July 2014

The oh-so-simple Namibia arrival

The exit procedures for getting Cuthbert out of South Africa (way back when we entered the Kgalagadi Reserve five days ago) had been so simple. The chap asked us how he should fill in Cuthbert’s Carnet form, he signed and stamped it, and we were on our way! Surely entering Namibia would be just as easy-peasy: passports, Carnet, put watches back an hour and drive on? Well not quite. Here’s the full story in our Namibia Overlanding Blog.

We presented ourselves and Cuthbert at Namibia immigration to be told that our arrival was straight-forward (passports stamped with a three month visa), but Cuthbert’s customs clearance could only be done at the main customs office in Keetmanshoop some 260 kms away. Bearing in mind that on gravel roads Cuthbert can safely only do around 80kph, this is a drive of over 3 hrs and must be done the next day. Failure to comply would make Cuthbert an illegal immigrant!

We had planned to eventually visit Keetmanshoop, but we had read of an annual 4×4 Rally taking place on the pans in Koes (about a third of the way to Keetmanshoop) that weekend and we did not really want to make the long drive to Keetmanshoop until after we had seen the Rally. Now we had no choice but to drive straight on, over two hours past Koes to the customs office for Cuthbert’s Carnet stamp. Then, if we want to see the rally start in the morning, back to Koes the same day.

After driving to the customs office and waiting for them to finish their lunch, we were told that it was not necessary for Cuthbert’s Carnet to be stamped on arrival from South Africa. Apparently we had been mis-informed at the Mata Mata border; due to a customs union between SA and Namibia, they would not be processing Cuthbert’s paper-work and it should be done when we exit the customs union. OK.
So after a wasted 4 hour round-trip drive, we were back in Koes by evening, parked up on the edge of the pan, well-earned glass of red in hand, ready to see the start of the Rally in the morning.

Koes Pan Rally

The Rally was a not exactly the scale of motor show that would attract the attention of Jeremy Clarkson, but it was a fun couple of days watching the amateur motor enthusiasts compete with their tuned-up dune buggies, quad-bikes and motor-cross bikes. Day one was a long endurance rally around the pan area. Day two was described as the ‘fun day’ with shorter rally routes, some drag-races across the pan, and some dune-climbing competitions. Spectators could watch from anywhere they wanted – the health and safety budget didn’t  extend to providing barriers between the racing and the public.

We met a lovely German/Czech couple, Renee and Andrea who had been over-landing around African on and off since 2008. Over a couple of evenings and a few beers by the camp fire they gave us lots of tips and advice on places to go (and avoid) during our travels.

Brits on a volcano

After Koes we headed west to visit the Brukkaros volcano crater. It’s an interesting stop-off, but it’s a bit off the beaten track and not one of Namibia’s main tourist attractions. The camp-site at the end of a steep and very rough 4×4 track was obviously rarely used and unattended. We parked up and did the short 40 minute trek up to the crater edge, listening to the echoing noise of the baboons fighting in the bottom of deep gorge valley below us.

Just after we returned to Cuthbert and started to think about what to cook for supper, we heard a vehicle coming up the track. We assumed it was an attendant coming to collect some money for camping, but as the Land Rover approached, we saw that it had a British number plate. Henry was a charming young British geologist, living further north in Namibia and passing by the Brukkaros Crater on a short camping break. There are places in Africa where you expect you might bump into another Brit traveling around, but the side of a little known volcano in southern Namibia in mid-winter is not one of them.

It was a chilly, mid-winter evening at 1500m on the edge of the volcano, so rather than light a camp-fire and braai, we hosted our first dinner party in the comfort of Cuthbert’s central heating. We were particularly impressed when, after setting up his tent, Henry came to dinner armed with that traditional refreshment of the ex-pat British gent in Africa: gin, tonic and fresh lemon! We had a lovely evening chatting to Henry, learning about diamond mining in the region and his recommendations for places to go across Namibia.

The Orange from the other side

After the Brukkarros crater, we headed back south to Keetmanshoop. You may recall from above that we were recently familiar with this town from our doomed mission to obtain a customs arrival stamp in Cuthbert’s Carnet.  This time our mission was simply to restock on some food basics and to spend a few hours enjoying a rare 3G internet connection.

