Easter saturday I followed my friends to a farm in the Erongo mountains. I set off after work and it was a fairly long drive so that I only arrived in the evening at the farmhouse. The camp was about 6km away and I have only been there once. The farmer described the way for me and it sounded easy enough: follow the path along the fence and bear left. However, as far as I could see there was nothing to bear right or left, just the one path. I noted a totally overgrown track to the left which did not look as if a couple of cars had passed there 2 days ago. I remained on the main path which led to an area I could not remember and then got worse until it only was a tractor track. Meanwhile it has gone dark and I turned around. There was no chance to find my friends this night and I did not want to return to the house. So I just pulled to the side, pitched up my tent, had a bread and a drink and sat on my cool-box watching the stars and the full moon coming up. It was very quiet and peaceful, an overwhelming feeling of beeing alone in the wilderness. Even the farmer asked me the following day whether I was not afraid, but of what? Leopards have been seen in the area, but are very shy, snakes escape when they feel the vibration of approaching man and the farm gates were locked, so there were no people. Next morning I got up before the sun, drove to the farmhouse and asked them to show me the way. It was really that overgrown track I considered the evening before! My friends had just decorated the camping tables with branches with easter eggs and I joined them for breakfast. Then we went climbing some fine granite walls and I even led one route myself. In the afternoon we went to the natural rock pools to cool down in a bath and wash the sweat off. Others had filled a black bag with water and hung it in the sun to have a hot shower, called "super solar shower". Then I went for a walk along the dry river bed and found a piece of a clay pot made by the bushman, probably thousands of years ago! I also discovered a small dead snake on the track, probably a poisonous puffadder. In the evening we had a delicious barbeque and lots of wine. We watched the lightening far away in the Brandberg region and were glad that it did not rain where we were.
Monday morning we packed slowly, went to Omaruru for an icecream and then each set off our own way. On the road back I saw a dead monitor lizzard, a giant beast of nearly 1,5m! I would not like to meet this alive on foot.
