Namibia Much more than a place to hurry through on the way to South Africa

DON’T RUSH IT…

With vast areas of desert and one of the world’s largest canyons, along with towns and It’s also a place you can easily rush through when South Africa is your final destination

Words: Raymond and Nereide Greaves Pictures: Raymond and Nereide Greaves, and as credited

cities that resemble something out of Bavaria, Namibia is a nation of great contrasts. – but to do that would be to miss out on what is a highlight of any overland journey

When you’re on a road trip, it can be all too easy to rush through the sort of places that really deserve to be visited properly. This is even the case on an overland expedition – particularly if you’re approaching your journey’s end and have either become tired of life onthe road or started to run up against time constraints.

So for anyone driving from the UK to South Africa, Namibia is at particular risk of being passed over. We had set off from London almost four months previously in our L322 Range Rover – the first of its kind, as far as we’re aware, ever to make this journey – and having travelled through some sixteen countries including Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, it would be hard to exaggerate how excited we were to see our first road sign to South Africa!

This was in Botswana, as we travelled west towards the border with Namibia. And it could certainly have prompted us to rush on towards our final destination, because the roads in this part of Africa are far better than we had become used to as we followed the classic route down the eastern side of the continent from Cairo. But Namibia is a land that deserves better than to be seen in a blur.

There’s no such thing as a border crossing you want to spend more time at, on the other hand. But the

Above: When you’ve been travelling for month after month on a mission to reach South Africa, seeing your first road sign to your final destination is a pretty exciting event. This is especially true when your route has taken you through various regions where road signs are notable mainly for the fact that there aren’t any Above right, right: Salt production at Walvis Bay involves allowing seawater to evaporate in huge pans. Throughout the process, the water changes colour – some pans are vibrantly green, others bright pink and others blood red. The salt itself is a reassuringly familiar white

checkpoint at Buitepos came pretty close, taking a mere 12 minutes to pass through.

We can’t let this pass without making an ever so slightly clichéd comment about German efficiency. Not something you would normally associate with Africa – however while the rest of the continent was being colonised mainly by France and Britain, in 1884 Namibia became part of the German empire.

Germany only controlled Namibia for 31 years before being driven back out by South African forces, but during that time much happened to shape the nation’s character. Today, you will find German architecture, German street names, German coffee shops and a significant German speaking population – and, in enormous contrast to some parts of Africa we had visited en route, everywhere is extremely tidy.

In addition to this, there’s also a strong South African presence in Namibia; its giant neighbour had varying degrees of political control for 75 years after ending the German occupation, with full independence only being achieved in 1990. As a result, it’s a linguistic melting pot with English, Afrikaans, Nama (the Bushman language, characterised by distinctive clicking sounds) and German all spoken.

Following a tumultuous century which included four obscene years of German genocide against the Nama and Herero people and a period of life (also obscene) under the apartheid regime of its South African masters, