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Fish River Canyon, Namibia

5 days to go:
The road out of Swakopmund has epic waves on the left with huge rolling sand dunes on the right. Two hours in, the terrain changes again as we start entering the harsh mountain ranges. Still in the Namib desert but its all slate looking rock.

“Thought of the moment #58: They call it bush toilets for a reason, at no point do they call it desert toilets. I can tell you why that hasn’t caught on; because squatting behind a cactus bush – ouch, and thorn bush – itchy.”

When we stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn sign plonked on the side of the highway, I was surprised to see no ocean. And now we all know that its actually a meridian line drawn all around the world 22.5 degrees south of the equator. It’s on the same line that goes through Rockhampton, Australia and we may see it again in Chile. I tell you what, post this trip I’ll be a trivia queen.

Just before sunset we walked down into the Sesriem Canyon. This canyon was formed when the Tsauchab River carved a gorge 30 metres into the gravel deposits about 15 million years ago. It’s thought that this river once flowed to the Atlantic Ocean but its course was blocked by the sand dunes. Now when there is actually water in there, the river flows out to the dune fields that stretch for hundreds of miles up the coast, and dries up in a clay pan at Sossusvlei. The only sign of water we saw was a tiny pool a few metres wide, with cat fish in it. Poor buggers they are trapped there again until it rains enough to get water flowing in the gorge.

4days to go:
I have a new found understanding about the formation of a sand dune after being a part of the creation.
At 5am today we drove 45 km to ‘Dune 45’ and by 6am we were up the side of a sand dune. The wind up the top of this 100 metre dune was ridiculous. You could barely put one foot in front of the other because of the strong winds, not to mention the 30 degree slope. I don’t usually quit, but I could only make it 3/4 of the way. Dave did, and on the return trip he attempted to slide down on cardboard but to no avail due to sinking on the non slippery beer boxes.
7am, French toast in the car park. Flapping our plates dry with wet hands in the wind in 5degrees made my fingers nearly snap off with frostbite.
830am, we have already reached our next destination. We transferred out of the truck and into 4×4 jeeps to get us to the Sossusvlei area, and more dunes. I nearly cried (on the inside) when our leader said, ” it’s another walk over the dunes to get to the next bit, the Dead Vlei”. From the drop off point all you can see is red dunes and a crevass, which once would have been a river. There’s water in there once a year. Namibian deserts have flash floods but the water goes nearly instantaneously. We followed that ‘would be river’ along until it abruptly stopped. A tall sand dune created a dead end (which is what Sossusvlei means, dead end) It looked almost like a wall between the ‘river’ and the other side. On the other side of the dune wall was the Dead Vlei. Can you imagine a huge bowl or crater with white salt pan like rock covering the bottom while all four sides are surrounded by red dunes, including ‘Big Daddy dune’ 388m in height (highest dune in Southern Africa)? The significance of this place is the hundreds of petrified acacia trees that stand tall at the bottom. They died 800 years ago. There once was water there and it evaporated so suddenly the trees didn’t have a chance to fall over so they are still standing perfectly to this day, dead! Well worth the venture, even just the contrast of red, white and blue sky was magnificent.
11am, back to the campsite for lunch, tent down and on the road again – 5 hours until tonight’s campsite in a desert valley somewhere.
5pm, tonight’s campsite has a bar with big thatched roof and walls and an open fire. As warm as that was, there was something wrong about that. We have the option to upgrade to a chalet tonight for $20, oh how I would like to forgo tent up tent down, but we just can’t justify it every time it’s offered.

3days to go:
As soon as we got into our tent last night and peeled 6 layers off, we realised that we should have paid to upgrade, even if it was triple the price. It was minus 4 degrees. When putting down our tents at 6am we saw ice on the inside and outside of the tent, and a burst water main made an ice tree – and we were (attempting) to sleep on the ground in a tent. Who the hell would have thought an African desert would be cold… anyone who didn’t do research into the fact that its WINTER! In summer it’s high 40s.