A couple of hours down the road from Keetmanshoop is one of Namibia’s best tourist attractions: the spectacular Fish River Canyon. We had been there before on a previous short holiday to Namibia years ago, but it is sufficiently impressive that we couldn’t miss this off the Cuthbert Tour. The canyon is only marginally smaller than the Grand Canyon in the USA, but few have heard of its little brother in Namibia.

At the southern end of Fish River Canyon is the Ai-Ais Hot Springs Resort. Ai-Ais has the potential to be a pleasant and peaceful spa resort, however it is currently the mid-winter school holidays in southern Africa.  Call us miserable old fogeys (we are sure to have been called worse!) but a spa resort can’t really live up to its image of peace and relaxation when it is overrun with excited 11 year olds on their school holidays.  We therefore moved swiftly on to return to the Orange River, this time to the northern Namibian bank, rather than the South African side where we spent much time a few weeks ago; equally beautiful, but blighted in places by the mining activity.

We followed the river westwards from near Aussenkehr, along to near Sendlingsdrift, taking some interesting short-cuts between mountains, along the dried riverbeds of the Orange’s tributaries.  Heading north towards the mining town of Rosh Pinah, we soon hit the luxury road surface of tarmac and were able to re-inflate Cuthbert’s tyres to full road pressure. After a pleasant wild-camp in the mountains just south of Rosh Pinah, the tarmac continued all the way to Luderitz.

Not exactly Hollywood

Luderitz is a small fishing town on the South Atlantic coast in the Namibian diamond zone ‘Sperrgebiet’.  The Hollywood-style welcome sign as you enter the town could be slightly misleading as to the excitement and nightlife to be found.

Luderitz is not spectacular, but it has some interesting architecture and it was nice for us to be back at the sea-side after several weeks in-land.

We had visited the town before on a previous short holiday some seven or eight years ago and had the most delicious carrot cake at a shack-café at Diaz Point just outside the town. As we arrived in town around mid-afternoon, we decided to see if we could find the same café for afternoon tea and cake.  As we pulled-up at Diaz Point, we were chuffed not only to find the café still standing, but also the Land Rover of a certain British geologist (see the story above of meeting Henry on the Brukkaros Crater) parked outside.  The carrot cake we remembered from years ago was replaced by an equally good walnut cake, which we enjoyed whilst catching up with Henry (or should we say, ‘Bananaman’ 🙂 ) and meeting his kite-surfing chums.

Ghost-town

A highlight of a visit to Luderitz is the Kolmanskop Ghost-Town just a few kilometres down the road. This is a diamond mining community in the dunes, deserted when the diamond-rush rushed south to Oranjemund in the 1940s.  The houses and other community buildings all still stand as they were used in the first half of the twentieth century. The walls are still decorated with paint-friezes and wall-paper, but the rooms are full of sand-drifts, blown in from the dunes over years. Some of the structures are now after 70 years, starting to deteriorate and fall apart but they are remarkably well preserved for their age and fascinating to visit.

Work is underway to repair the railway to Luderitz to provide access to the port for the in-land mining industry. We recalled that this work was underway when we visited the area back in 2007.  On our visit to the Kolmanskopp Ghost Town we learned that the original railway from Luderitz all the way to Keetmanshoop, had been built by the early German diamond prospectors in around 10 months. The 21^st Century renovation of the line started in 2003 is now, after 11 years’ work, still not complete!

Cuthbert barred from the Vleis

Next we headed north to the dunes and vleis (pans) of Sossussvlei. You may not have heard of this place by name, but if you have ever flicked through a National Geographic covering the wilderness of southern Africa, you are sure to have seen pictures of this famous site.  We had visited briefly here on a previous holiday to Namibia, loving the peaceful beauty and deserted isolation of the dunes and the petrified trees on the white vleis.

