Luederitz

On our way to Luederitz we stopped at Garub to watch the wild horses of the desert. It is surprising how they survive in this bleak environment. We saw a number of them at the well, fighting with each other. A single oryx also came for a drink, hardly taking any notice of the horses. The remaining 90km of the road were straight and boring and I was happy to use my automatic speed control so that I did not even have to keep my foot on the accelerator, but could relax. In Luederitz we rented a large, colonial-style flat. There were 3 bedrooms, a large living room with TV and many very old German books, 2 bathrooms, a fully equipped kitchen with sitting area and an entrance hall. For the whole flat we paid about 40 Euro per night! It had a special atmosphere, it looked as if the owners from colonial times had just left. Luederitz disappointed us first as we walked through an area of old, disused industrial buildings and rotten houses. The other day we discovered the new waterfront with restaurants and shops which is much nicer, but nothing special. They still had the Christmas decoration on, a bit behind the time.

We visited the old diamond-town Kolmanskop. It was interesting to see how well organized and technically equipped people lived there in the desert up to 60 years ago. Now the sand is claiming the area back with dunes walking through open doors into deserted houses. Still, what can be seen is impressive. Most houses were built in a generous style, there was a theatre, gymnasium, shops, hospital and even a small railway connecting the few houses. In the surrounding area diamonds are still harvested, but not by the handful on the surface anymore as it was the case in former times. All vehicles and people leaving the diamond mining area are screened for hidden gems.

From Luederitz we went on a day trip to Diaz point. On this barren and sandy peninsula we really needed the 4x4 again. We watched seals and dolphins playing in the sea, flamingos in the lagoons and we even had a good view at the penguins on the nearby Halifax island. It seems funny to see penguins in Africa, under this burning sun, but the water there is quite cold, only about 16 degrees. To our surprise at this remote and lonely point, there was a café! They served excellent apple cake, tea, hot chocolate, beer and fresh oysters. I did not expect anything that civilized in this area.

Ballooning

I have heard a lot of contradictive opinions about ballooning here. Some people say it’s great, others think it is boring and not worth it. Only in one point they agree: it is expensive. We started very early in the morning in a vlei between the dunes. We rose up to 1000m and saw the sun rising over the misty mountains on the other side. Then the mist cleared up and we could see quite far over the dune sea. We travelled very quietly, watching the dunes pass and animals moving on the ground. Where we landed, in the middle of nowhere, the team had prepared a table for us with Champagne breakfast. This was the i-point of this marvellous start of the day. Then we were driven back in a 4x4 to our starting place.

It was a long way to our next lodge, but it was a beautiful drive. Sometimes the now green landscape reminded me of Scotland! However, we saw secretary birds on the way, zebra, ostrich and oryx which you certainly would not find there. On the farm there was a oryx-family with a very small one. While walking around in a dry river bed I found the skin of a snake, easily 3m long. I asked the owners of the farm and they think it was either a cobra or black mamba. I am glad the snake was not there anymore! We enjoyed our stay at the lodge in this beautiful surrounding. The meals were taken together with the owners in a tastefully decorated hall. This was a good opportunity to find out more about the area and farm life.

Sossusvlei

Of course we made a trip into Sossusvlei. This is the most famous part of the real desert, a usually dry chalky plain surrounded by red dunes. A tarred road leads 60km into it and then a sandy track continues for another 5km until it is stopped by the dunes. This time there were some puddles at the roadside and grass was growing on the dunes, a strange sight. We started very early in the morning to be there before the heat of the day. A herd of springbok was in front of us and bouncing to the right and to the left between the farm fences at both sides of the road. Eventually some of them got through and others let the car pass. This is the downside of all this farmland. Later we saw ostrich very close and oryx galloping across the road directly in front of my car.

For the sandy track I reduced the pressure of the tyres, realizing that I had forgotten the especially for this event borrowed compressor in the camp. Never mind, I just had to drive back the 60km to the park entrance and petrol station very slowly. Driving through the sand was quite an experience, very difficult to steer. People say you have to steer to the side the car is veering to in order to get it under control again, but this is just against your automatic reaction. Finally we arrived at Dead Vlei, a plain that had been cut off from the rest of the valley by shifting dunes with the result that water cannot enter anymore and all trees have died. It looks ghostly, this wood of black stems and branches. I decided to climb up the highest dune in the area, called “Crazy Dune”. Instead of going the normal long way along the ridge I went straight for the deep ascent. This is an angle of about 45 degrees and with one step up you slide half a step back. It took me over an hour, a lot of breaks and sweat until I reached the top. I was rewarded with great views over the other valleys and dunes. The way back took only 10min. Meanwhile it was half past 11 and over 40 degrees in the shade of which there was none. We drove back with the aircon on full power.