First stop of the day is the Giant’s Playground. Large dolerite boulders are stacked up on each other as if a giant baby had used them as building blocks. The boulders are between 160 million and 180 million years old, most of which are over a tonne in weight.They were caused by magna that cooled before it reached the surface. Because of the different hardness of the rock, the softer bits were washed away and that left the harder bits… or something like that.
On the way to the Quiver Tree Forest walk, we finally saw cheetahs. Namibia has 25 % of the world’s cheetah population. At take off they reach speeds of 145km ph but although they catch their prey, they often can’t keep it. When they stop, their body temperature is at 60 deg so they have to wait 30 minutes to cool down before they can eat their prey. Often vultures will have stolen it before then. If they run for more than 200 m, they will overheat and drop dead. That was more of a highlight than the Quiver Tree Forest walk itself. A forest that doesn’t consist of more than a handful of Quiver Trees doesn ‘t constitute a forest but I’ll give it to them because it’s the closest they’ll get in a desert and quiver trees mostly grow in groups: but a forest, really???!!! They’re not even a tree and it’s not even called a quiver tree. It’s actually a plant called Aloe Dichotoma. Dichotoma refers to the forked branches. The reason it’s called Quiver is because the San – click click – bushman use the branches to make quivers for their arrows. These weird 9m high plant / trees things only flower at around 25 years old and live to 300 years.
Like most people on our trip, my enthusiasm for anything is drying out… trees plants rocks sightseeing it’s all just becoming a bit same, same. Everyone on the trip’s energy levels are dropping as it comes closer to the end. At no point are you ever clean, always dusty, always dirty. We are all living in our marino base layers or thermals, day and night. Some days are longer than others. Today, before 10am we had driven 4 hours and now (1pm) we have another 3 hours drive before another sightseeing stop before ‘tent up, tent down’. Its been 21 days overland and I’m worried about the 60 days overland tour in South America. Guess I can’t do much about it, so I may as well smile, even if days like today I’ll just have to fake it until I make it. “Just keep swimming – swimming -swimming”.

Fortunately alcohol fixes everything, at the end of the 2km walk along the edge of Fish River Canyon I was feeling tip top. The truck was waiting there with our esky and our bottles of wine ready for sunset. I suppose I should mention the importance of our last included highlight of the trip rather than just the mighty fine sav blanc from South Africa, straight out of the bottle. Fish River Canyon is the second biggest canyon in the world, second to the Grand Canyon. It’s 161 km long, 27km wide and 550m deep. Namibians have really got to work on their naming conventions though. Fish River…. There is a buckets worth of water down there and enough fish to feed a family of four!
….And there’s my real smile!!

2days to go:
A sleep in today! We weren’t on the road again until 830! A short drive this morning to Orange River, via a stop on the way at Ai Ais Hot Springs. But you can’t swim in it at 65+ degrees and the pools were 30deg. Whipping 5 layers of clothing off unnecessarily in these temperatures just doesn’t happen.

Today is the last
day in Namibia. We are staying the night at Orange River, which is just before the border between Namibia and South Africa. We can see South Africa, just past the hills and a vineyard coming into the campground. I was thinking how do they grow grapes without water, we have not seen even a cloud in the sky for weeks. Sure enough, here it’s cloudy with light showers.
It’s Sunday and our goal from here on in is to make our way to Cape Town by midday Tuesday, our last day on tour. I’m thankful that the majority of this trip has been in Namibia. The last animals we saw in Namibia were the many ostriches. Poor stupid animals, they have a brain the size of their eye. They are so intellectually challenged that unless they leave an egg in the nest to remind them what they were supposed to be doing, they would forget their job and stop laying. Sounds like old age! We never got to see the rhino or meerkat which was a shame, but there’s always next time – or the zoo. We have had nearly two weeks here to discover the Namibian diversity with its immense solitude and far horizons, arid deserts, jagged mountain heights of rock then sand dunes, and its rough ocean shoreline. You can never pick a favourite but certain highlights come to mind: sleeping under the stars at Spitzkoppe, the first animals we saw at Etosha and the click click bushman.

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