Namibia Part 1

14 August - 2 September

Made it!
Crossing the Angolan border into Namibia introduced a major and long anticipated change to our mindset. We were leaving behind the exciting and ever challenging rawness of ‘in your face’ Africa that had been with us since Mali, to be replaced by the sanitised and westernised Southern Africa of the travel brochure and game lodge. Amongst others: bush camping; appalling and challenging pistes; corrupt officials seeking bribes; irregular fuel supplies; and relying on tinned food would be no more. Now the almost suffocatingly dull ‘comfort zone’ norms of: 5 star camp sites; graded gravel tracks; intact tar roads; road signs; malls and supermarkets; plentiful supplies of fresh produce; ATM’s in every town; white faces here and there; roadworthy vehicles; and everywhere the English language be it spoken or written.

Our freedom and independence would be curtailed; farming, land owning on a scale we had never seen before in Africa, would be all around along with the depressing, concomitant expression of ownership: locked gates and mile upon mile of roadside fencing. We would become tourists not overlanders, following well trodden tourist routes to well known tourist sites. All of which sounds as if we hated the thought of it, we didn’t! We felt a great sense of pride, of achievement and of relief. We had done it, we had made it, the worst was over and from now on it would be easy. We deserved this!

The border formalities on the Namibian side of the border were simplicity itself, no visa to be checked just the thump of a stamp on a page of the passport and we were waved through. As we climbed the escarpment that overlooked the border, we stopped and looked north, back over the yellow-green clad hills that were Angola, beyond which for over 20,000 glorious miles stretched our route from England. We had made it and for Liz it was a very emotional sense of relief! Getting out of Boris we just stood looking in silence, then stiff upper lip gave way to trembling lower lip, followed by a huge tearful embrace and congratulatory pats on the back!! 
The Kunene River and the Kaokoveld
We needed to restock so spent a day and that night in the nearby town of Outapi, before retracing our route back to the Ruacana area and the River Kunene. The river flowed west into the Atlantic, still some 250 miles away; ‘flowed’ gives the wrong impression, near Ruacana the ‘flow’ of the river was strictly controlled by the hydro-electric dam that lay across its path. It was now the dry season and in order to store enough water to turn the turbines, water was only released periodically. Thus about once every 36 hours water was released through the turbines over a 12 hour period and the level of the water in the river rose by over 3 feet, only to fall back again as the long slug of water passed on.

West of the dam, the Kunene River marked a 200 yard wide border between Angola and the northern limit of the Kaokoveld, one of Namibia’s least inhabited and most inhospitable regions. The north of this region was known as Kaokoland and according to the Bradt guide book was ‘best visited by air’ and although ‘it appeals to the adventurer and explorer in us’, should only be driven as an ‘expedition of two 4x4 vehicles, with experienced drivers. This isn’t the place for the casual or inexperienced visitor’!! All of which ensured we would visit this region; a final fling, a last chance for the type of travel we had been used to and found so rewarding.

Kaokoland is a stunning mixture of mountains and arid grass savannas; it is also the land of the Himba, a pastoral nomadic people, relying on herds of drought-resistant cattle for their livelihood. Because of the remoteness of this region, the modern world had largely passed them by; up until the 1980’s there were groups of Himba living in the area who relied entirely on a hunter-gatherer existence, using only stone implements. It is only in the last 20 to 30 years that the Himba have increasingly come into regular contact with modern cultural norms and the strains this rapid transition places on their own culture and traditions are considerable.
 Himba women and children, enroute Epupa

