This trip was an organized 4x4 tour from Luederitz to Walvis Bay - 630km through the desert! Participants had to use their own car, carry extra spares, water for 6 days and around 250l of petrol. I was lucky to be invited by a friend to join him in his car as I would never have done this tour myself.
Firstly, it is a long drive to get from Windhoek to Luederitz. We camped on the way at a place near Keetmanshoop, near a quiver tree forest. These “trees” are in fact aloes, but they grow as tall as trees. There was not much time to look around in the evening, but the light effects were great and there was a marvellous sunset with very localized rain in the background. We were the only people on the campsite. For our evening meal we used electric light which attracted so many beetles, moths and grasshoppers that the area around the light was covered with them. Although we kept some distance from the light source a number of beetles still found the way into our salad. Then you just eat slowly and carefully and spit the bit out when you feel legs moving on your tongue. In the morning a bus full of tourists arrived and they all came up to our tent to take photos of the oldest quiver tree which stood next to it. There was no respect for privacy and they were just short of asking us to move the car so that they could get a better shot. After this sobering experience I went to explore the “forest” with my camera. It is an accumulation of some trees, but nothing that would be worth calling it a forest by European dimensions. However, it was a very pretty setting. We carried on to Luederitz, pitched up camp on Shark Island, and I went for a quick swim. We were lucky that it was not too windy that night as tents had been blown away from that peninsula.