When we arrived at the park gate around sunset, we were disappointed to find a much more developed arrangement than we had seen seven years ago.  The small ticket office, the quaint single-pump petrol stand, and simple camp site under shady trees were now a ‘motorway services-style’ petrol station with shop, a new sprawling, unattractive camp-site, and a large site office with a tat-souvenir shop and canteen-café/sports bar.  This raised the ‘chicken and egg’ question in our minds…. had the tourist numbers increased to require this infrastructure monstrosity, or had the development monstrosity attracted more tourists? Either way, this looked set to be a very different experience to the peaceful isolation we had enjoyed on our last visit!  We settled down in Cuthbert for the night, ready to visit the park in the morning.

Next morning we were woken by streams of vehicles flooding towards the park entrance. Not only those from the monster-campsites by the gate, but also from lodges and camps in the surrounding area. Large tour groups of gap-year students in their over-landing mega-trucks, smaller groups of high-end tourists in safari Land Rovers from the nearby exclusive lodges with their personal guides, South African families in their 4x4s with trailer-tents in tow, and a stream of ordinary road-cars down from Windhoek, all charged towards the entrance gate for opening at sunrise.  We decided not to compete with the crowd and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in Cuthbert.

Mid-morning we finally ventured into the park. Fingers crossed… the traffic didn’t seem too bad.

After around 50 kms, the park road deteriorates into a wide track of soft but flat sand. We rounded the corner at the end of the track to see the car park….. full of hundreds (only a slight exaggeration) of tourist vehicles.  Guides were marshalling the crowds from their vehicles, over the dunes to the vleis hidden behind. Our hearts sank with disappointment at the sight.  We would have had a more peaceful experience at Glastonbury Rock-Fest!

As we pulled up to park Cuthbert, an official ran towards us frantically waving his arms.  It transpired that under the park rules, Cuthbert was too large a private vehicle for the sand track he had just driven and was therefore not permitted to park.  We would have to either leave promptly or (surprise, surprise) pay a fine.

Under different circumstances, it would have been a major disappointment not see the famous vleis and we might have argued harder with the park official.  However, having now probably become ‘travel snobs’, we saw this as a blessed release from an unpleasant, mass-tourism experience.  Following the crowds could well have spoilt our memory of the previous visit, when we traipsed alone over the dunes to the vleis and saw only one other person when we got there.

Oh well….!  We had at least enjoyed the scenery on the drive to get to the turn-around point!  The Sossussvlei dunes are quite dramatic; far higher (and arguably more spectacular) than the deserts of the Middle East which we had seen many time during our years in Qatar.   One experience that we had missed on our previous visit to Sossussvlei was to climb ‘Dune 45’, so we did this (and ran all the way down the other side in scorching hot sand!) before hitting the road onwards further north into Namibia.

Three times over Capricorn but no cheese shop

Our onwards drive north took us north over the Tropic of Capricorn and into the northern section of the Namib Naukluft National Park.  On long drives, Wallace (well, the voice of Peter Sallis actually) on our ‘Wallace and Grommit’ sat-nav continues to amuse us occasionally: “keep on this route unless you see a cheese shop….”.  Predictably, cheese shops are lacking in this part of the world.

As we had obtained a permit to camp on the Kuiseb River in the Namib-Naukluft, our route soon ducked back south of Capricorn, then crossing back north again the next day en-route to Walvis Bay.  Few making this journey would notice that the signs by the side of the road marking the Tropic did not quite match up with Wallace the sat-nav’s latitude of 23.5° South, however this kind of discrepancy does not go un-noticed by a certain former professional navigator 🙂

Cuthbert’s adventures in Walvis Bay

In the coastal town of Walvis Bay we had arranged for Cuthbert to see the Iveco doctor for his 20,000km medical, including oil change etc.  Udo at the Walvis Bay Iveco Centre was very helpful and signed Cuthbert off with a clean bill of health for a further 20,000 km across Africa. We have absolutely no idea where we will have reached by the time his 40,000km medical is due!

Whist in Walvis Bay, we took the opportunity to test Cuthbert driving over his first proper sand-dunes! Armed with a special permit from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism to access the route, we let Cuthbert’s tyres down to the lowest sand-driving setting and set off over the dunes and beaches south towards Sandwich Bay, following the tracks in the sand.  The scenery is lovely but as the video shows, the drive was not always easy 🙂

Nothing we couldn’t handle with a few sand-ladders and diff locks engaged!  The winch was also used for the first time; not in its intended role to haul Cuthbert out of the dwang, but to recover a sand-ladder that had become trapped underneath him in the deep sand.