As we drove west on a tree lined sandy piste that ran alongside the river we came across isolated temporary Himba settlements from where small groups of women carrying children, clad only in a leather loin cloth, their skin a dull reddish-brown colour as the result of the application of their traditional ‘beauty cream’, came to the side of the piste to sell beaded necklaces and other ornaments, all covered in a muddy film of the same cream. The preferred payment was food (bags of maize flour and sugar were very popular!); they were not malnourished but for them, miles from the nearest town and with no transport, bags of staple foodstuffs were useful for subsequent bartering. 
Kunene River Lodge
After travelling for about two hours beside this picturesque river, with tall palms and huge jackalberry trees rising above the 50 yard wide ribbon of green marking the river’s passage through the yellow desiccated grasses of the semi desert, we arrived at the Kunene River Lodge. Here we camped for three nights; it was the most perfect place to unwind and relax. We were given a pitch right by the river. Everything was so upmarket! There was an electricity supply for Boris; clean flushing toilets; hot water in the well appointed shower block; a place to wash our dishes; a laundry; and a restaurant with decking reaching out over the river – just ideal for a cold beer ‘sun downer’!

We also made our first acquaintance with the braai stand (for braai read BBQ), a concrete rectangle above which was a section of latticed metal. For ALL white southern Africans, the braai was obviously a culturally de rigueur aspect of campsite life. Every evening the huge piles of foot long pieces of wood on the concrete braai stands were lit (note: no charcoal briquettes ..ever!). Then a pall of wood smoke enveloped the whole campsite before it eventually cleared to reveal rotund, pregnant looking middle aged men in shorts and T shirts cooking huge steaks on the latticed metal above glowing embers. For these chefs it was a very social affair, they moved between braais downing cold larger from a bottle in one hand and emphasising the points they were making with a mean set of 2’ long tongs in the other. There was no exception to this routine; the whole thing was repeated every evening!

There then followed three very relaxing days during which, seated in the sun beside the river, Peter planned our route through Namibia and Liz recreated some of the local birds in watercolour .. she also became addicted to bird spotting and as a newly fledged ‘twitcher’ disappeared for hours on end into the riverside scrub armed with binos and bird book.
The Zebra Mountains
We left the Lodge on the 18 August to continue west along the piste beside the river and towards Epupa Falls, about a day and a half away. The route had been described by Peter, the charming owner of the Lodge, as ‘tricky’ and before leaving the Lodge we had agreed with a young white Namibian couple that, as we were both heading the same way, we would keep an eye out for each other. We passed one another as we negotiated the baking hot, sun drenched route; initially taking us past a memorial to a group of Boer trekkers who crossed the Kunene River from Angola in ox drawn wagons nearly a hundred years ago, leaving behind members of their trek in the small grave yard close by. Then came the ‘tricky’ passage through the remote Zebra Mountains, so called because of the lines of black dolerite rock that ran down many of the light brown slopes.

Having crossed the last of four testing rocky mountain passes, it was by now time to look for a bush campsite. Close to the river we were waved down by Hanne and Axel, our Namibian fellow travellers; they had found the most perfect, idyllic riverside site and wanted us to join them. We needed no second invitation, made camp on the sandy bank of the Kunene and then had the most refreshing swim and wash down in the river; Axel had assured us that as it was fast flowing at this spot there was no danger of crocodiles!

They proved to be a really lovely, hospitable couple and after supper we all indulged in a pleasant session of star gazing, led by Axel who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the marvellous display that punctured the black night sky above us. It was all rather like one of those joining up the dots games, suddenly all sorts of animals and reptiles were looking down at us. As a finale he pointed out the Southern Cross, not quite where we had thought it was!
Epupa Falls
The next day after many encounters with riverside wildlife; including monitor lizard, vervet monkeys and a parrot called the Rosy Faced Love Parrot .. oh yes it was! This sweet little parrot was spotted by the navigator who increasingly spent the day with a pair of binos pressed to her eyes! After a lunchtime dip in the river, we arrived at the small settlement beside the Epupa Falls. We had a choice of two riverside campsites and chose that run by the local people, the community campsite, with the profits being ploughed back into community projects. Hanne and Axel had arrived before us and assuming that we would make the same choice, had kindly reserved a riverside pitch for us.

