Namibia: The Coast & Namib Desert

It’s been a bit longer than usual since my last update as we have been busy dealing with some new mechanical issues with the car. These have been a burden both psychologically and in terms of logistics (though we have not been fully stranded on a roadside quite yet!) but have meant we have met some interesting characters at garages along the way. As a result, for the time being I will keep my accounts of the trip a bit less detailed and more impressionistic.

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From Twyfelfontein, we set off for the notorious Skeleton Coast on the Atlantic Ocean. Driving along bone-crunching gravel roads, with the car seemingly about to fall to pieces, the scenery changed dramatically as we approached the coastline. I didn’t think there could be much of a difference between desert scenery, but Namibia proved otherwise. From the arid sandstone of Damaraland we quickly entered a vast sandy moonscape. Just when the area couldn’t get more inhospitable, we came across two stranded Austrian tourists who had had two flat tires that afternoon and needed a ride. We helped them to the nearest outpost 30 kilometers away, but what struck me from the encounter is how we humans have been able to bend the earth to our will over the last few decades. In what used to be one of the most perilous coastlines in the world for sailors - the beaches are dotted with shipwrecks - now twenty-year-olds in swimming trunks and flip-flops can simply jump in a small sedan and (safely!) drive around without a map or any clue about the area. This is not to say that we ourselves were much better equipped :)





We stopped for the night at Cape Cross, at a campground full of Afrikaans-speaking fishermen, near the seal colony on the coast. The next morning we stopped by the colony, where hundreds of seals were jumping in and out of the water and lounging on the sand just like in Attenborough documentaries. The cuteness of the moustache-sporting creatures was somewhat offset by the horrific stench they emanated, however…



Having got our initial fill of the ocean and its chilly morning mist, we drove back inland to Spitzkoppe, or “Namibia’s Matterhorn” as it was called by colonists hell-bent on “discovering” existing places and drawing somewhat far-fetched comparisons. This tightly-knit group of mountains, rising straight out of the desert to 1,800m, is very striking and complemented by an exceptional campground with secluded sites spaced out all along the mountains’ bases. Needless to say, the sunsets were phenomenal here!



From Spitzkoppe we returned to the ocean at Swakopmund, Namibia’s main resort town, where we had to do some emergency mechanical repairs. The town was set up by the Germans to support a deepwater port to rival the British-controlled one at Walvis Bay, just 30 kilometers to the south. The port itself never really took off, but the town itself is very pleasant, though reminiscent more of a seaside resort in northern California than an African port like Mombasa. Unfortunately it was shrouded in thick fog over the two days that we were there, which we learned happens 180 days out of the year and especially during the winter (European summer).


With the weather against us, we spent most of our time in Swakopmund sampling the local seafood, including from a food van on the beach serving some of the best calamari we’ve ever had, and cycling on the nearby sand dunes using “fat tire” bikes. This was particularly memorable for both me and our friend Ionica, who got to sample the Namibian sand firsthand. After some warm-up runs down smaller dunes our guide Rich invited us to take things to the next level and tackle a steep grade plunging into deep sand at the bottom. We weren’t convinced but after seeing some local ladies navigate the slope flawlessly, we felt compelled to uphold the pride of both our gender and our motherland. The results were painful - in quick succession we both triumphantly flew down the hill to our untimely demise in the sandbox below, a clear demonstration of why Romanians have no heroes in the X-Games.


With a slight hobble and a healthy dose of respect for sand, we left Swakopmund for the most famous dunes in Namibia at Sossusvlei. These are the subject of most postcards from the country and you can understand why when sitting atop “Big Daddy,” the highest dune at 325 meters, and looking across miles of desert and into the forest of dead trees at Deadvlei. Apparently the sand comes from hundreds of kilometers away on the Oranje River on the border with South Africa and is carried north by the Atlantic’s Benguela Current and then swept inland tens of kilometers by the wind. I feel I cannot do the place justice with words, so will let pictures do the talking...



From Sossusvlei we headed back to Windhoek to drop off my parents and pick up my friend Victor for the next leg of the trip. And of course to see yet another mechanic (#7) to hopefully get to the bottom of some of the recurring problems with the car...