Sensational seals

In our research on things to do in Walvis Bay, we heard about Jeanne Meintjes and her small-group trips taking tourists kayaking amongst seal colonies. You can see her website at www.emkayak.iway.na and she gets rave reviews on Trip Advisor. We left Cuthbert behind in the town and went with Jeanne out to Pelican Point for our date with the seals.

The day for us was even better than we expected. Despite a slightly chilly morning and the light grey skies of the sea-mists hanging over the bay, we had the most fabulous time on the water, splashing around (the term ‘gliding around’ cannot really be used for our slightly random and uncoordinated use of the kayak paddles) the bay amongst the seals.  Unlike their nervous reaction to humans on land, seals in the water are fearless, friendly and playful. They leap around, trying to out-do each other for attention, swimming right up to the kayaks and playing with the paddles.

The short video below tells the story….

Some of this footage was taken by Marcus holding an underwater Go-Pro at the side of the kayak, and the shots of us in the kayak were provided by Jeanne as part of the trip.  Thanks Jeanne for a great time!

Fixing the water works

Availability and quality of drinking water is of course always a concern when travelling in Africa.  Cuthbert’s fresh water tank holds around 230 litres and the water is pumped to the taps via a 0.5 micron filter to ensure that all the nasties are removed.  This volume can normally provide us with all our water needs (drinking/cooking, washing-up and showering etc) for around 5-6 days, but it can last must longer in a emergency if we ration the showering a bit (yes, it would have to be an emergency to keep us from our daily showers!).

In Walvis Bay we noticed that our water pressure had dropped significantly. Investigations showed that the pump was fine, but the water filter was severely clogged-up with silt.  Thinking back, we realised that our last tank-fill had been at the Sossussvlei camp tap (yes, the dunes place where Cuthbert was denied access to the vleis).  Being in the middle of the Namib desert, it is perhaps not surprising that the water obtained there was not of best quality. Our filter had removed all the debris, but in the process it had become a bit over-whelmed by the volume of sand!

Hmmm. We have several replacement filters with us, but probably not sufficient to last for long if the water quality continues to be so bad.  ‘Why not buy more filters?’ you say.  Good idea. But in Africa we can only find the larger 5 micron filters, which is not sufficiently fine to remove all the ‘micro-nasties’ that may lurk in the local supply water.

Our solution: install a separate 5 micron pre-filter to remove all the large gunk from the water, before it passes to Cuthbert’s finer 0.5 micron filter.  In a random emporium in Walvis Bay (a store appropriately named ‘Magic’ selling everything from bicycles, to water filters, to carpet, to nail polish) we found exactly the right filter system to fit in with Cuthbert’s existing kit.  ‘Tucky the Techie’ took out his mobile plumbing kit to fit the new filter. Hey-presto.… problem solved!  This should hopefully extend the life of the fine-grade filters and ensure that we have plenty of these left for when we are in the areas further north, with water from even more questionable sources.

Little Germany in Africa

After a great time in Walvis Bay, we did the short drive up the coast to the neighbouring town of Swakopmund. Unlike Walvis Bay, which has a recent South African heritage (only being handed back to Namibia in 1994), Swakopmund has a very German heritage from its colonial days.  German is still a dominant language of the town today and the German heritage is also found in the culture, architecture, food and drink: plenty of schnitzels and sauerkraut!

On our way to Swakopmund, we stopped off at the resort area of Langstrand. This small, modern, purpose built resort is set on a beautiful stretch of beach. It gained some notoriety a few years ago when the ‘Brangalina Jolie-Pitts’ settled there for a few months when one of their children was born. We saw no evidence that they have been back since!

Swakopmund is a tourist destination for the people of Windhoek and also (lots of) South Africans.  The large range of souvenir shops provided some choice for a new interior wall-hanging for Cuthbert, while the wide choice of food and beverage establishments allowed us to carry out some research into the quality of the irish coffees on offer (n.b. the bar in the Hansa Hotel was the best!).