The winter school holidays, truck loads of tourist on ‘adventure’ holidays and a good gravel road from the south meant that the falls, despite their remoteness, were quite crowded. The falls fell 90 feet in a series of chutes over a broad half mile long horse shoe of a rocky precipice that stretched to Angola on the far bank. They were spectacular, even more so than normal as, luckily, a slug of water was passing through. We spent a couple of hours, along with gaggles of tourists, making the most of the photo opportunity afforded by the falls, before returning to the campsite. The men cooked the evening meal, with Axel giving Peter a lesson on braai cooking Namibian style; in particular the creation of the ‘coals’ and the cooking of a boerewors, a very long traditional Afrikaans sausage wound around in a tight circle, rather like the Cumbrian sausage, and without which no braai meal would be complete. The boerewors was a tender, moist hors d’oeuvre and would then be followed by yet more meat .. and more meat .. boy, these Namibians really loved their meat!
Van Zyl’s Pass
Early the following morning we said farewell to Hanne and Axel, promising to see them again in their coastal home town of Swakopmund, and headed towards ...drum roll! ... Van Zyl’s Pass, mooted as ‘one of the most testing and remote mountain passes in southern Africa’ and which, because of its precipitate nature could only be attempted travelling East-West. Initially we followed the good gravel road south from Epupa Falls, before turning off onto a little used rocky undulating piste that would bring us to the foot of the pass the following day. Reaching that point was in itself very testing for both navigator and driver; the piste, which was full of turnings and Y junctions not shown on the sketchy map, was awful and in parts just plain dangerous. Our ‘team spirit’ was sorely tested!!

After the demands of the approach to it, ascending the pass was not quite as white knuckle as we had anticipated. The view from the top was absolutely out of this world, the most dramatic ‘Out of Africa’ moment ever! The top of the pass stood on the lip of a mountain and looked out over a yellow savannah, the wide Marienfluss Valley, 2,000 feet below us; lining the far side of the valley rose the Hartmann mountains beyond which, and hidden by them, lay the dunes of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast. The impact of this awesome and unexpected vista was almost spiritual; in the tranquillity, the silence and the beauty that surrounded us, we felt as if we were explorers and the first to stand there and marvel at the view of this hidden valley.

The descent brought us back to earth with a bump, almost literally! Initially it was the scariest piece of driving, the gradient of the loose boulder piste was so steep that at times that Liz had to get out and walk ahead guiding Peter, as Boris, sliding and lurching, inched his way down. Forty minutes later we were at the base of the pass and adding our names, inscribed on a piece of stone, to the pile of stones containing the names of other successful navigators of Van Zyl’s pass.
The Marienfluss Valley
We headed 20 miles north through the Marienfluss Valley back towards the Kunene River through a three to four mile wide carpet of waving yellow savannah grasses, so dry and so fragile an ecosystem that any deviation from the red sandy track would create damage that would take nature decades to repair. The mountain ranges that lined both sides of the valley added to our glorious sense of isolation. Here and there we spotted our first ‘game’; springbok, gemsbok and ostrich, somehow able to find food on the semi arid valley floor. Here were also the ‘fairy rings’; circles of barren ground about 6 to 8 feet across and endemic to the valley. The scientific and not so scientific debate about the cause continues!

Once at the Kunene River we were the sole occupants of a pitch in the riverside Okarohombo community camp site; more splendid isolation! These community ventures were unique to northern Namibia and with great facilities, were very good value; as a result we determined to use them whenever possible. On the morning of the 22 August we said a final farewell to the distant mountains of Angola, left the banks of the Kunene River and returned south through the Marienfluss. As predicted by our map we came across a three-way junction of pistes called Rooi Drum at the mouth of the valley; it was quite literally in the middle of nowhere, a large oil drum painted red above which some wag had fixed a phone box! We took the left hand fork and headed southwest towards the Skeleton Coast National Park.

For nearly the whole day we were completely, gloriously alone; travelling on hardly used tracks, through stunning arid valleys carpeted in tall yellow grasses and over passes in the steep rocky mountain that bounded them. The clarity of the Namibian air enabling us to see the detail of mountain ranges some 30 miles distant, the mountains changing shape and colour as we drew ever closer.
Skeleton Coast Fog
Eventually we were running parallel with the Skeleton Coast, but some 10 miles inland; the drama of the mountains had given way to a graded gravel piste cutting through a rolling monochrome treeless plain, on the coastal side of which an unending bank of fog ominously monitored our movement. As we passed through this pristine wilderness, we came across teams of Chinese workers creating ugly white gashes in the distant hillsides as they extracted huge monoliths of white marble, elsewhere in the hills along our route their compatriots were carrying out drilling tests, determining what else lay beneath the surface that could feed the insatiable hunger of the developing Chinese economy.

