I’d just finishing the festive season in London, ringing in Christmas and New Years with friends while Blake and Nari had just spent their honeymoon in South America so it was about time to head off on another trip. Blake and I had been talking about another Africa jaunt after our awesome South Africa road trip in 2019 so we had been slowly putting things in place leading up to January 2022.
The main highlight for the both of us is Tanzania. I really want to summit Kilimanjaro and Blake really wants to see the great migration in the Serengeti but first stop I decided was for us to head to Namibia and hire a 4×4 to road trip the northern half of the country.
A day in Windhoek to settle in, get our feet on the ground and find a 4×4 to hire. There isn’t much to do in Windhoek but it was interesting to begin to get a feel for the people, the country and the dry environment. The architecture and food has a strong German theme owing to it being a German colony from 1884 to 1914. This European influence seemed to continue throughout our whole trip in Namibia. After we hired the 4×4, we left Windhoek, heading south-west towards to Sossusvlei that evening. We’d not got 20 minutes from our starting point when we had to go off road to get around some roadworks and find the freeway and I got the 4×4 stuck in some rocks. Lucky some locals were driving past in their truck and came down to pull us out. We then got on with the start of our road trip proper and was soon experiencing the vast dryness that would become our view of Namibia. We arrived to Sossusvlei just in time to pay the park entry fees and drive out to Dune 45 and hike it for sunset.
Sossusvlei translates to “dead-end marsh” and is located in the southern part of the Namib Desert. It is a salt pan surrounded by large star shaped sand dunes. Star shaped means the wind comes from all directions, giving the dune a star like appearance from above. We sped out to Dune 45 marveling at the sand being blown across the road and thrown up by our car in in hypnotic clouds. We arrived to Dune 45 and kitted up with some water and the drone and took off up the dune. Climbing started off very easy as we were full of excitement but soon turned grueling with the soft sand shifting underfoot at each step. We made it to the top (some 170m high) in time to watch the beautiful sunset over the desert before running back down the dune like giddy children. We stayed the night at the entrance to the park, setting up our camping tents on top of the 4×4 for the first time and cooking our first camping meal of the trip. We were up again before the sunrise to drive down to the end of the dunes where we hiked the biggest dune in the area named Big Daddy which stands at 325m high. This one was significantly longer and more difficult with Blake and I using a combination of slow walking, crawling and crab walking to make it to the top. The view over the red dunes was breathtaking and reminded me of the planet Arrakis from the Dune books by Frank Herbert. We watched the sun come up and begin to bake the shifting sands, feeling like the only two people in the whole world. We then ran down the steep side straight into the dry bed of the salt marsh that is known as Deadvlei. Walking through the dead trees and back to the car before making our way north to Walvis Bay.
We forgot to get apple pie in Solitaire which we were very unhappy about but we arrived to Walvis Bay without any further upset. Walvis Bay is a port city nearly directly west of Windhoek. Its famous for its flamingoes, dolphins, whales and cape fur seals which we were very keen to get out and see. We explored the coast a little that evening and then were up early the next morning in preparation for a kayaking tour around Pelican Point. The tour was amazing with the guide taking us out along the sand penisula, giving us information about the flamingos, the local salt pans and salt production and all the other local wildlife before we arrived near Pelican Point at the end of the peninsula. There were thousands of seals sunning themselves along the beaches and just as many frolicking in the water. It was calving season so there were also thousands of baby fur seals bleating like sheep along the sand. The seals might seem afraid of humans while on the sand but once on the water in our kayaks, they were near enough fearless as they leapt and dived around us. They were like curious dogs and loved splashing us, biting our paddles playfully, bobbing beside us with the heads poking out of the water, and leaping alongside us as we paddled along. As well as this, we were lucky enough to encounter a pod of very large bottlenose dolphins. We had an awesome seafood feast for lunch before driving back out onto the peninsula ourselves and again i got us stuck in the 4×4. This time belly deep in the sand. After an hour of digging and us not getting any closer to being able to drive out, we called our tour operator to come pull us out (luckily he was available).
From Walvis Bay we drove north along the coast, through Swakopmund and camped on the beachfront. The sound of the waves as we slept is always so relaxing and we made a little campfire out of driftwood. A bath in the ocean the next morning and a quick search to find my flip flop which had been chewed a little by a jackal and we were good to continue up along the coast again. A stop at Cape Cross to view an even bigger seal colony (we didnt stay long as it absolutely stank) and a couple of other stops along the Skeleton Coast to view ship wrecks. Before we knew it we had entered Namibia’s Skeleton Coast National Park and then exited again on the other side. There are wild lions roaming this desert park but unfortunately we didn’t see any. From Torra Bay, inland to Grootberg Pass and the lodge there where we had an amazing 3 course dinner and then camped on the mountain plateau. The next day we entered Etosha Nation Park where we stayed two nights at Okaukeujo Lodge, exploring the park each day. We had some incredible encounters with elephants and numerous rhinos which absolutely made our trip seeing as we hadn’t gotten up close to rhinos before. Some of the park around the salt pan was breathtakingly beautiful but ultimately all the animals are grouped around man made water holes as the whole park reflects the rest of Namibia, dry and desolate and this felt a bit like a tortured existence, always out in the baking heat, desperate for some clean running water.
After experiencing Etosha, we drove east through the park on the last day and then down through the centre of the country and back to Windhoek. A night in a massive fancy self-contained apartment in the centre of the city before we returned the car and flew out to Uganda.