On our last night in Swakopmund, we lay in bed with Cuthbert’s windows open, listening to the sound of the ocean waves to send us to sleep. This will be the last night for a while that we will be able to enjoy this!

Skeleton Coast – last sight of the sea

Newly stocked-up with plenty of fresh food and beverage in Swakopmund, we set off up the Skeleton Coast past Henties Bay towards Cape Cross. We stopped off to see one of the many ship-wrecks to be found on this treacherous and desolate coast. Many of the wrecks are quite old, but The Zeila of Hangana is the newest; an Angolan fishing ship which foundered in 2008.

Cape Cross hosts a large seal colony which can be visited, but having just had such an amazing time kayaking amongst the seal colony near Walvis Bay (see video above), we decided to give this ‘view from the land’ opportunity a miss.

Our track now takes us in-land. The very northern coastline of Namibia, all the way to the Angolan border, is protected land for concession holders only.  As we leave the South Atlantic coast now, we are heading gradually eastwards across Africa and are not sure when we will see the ocean again.  Maybe the Indian Ocean coast of Mozambique or Tanzania?

The Messum not-so Crater

From the coast we turned due east and headed up a long, rough track towards the Messum Crater.  After what seemed like hours, we only realised that we were there when Wallace the sat-nav announced that we should “Crack-open the Caerphilly, you have reached your destination on the left!”.  The Messum ‘so-called’ Crater is a vague ring of mountains around a plain which apparently formed some millions of years ago.  It was difficult to identify any ‘crater’ as such, but the scenery was quite beautiful and we saw our first wild roaming zebras on the plains.

As we looked around for a nice spot to park-up Cuthbert and camp for the night, we found a very friendly German couple with a similar idea to ours. Reiner and Suzannah were parked-up in their over-landing truck ‘der Dicke’ (loosely translated as ‘The Fatty’).  They have been travelling around Africa for many years and over a few beers that evening, gave us some great tips on places to go and avoid etc.

Desolation Valley

For the next week or so we bumbled very slowly through the extremely scenic Damaraland countryside, along the dry Aub riverbed, across the vast Desolation Valley and then along the dry Huab riverbed. We covered only a few miles each day, finding different and beautiful camp-spots each night with stunning views.

There are no roads in this part of the world, but rough tracks established by previous 4×4 travellers and recorded by the ‘Tracks for Africa’ (‘T4A’) maps. The routes vary between very rocky, rough tracks, to deep soft sand in dry riverbeds and short but very steep climbs into and out of the dry riverbeds. The conditions allow an average speed of no more than around 10 mph, but we aren’t in a hurry! Cuthbert is ideally designed to cope with these conditions, although in places it was a struggle, even with his low ratio gears and 3 diff-locks engaged.

On one section of the route, the T4A map was marked “River crossing difficult to impossible”.  On inspection, we agreed with T4A’s assessment and decided to follow an alternative route that a few previous travellers seemed to have taken around the riverbank. The problem was that the ‘detour’ was only slightly less challenging than the ‘main’ track.  Marcus decided he would give the detour a try with Cuthbert; but Julie couldn’t bear the ride, getting out and walking a couple of the sections, not even bearing to look and take pictures as Marcus bravely manoeuvred Cuthbert through the obstacles!

The weather in northern Namibia is reliably warm, reaching up to 39C in the middle of the day, but cooling down to a pleasant 20C to sit out in the evening. However it can also be quite windy at times.  One night at 01:30 hrs, with Cuthbert rocking precariously in the side-on wind, Marcus had to climb into the front and turn Cuthbert into the wind to stop the rolling.

Other than Reiner, Suzannah and ‘Der Dicke’, we saw very few other travellers in this remote part of Damaraland, but it does seem to be a popular area for charity mountain biker groups.  We met two separate groups of frankly, slightly crazy but very friendly European extreme mountain bikers on sponsored rides raising money for ‘Save the Rhino’. Damaraland is supposed to be one of the few areas left in Africa where black rhinos still roam, but sadly due to the hunting they are extremely rare and we didn’t see any. We did however see roaming zebra, giraffe, oryx, ostrich, wild cat, meerkat, springbok and duikers; not a bad range bearing in mind that this is not a wild life game reserve, just the rough African countryside!

