Cold Namibian Nights

There we were on the South Atlantic coast at Luderitz, Katie drinking a Tab and trying to eat a frozen hard boiled egg, Tom trying to drink a frozen Coke. We realized each had frozen in a different way. The egg had frozen in the cold air the night before, the Coke had frozen in the car refrigerator that came with the rental pickup.

When we picked up the rental, we were pleased to find that in addition to the roof top tent, we had the above-mentioned fridge, table and chairs, full set of silverware, plates and bowls, a braai (grill kit) and pillows, among other luxuries. It was far cushier than we are used to camping.


On the other hand, the steering wheel was on the right side, the shifter was to the left of it, and it seemed everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road. This was briefly interesting, but quickly overcome, and we headed south out of Windhoek. The city quickly gave way to desert, and the hills around Windhoek more gradually gave way to flatter terrain. The vegetation also became more sparse as we headed south, until there was barely anything living. But this changed as we reached our first campsite, near Keetmanshoop in a quiver tree forest. We pulled up just as the sun was setting, providing a few minutes of good picture taking,

and we settled into what would become our approximately nightly routine of firing up the braai and cooking dinner. It was an early morning to catch the quiver trees at sunrise and after breakfast we headed over to the Giant's Playground, a landscape of boulders that appeared to have been stacked on top of each other. Relaxing on the rocks were some rodents we have yet to identify.

As we left Keetmanshoop and headed southeast, the terrain became more interesting again, with mountains and plateaus all around. We had now left most of Namibia's population behind and other than the road, saw little to show that anyone ever came this way. We reached our campsite for the night (Saturday night), Canon Roadhouse near Fish River Canyon. We took a look around the area, climbing up to the top of a plateau where the land was tiled with interesting volcanic formations. Then onto the main attraction of the day. About 15 miles away from the roadhouse, the rolling terrain suddenly dropped into Fish River Canyon to the river 1,800 ft below. The setting sun turns the canyon all different colors as it goes down. Only we didn't see this - clouds had filled the western sky, ending our prospects for a colorful sunset.

Across the canyon, we could see the the curtains of some rain showers which would surely dry up before reaching us. And then the rains came. Preparing dinner was a wet process, and dinner was eaten in the protection of the pickup.

Sunday morning, we awoke to sun, but the clouds made a return with some rain falling as we started the day's drive. We were about to enter even more remote and rugged terrain, reaching the Orange River and the South African border. It was a spectacular drive through terrain that changed quickly from open spaces to narrow canyons, rugged mountains to rolling plains.
We were however tiring of our one CD, a South African folk compilation with such songs as 'The one that sounds like a Paul Simon Song', 'The one where a guy coughs loudly in the middle' and 'The one where someone whistles and it sounds like the car broke'. The weather was changing quickly throughout the day, until we approached our destination, Aus, when we left all the clouds behind. As usual, we went out for a short hike to explore the area. This hike would be a sunset hike as the afternoon was getting on, and we followed the appropriately named Sunset Trail. When we reached some plains that looked like they'd be nice in the setting sun's light, we waited for the sun to set. And we waited, and waited, and waited...meanwhile noticing that it was quite a bit cooler here than it had been all the other places we'd stayed and that the wind was really blowing! Once the sun finally set, we returned to camp, by now both of us completely frigid. Dinner this night was pasta, which we were already expecting to be a challenge with a relatively weak burner (the one non-luxury of our setup). The cold and wind only added to the challenge, and we were soon huddled in the pickup for the second night in a row. Who knew it was so cold, windy & rainy in Namibia!? Once in our tent, the wind was blowing with furious gusts, leading us to wonder how much it would take to separate the tent from the roof. It went on like that all night and was still going in the morning, so we were glad we had planned to embark on our day's (Monday's) activities and eat breakfast in the car. Even so, just taking down the tent was enough to numb our fingers and as we left the campsite, we noticed a heavy frost on the desert plants.

About an hour from Aus, we reached Kolmanskop, a town and mine which by the time WWI began, was providing 20% of the world's diamonds. They were so abundant that the preferred mining method was to line people up to crawl across the sand dunes picking up stones with cloth over their mouths to prevent swallowing any diamonds. Now the population of Kolmanskop is zero, and there are no diamonds, although other nearby mines are still producing (by more modern methods). The last inhabitants left a bit over 50 years ago, and with little in the way of elements, the buildings have held up pretty well. Except for one thing - blowing sand. Nearly every room in every building has been overtaken by it, all the way to the ceiling in places. The combination of still brightly colored walls and sculpted sand is quite striking.



After a thorough exploration, we made our way into Luderitz for our aforementioned picnic. After lunch, a look around town at the interesting and out of place seeming German-inspired buildings, and restocking our groceries, we started our return to Aus. We made one side trip to see the feral horses that roam the plains near Aus.


There are a variety of theories on how they got here, but basically all of them go back to wealthy Europeans. With strong winds and cool air, by now we had decided to eat at the restaurant where we were staying rather than endure cooking in the cold another night. It was quite a feast - including oryx steaks. Being warm while we were eating was quite a treat as well.

Here are the animals we've seen so far:

Monkeys (or some kind of primate) on the road not far south of Windhoek
Meerkats along the road south of Windhoek and near the quiver tree forest
Unidentified marmot-like animals in several rocky places
Springbok several places along the road
Red Hartebeest (or so we think, identified as the animal on the back of the Namibian $20 bill, otherwise Kudu) a couple times along the road near Fish River Canyon
Ostiches several times
Jackals first seen by Katie while Tom was taking a shower at the Canon Roadhouse campsite, and he came back to find her hiding in the car, then by both of us on the road between Aus and Luderitz
And the wild horses of the Namib near Aus