In the Desert Camp we cooled down in the pool and then just lay on our beds and waited for the day to pass. In the evening a strong wind came up which made the braai a difficult task. At night we listened to the barking of the geckos which can be amazingly noisy.

River Crossing

We drove further south, past Solitaire and then through an area which I knew dusty, burnt brown and dry from a few months ago. It was unbelievable how green it was now! Leaves on the trees and bushes, juicy grass on the ground and the river flowing with a strong current. However, the only animals we saw were a few baboons. We heard that all the antelopes had travelled north much earlier, towards the first approaching rains. Strange, how animals know where the food will be.

Not far from our destination, driving down into a dip, I had to stop. We suddenly stood at a muddy river crossing the road. Although there were some tracks going through I was not sure about the crossing and rather returned to the nearest farm to enquire about the river. Luckily this was only a few 100m away. I was told that this river was ok to drive through, but the next one we should check out first. I was a bit nervous at this my first river crossing, but my car knew how to get through. At the next river we stopped and I walked through first. The water was almost reaching my knees and the ground was a little sandy in places, but the current not strong. The manual of my car stated that the car can easily wade through 50cm deep water. Still nervous, we tried and although it felt a bit weary in the mud we got through. Later we heard that someone got stuck in that river this morning, trying to get through in a 2x4 combi! At this point the latest I was really glad that I did not listen to some people who told me that you can drive almost anywhere in Namibia in a normal car. This may be true in winter, but not in the rainy season.

Finally we arrived at our destination: the only wine farm in Namibia. They have 5 wells on their property and thus enough water to grow Merlot and Shiraz at the edge of the desert. There is also a veggie garden, date palms and a lovely little shady pool, very romantic to sit at. Walking around in the there already dry river bed we were accompanied by “go away birds”, a kind of kakadu. We spotted a large praying mantra and even a wild cat. In the evening we had a delicious braai with home made sausage and very tender lamb and of course, wine with it. It was also very interesting to chat with the owner about the development of the farm and about Namibian history.

The sound of stillness

We moved on from Swakopmund via Walvis Bay towards Spreetshoogte Pass. We took a scenic detour along the dunes through the Namib-Naukluft Park. You need a permit for using these small roads i.e. you have to pay an entrance fee. It was well worth it, the sight of the dunes behind the green riverbed on one side and dry, stony desert on the other side was an amazing experience. We passed some villages of the local “Topnas” people. They used to make their houses of wood, clay and reed, but nowadays you mainly see ugly huts made of leftovers from the civilization: wooden boards, tin, plastic and wire. We met a family travelling in a donkey cart, quite a common method of transport amongst the indigenous people.

It was a hot day and a long drive on bad roads. I was really glad to have air conditioning in the car and in the end we avoided stopping to have a look around because when we switched it off it immediately became unbearably hot. We passed the Tropic of Capricorn. In shallow places, where the rain water was kept for a little while, the grass began to grow. Zebras and oryx were grazing there, ostrich and springbok running around.

Approaching the mountains we saw dark rain clouds in front of us, but it rained very locally and we only got a few drops. However, it was impressive to watch the weather developing. A few days before one of the two passes we had to drive through was closed because the river was so strong and high that it threw tree-trunks onto the bridge. By now the road had been freed and there was hardly any water left in the riverbed. This change is hard to imagine.

