverside camping sites had all been washed downstream in the ravaging floods of 2002 and so we were invited to stay in a thatched rondavel deep in the woods. From there we walked along the river to find another rock art site…so exciting, we had to really struggle to reach it, clambering over a railway track and up some precipitous slopes and over a horrible collection of baboon excrement…and there they were, four or five panels of amazing paintings of warriors and shamans and eland. We luxuriated in the walks here, through dense woodland with eagles soaring overhead and giant snails and tortoises and baobabs. We found more mountains and rock art sites further into the Drakensberg mountain range and were driving through gorges and views, views, views, made all the more thrilling because much of the time they were covered in fog and we had tantalizing and awesome glimpses and had to come to a screeching halt to get a better look.

We enjoyed a brief and rain soaked trip into Kruger National Park where we watched some hippos and buffalos (new for Michael) and got flooded out of our tent in the night.

We eventually found the town with the Mozambique embassy and a bank big enough to stock Mozambican currency, but both were unable to help us, the former shut for a three week holiday and the latter saying that noone ever asks for currency….? Only 100km to the border? What is the secret message here? Are we destined not to get to Mozambique? When we saw the weather forecast from our friends’ house where we had a wonderful Christmas, complete with crackers, hats, feast and rain, we abandoned our plans for Mozambique altogether….solid rain for the next seven days.

So we started our unplanned and utterly brilliant discovery of South Africa’s Wild Coast.

This involved plenty of driving down hair-raising tracks, or roads if we were lucky, and much negotiation to find somewhere to stay or camp, and miles of empty beaches and craggy cliffs. We worked hard to be allowed into a dilapidated nature reserve with cottages, arriving too late one night, no bookings, no space, yet we were somehow allowed in and then had the beach to ourselves. We got ferried over a river on a punt for two cars and got to a campsite already overfull and sweet talked ourselves in there. While it rained and poured we got chatting to a lone fisherman who was aghast that we had not yet eaten local crayfish and he gave us six fat juicy crayfish for the next day.

Two campsites further on we knew we were pushing our luck to arrive on Dec 30th, peak holiday time, looking for a campsite, but benevolence was everywhere: someone had left early, we could have their place for the night, right on the lagoon, overlooking the sea. Indian ocean, big waves and surf, body surfing, bliss and sunburn. And then when our neighbours left after wistfully looking at our tiny tent as they took down their mighty construction of awnings etc, we learnt that they had paid up for two more days and so we could stay on for free. And so it was there that we celebrated New Years Eve, starting with champagne sipped under our umbrella/flysheet/ canopy and then lying in the tent watching an impressive fireworks display over the sea, bangs and pops and the roar of surf.

After that we still had two more weeks of adventures. One adventure was to gasp with the thrill of driving up the Skeleton Coast in Namibia on our way home, but another was then the resultant Four Punctures in 100km - and How to Survive. But we did, camped by the roadside for two days, hitching around in a search for tyres. We must have been in Africa for a while now; I would never have thought that we could be so relaxed…..

More to follow...

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