August 2014

Kaokoland

One of the marvellous things about this kind of travel is that we never know where our next night’s camp spot will be and what kind of scenery we will be enjoying as we relax with our cold beer at sunset. As we left the dry riverbeds of Damaraland and headed up into Kaokoland, we were surprised to find the scenic Khowareb Valley with a small and only-just-flowing river, and a little waterfall at Ongongo. However with water comes mosquitoes! There weren’t many, but as we are now in ‘malaria zone’, we have started taking our anti-malarial tablets and taking all the usual precautions at dawn and dusk.

Which way to Epupa?

Kaokoland is a vast arid and mostly deserted area of north-west Namibia, extremely remote from ‘civilisation’. The sparse population is a scattering of villages of Himba tribes-people living the primitive existence that hasn’t been seen in most parts of the world for hundreds of years. In much of the region there is absolutely no infrastructure whatsoever: no graded roads, no electricity, no phone signals, no mains water, no schools, no medical centres, and certainly no fuel stations or food shops for anyone who is daft enough to venture up there without a very long-range vehicle capability and self-sufficiency.

Epupa Falls sits at the very north of Kaokoland, on the Kunene River between Namibia and Angola. There are two ways to do the 250ish km from the southern village of Sesfontein to Epupa: the western route with its extreme rough-road routes taking several days of driving at 10 kph; or the eastern route following a rough but graded gravel road and passing through the small town of Opuwo at the half-way point.   So which one do we take?

We have given a lot of thought to both options. Cuthbert is certainly well equipped and capable of handling the (lack of) roads; we had been negotiating the slow, rough tracks of Damaraland just a few days before. However after much deliberation, the deciding factor was a report from a previous traveller that some sections of the western route go through dense layers of low trees.

Low tree branches are unfortunately Cuthbert’s weak-point. At 3.3m high, Cuthbert has already suffered some minor damage from low hanging tree branches. Having invested so much time and effort (and money) into preparing Cuthbert as our home for this long overland trip, we decided that it was simply not worth risking further, more serious damage to Cuthbert for the sake of a bit of rough-road adventure. If you are curious about some of the extreme track conditions in the western side of Kaokoland, search “Van Zyl’s Pass Namibia” in YouTube and watch the videos! If you are interested in 4x4s and off-roading, you will find these entertaining!

And so it came to be that we drove the whole length of Kaokoland, up to Epupa and the Kunene, on gravel roads, stopping off for the night in the one-horse town of Opuwo to break the journey.

Was it worth the journey?

So. Bearing in mind that our onward journey after Epupa requires a back-track of over 100km to continue eastwards, was it worth the drive? We thought so. Below is the story of our visit to the Himba people and a slide-show of our pics so you can judge for yourself.

The Himba Dilemma

As you will see from the pics, the Himba people are amongst the most primitive left on the planet. Even by standards of the rest of Africa, this type of traditional existence is rare.

Tourism is not yet sufficiently developed in the region to generate the ubiquitous ‘coach excursion to a traditional local craft village’ found in so many other parts of the world.  The Himbas have yet to feel the ‘Sossussvlei Effect’ (avid readers of the Blog will recall this concept from ‘Cuthbert barred from the vleis’ above). However the small trickle of camping/over-landing traveller-tourism that is now edging into their territory creates a conflict for the Himbas.

On the one hand, they don’t mind outsiders coming to see their beautiful land and are happy to engage with visitors to a limited extent, but on the other hand, they are proud of their culture, nervous of technology (including cameras) and are understandably reluctant to become the subjects of a ‘human safari’.  They are traders and are happy to sell beads, and rough carvings that they have made themselves; but they do not seem to be attempting to unduly ‘cash in’ on the embryonic tourist industry that is emerging around them.

The responsible traveller will therefore try to find a way of learning about and enjoying both the region and the people, contributing to their limited local economy, but not insulting their sensitivities or gawping at them through a camera lens.