Continuing along the edge of the Skeleton Coast National Park, afternoon began to turn towards evening and we still had not found a bush camp site with shelter from the bitingly cold sea breeze. Getting desperate, we at last saw a small, lone shrubby tree on the edge of a dry river bed about a mile from the track. We left the track and cut along the river bed towards it; as we drew nearer a large portion of the tree turned out to be a pair of vultures roosting, huddled side by side sheltering from the wind. They grudgingly gave way as we arrived and set up camp. It was absolutely freezing, the coldest we had been since Morocco, despite wearing both a fleece and a rain proof jacket! The threatening, rolling blanket of fog obscured the sun and drew ever closer, driven on by a wind that chilled us to the bone. Supper was over in double quick time and we were under the duvet thawing out in our sleeping bags by 6.30pm!

The next morning we ventured down from the tent to be greeted by an amazing sight; we were in an island of clear air no more than half a mile wide and completely surrounded by fog, through which to the east, the sunrise was pushing pale fingers of gold. The break in the fog remained with us whilst we huddled out of the wind in the front seats of Boris eating breakfast ... brrrrr, it was just so cold!
Desert Giraffes
As we drove south the fog cleared and the warmth of the sun made Boris’s heater unnecessary. The northern section of the Skeleton Coast can only be accessed by air and the numbers entering the National Park are entry strictly controlled. With no permit and in a vehicle, we were unable to enter the Park but were determined to get as close as we could and so turned off down the dry bed of the Chumb River, following the route that it had, over millennia, cut through the coastal hills towards the sea. We got to within about 3 miles of the Atlantic Ocean, as far as a large sign forbidding any access beyond that point! But by climbing a nearby hill we were able to glimpse the serried ranks of sun drenched sand dunes that were the Skeleton Coast. As a bonus, as we were driving along the river bed we passed within yards of several family groups of ‘desert’ giraffe feeding on the scrubby brush that grew there. A first for us, they seemed unperturbed by our passage and only too happy to pose for photographs. 
Purros and the Desert Elephant
By mid afternoon we were entering the Himba village of Purros and soon arrived at the community campsite on the banks of the Hoarusib River. The wide dry river bed was somewhat of a green oasis with trees and shrubs peppering its path. It was our intention to try to spot some of the small number of legendary desert elephant that were known to inhabit the area; they made use of the vegetation and isolated spring fed pools in the river bed to survive the seemingly unending dry season and the wide bolder strewn bed as a passage to seasonal supplies of food in the hills that were the river’s watershed. These elephants, like the ones in Mali, had become adapted to the harsh dry environment, needing to drink their fill only once every 4 to 5 days compared to the daily norm of their savannah cousins. This ability enabled them to travel large distances seeking fodder in the mountains and valleys that were the river’s ‘watershed’. Finding them away from water was thus problematic to say the least and even the lure of the perennial pools and acacia trees in the riverbed could not guarantee a sighting.

We mentioned our aim as we booked in; with a broad smile one of the men in the office came forward and volunteered his services as a guide. Elephant had passed through the campsite the night before so John assured us that we would see them in the area, and although they might be heading for the mountains, he was pretty certain he knew where they would be. John sat in the front between us and following his directions as we drove up the river bed, before climbing out and heading towards the distant parched mountains. After a horrendous, tortuous 15 minutes of bumps and scrapes, John pointed out some grey lumps moving slowly up into the foot hills. We drew as close as John would allow and watched as the family group of seven elephants and one calf followed the matriarch into the mouth of a seemingly desolate valley, where no doubt her infallible memory of that inhospitable area would bring them to food.