Late afternoon we arrived in the camp where we had booked a “family unit”. This consists of 2 permanent tents with 2 beds each, a raised place between them with an open (that is without walls and a roof) kitchen with gas cooker and fridge and a bathroom behind. In order to have a warm shower you had to light a fire at the back and heat a tank of water. About 100m away from this place was a little pool, more like a stone-built bath, in the middle of wilderness. I had a bath there at night, watching the starry sky (and there are a lot of stars out there!) and listening to the sounds of nature. Before this, however, we observed the Namibian ritual of sundowner drinks, walked up a hill to a lapa (thatched roof with a bar underneath, but it was empty), taking our wine with us. We took our seats on the wooden benches outside, had our drinks and watched the beautiful sunset. All that was around us was space and nature with the mountains forming a phantastic background. The only signs of human beings we could see were the lapa and our tents. And it was so still …

Living Desert

We went on two more excursions into the desert, one into the “Moon Valley” along the dry Swakop riverbed and the other one into the dune girdle between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. One was as exciting as the other. The barren, hostile landscape of the Moon Valley was breathtaking and you could easily imagine how people get lost there and die from thirst. Yet, there are plants! “Living stones”, almost invisible, sunken into the gravel to expose only the absolute necessary amount of leaf surface to the burning sun. The sunlight enters the plant through little windows at the top of the thick leaves to allow photosynthesis inside. Then, there is the “pencil plant” with little grooves along the stem-like leaves to collect moisture from the fog and lead a few drops towards the stem of the plant where they enter the soil and can be absorbed by its roots. Last not least, we saw Welwitchia Mirabilis, actually a conifer which consists of a wooden stem and only two leaves. It can grow for thousands of years. It is amazing how some plants are used by animals. For instance, a kudu would injure a euphorbia and cover its fur with the poisonous milk so that any ticks fall out.

Along the way we found strange rock formations resembling the sinking titanic, a giant lasagne or comic figures. There were also some rocks very rich in iron sitting loosely on each other. When you hit them with a stone they gave a sound like from church bells, in different nuances. What a concert of the nature!

The drive through the dunes was a special experience, one of the highlights of the whole trip. Our guide would spot an animal track – not of antelope or such, but of tiny, tiny animals like scorpion or spider – and follow it to find the animal. Most of the time he was successful and brought the beast to us to have a close look. Thus we saw sidewinder and horn viper, two poisonous snakes. He even dug out a Palmato-gecko just after spotting a tiny heap of sand next to a little hole. The skin of this gecko is so delicate that you can see the vertebrae and guts through it and it would burn in the sun within 20 min. The most amazing animal, however, was the Namaqua-Chamaeleon. Our guide spotted one from the driving car, threw some tok-tokkie beetles to feed it and then caught it. We observed it changing colour and apparently it can even go pink. We watched it snatching out its long tongue to catch the beetle. We held it in our hands. We saw it turning its eyes in completely different directions. It seemed like a creature from the ancient past.

Sandwich Harbour

The first tour was a 4x4 drive through the desert to Sandwich Harbour on my birthday. We were only 4 people in the group, so it was quite a private atmosphere. The vehicle was a purpose-built Landrover Defender with a steel construction inside in case we roll over. Which we did not. The drive alone was exciting enough, climbing up the dunes and going down so steeply that you sometimes could not see the bottom on the other side. On top of this it was an amazing landscape: first the salt pans near Walvis Bay, then “hammock dunes” (bushes in the pan that have caught the sand and become a little hill), then real, high dunes, the seashore and finally the lagoon Sandwich Harbour. The sand of the dunes has different shades depending on the material deposited. The base colour near the coast is yellow while further inland, at Sossusvlei the dunes have literally rusted and display a bright orange colour. Then there are black patterns from iron containing sand and dark red ones which is actually garnet.

On the way we saw springbok, flamingos, pelicans and even one spoonbill who got here by mistake during strong winds and was adopted by a group of pelicans. It was an awesome sight to see some pelicans flying in front of the dunes. Sandwich Harbour itself was formerly a fishermen’s settlement, but all the houses have been swallowed by the ever moving dunes. Today the area is a biosphere reserve because the lagoon provides a unique biotope for fauna and flora. Our guide explained how the plants have adapted to the conditions of living between the desert and the sea. We tasted salty sea-asparagus and sweet-savory Nara, a kind of melon which is highly valued by the native people for its water content. On the way back we stopped for a play in the strong waves of the Atlantic followed by a picnic on top of a dune. It was delicious and combined with the great view of the empty landscape just incomparable.

In the evening I made a “braai” (BBQ) in the cozy backyard of our accommodation. Unfortunately, just at this time Swakopmund received about a third of its annual rainfall (which is about 5mm) so that I had to use an umbrella for it. Nevertheless, it was very tasty.