The current prevailing wisdom encourages visitors to find a young Himba chap who has been to school, speaks some English, and can host you for a village visit. Such chaps are not great in number and are not advertised, but campsite offices will usually be able to find one for you if you ask. We were introduced to Remo.

Remo explained that the ‘fee’ for visiting the village is some groceries that the villagers can share amongst themselves. He took us to buy a bag of maize meal, a bag of flour, a bag of sugar and a small bottle of cooking oil; we then drove to the village, Remo with us in Cuthbert.

The term ‘village’ may be a slight exaggeration of the size of a Himba settlement; they typically consist of no more than 6 or 7 mud huts as houses, plus a communal food store (on low stilts off the ground) and a small corral for the goats.  After Remo sought permission from the senior ladies to allow us into their community, we were beckoned forward. Remo introduced us and we spent a fascinating couple of hours with the Himbas, with Remo translating and explaining the culture and traditions for us.

We were encouraged to take photos of anything that we wanted. The youngsters clearly loved it and were posing around the place like mini-Naomi Campbells; but the ladies seemed more reluctant. Face-to-face they were charming, making lots of eye-contact as part of the communication and smiling. However the photographic experience seemed to be something of an ordeal for them. Remo was encouraging them to pose for us, but they rarely made eye contact with the camera. We obviously did not push this point and the photos are therefore mostly of the babies and children.

Kunene eastwards

After a lovely few days around Epupa and the Himbas, we headed east along the Kunene (again, due to low trees, avoiding the section between Epupa and Swartbooisdrift). We found a pleasant campsite along the road to Ruacana. As luck would have it, there was a small bar serving a wicked G&T sundowner on the deck overlooking the Kunene. In fact the G&Ts were so nice that we decided to stay put for a few days to do some croc-spotting, catch up on some admin and plan the next stage of the route (we need a break from this hectic lifestyle occasionally you know 🙂 ).

(Almost) entering Angola

Further east along the Kunene is the Ruacana Falls, with a large hydroelectric power station. Due to the dam and the river flow control for the power station, the falls were dry. However we wanted to get a view of the cataract which, according to our research, is meant to be impressive even without the water flowing. There are no signs to the view-point, but with Wallace the sat-nav’s guidance, we found the turning off the main road. Before reaching the river, we had to exit Namibia into ‘no man’s land’.

Shortly after the Namibia exit gate is the Angola border entry gate and a track off to the side which remains in ‘no mans land’.  It must be said that there is not exactly a tidal wave of travellers queueing up to enter Angola. There is not even a trickle flow. We didn’t see one vehicle or person cross over.  The Angolan guards looked bored sitting at the side of the closed gate and looked up expectantly as Cuthbert drove towards them, only to have their hopes of any activity for the day dashed as we drove past them and down the track to the side. Wallace the sat-nav guided us to the end of the track to the view-point.

We have included a picture resulting from this detour ‘almost’ into Angola. We wouldn’t recommend that you drive the length of Kaokoland specially to see this view. In fact we probably wouldn’t even recommend that you drive across town to see it. But if you happen to be driving along the Kunene on your way to somewhere, it is worth the short detour off the main road and briefly out of Namibia, even if only to see the disappointment on the faces of the Angolan border guards as you sail past their gate without stopping (Note to the guys: if you are reading this…. make it easier for us to get a Visa and we will give you something to do at your border crossing!)

Eastwards via nothing

Inevitably on a long trans-african journey such as this, there will occasionally be some significant distances to be covered with nothing to see. And we mean NOTHING to see.

There are no redeeming features to the next 700 km of our journey eastwards towards the Caprivi Strip and the Okavango Delta. The roads are long and straight. The countryside is flat and featureless, save for a few mosquito infested swamp pans with cattle grazing around them. We have the I-pod playing most of the way to relieve the boredom and we have the occasional entertaining chirp from Wallace the sat-nav (“Are we nearly there yet? Only I’m ready for me tea and Gromit’s got his Tai-Chi class later…”). Or at least we did have for the first half of the journey.

Wallace is kidnapped

After a night-stop in the less-than-inspiring town of Oshakati, we went to refill with fuel before continuing this ‘exciting’ stage of our drive towards Botswana.  It was just a normal fuel stop at a busy Shell petrol station, but Marcus didn’t have enough money in his wallet to pay and asked Julie to get some more cash from the back of the truck. In the minute that it took for this to happen, some little sh*t opened the front cab door and stole the Wallace & Gromit sat-nav off the dash-board.

It was admittedly careless of us (actually, downright stupid of us really) to leave the front cab unattended and un-locked even for a second. We reviewed the CCTV footage with the petrol station manager and the police were called, but by then it was too late – he was well away. The police tried to be helpful, but do not ever underestimate the level of patience required to complete a crime report process in Africa. By the time it was all done, it was too late to hit the road again, so to add insult to injury, we had to stay a second night in the mosquito infested town of Oshakati!

The major inconvenience to us is that not only have we lost our sat-nav device, we have also lost the Garmin mapping that was down-loaded and licenced only to that device. And in this part of Africa, stores selling replacement sat-navs are not exactly on every street corner! The frustrating thing is that Wallace is probably of absolutely no use to his kidnapper. He didn’t take the cables or connections; the battery will run flat in a few hours, so Wallace won’t speak to him. Without even being held hostage for a ransom, Wallace is probably now lying in a ditch somewhere in the outskirts of Oshakati, discarded due to his blank screen 🙁    RIP Wallace! We miss you!

Joining the Kavango

After the long drive eastwards across the very north of Namibia, tracking the Angola border, we joined the Kavango River just before Rundu. We stopped in Rundu to see if we could obtain a replacement Wallace. The helpful chap in Cymot said he could have one sent up from Windhoek overnight. We were chuffed to bits! This wouldn’t replace our Garmin mapping, but it would be good if we could at least replace the hard-ware, and we could still load up the T4A mapping and hopefully also get our Wallace voice back. When we went back the next day to collect ‘Wallace No.2’, the chap was embarrassed to tell us that unfortunately it had not arrived on the van 🙁   Oh well. This is Africa!  We’ll try again when we next get to a town.

Continuing east, we entered the start of what was formerly (and is still commonly) known as the Caprivi Strip, but which has recently been officially re-named as the ‘Zambezi Region’. The Namibians are attempting to remove from their place names, references to their colonial heritage by renaming them with African references (in this case, removing the name of the 1890 German Chancellor, Count Leo von Caprivi). However as with the Indian renaming of Bombay etc, the new names are likely to take some years to catch on.

We spent our last few days in Namibia camped on the west bank of the Kavango River near Divundu and fell asleep each night to the sound of hippos grunting just a few feet away from us in the river.

Farewell Namibia, but what about Etosha?!?

From Divundu it is only 30ish kilometres south down the western side of the Kavango River to the Botswana border and the start of the Okavango Delta. The road took us through the small Mahango Reserve where we saw hippos, elephants, warthogs and lots of the various African deer varieties. We are not always accurate in our identification of the many varieties of deer that we spot, so we have somewhat lazily taken to referring to anything with four hooves and horns/antlers as ‘goats’ J.

Anyone familiar with Namibia and following this Blog may at this point be asking: “Are you crazy?  You missed Etosha!  What about Etosha???”.  Well on this trip we have missed a couple of Namibia’s major tourist attractions (particularly Etosha), mostly because they were not convenient on our route and we have visited them on previous visits to the country. Etosha is a great wildlife park, but we will have plenty of opportunity to see more wildlife as we continue further into Africa.

We have had a fabulous 6 weeks in Namibia. It is a truly stunning country, with some of the most jaw-dropping landscapes you will see anywhere in the world.  There are however, some great distances to drive between Nambia’s best attractions. It can therefore only be recommended to those either with the inclination to spend many hours on the road (for which you are rewarded with a long succession of wonderful varying landscapes), or the budget to afford several internal flights.

Below is a quick overview map of our route in Namibia  (note: Red line = our route on this trip in Cuthbert; Blue line = our previous trips in other vehicles).

Now tune in to the appropriately named Botswana page for further exciting instalments….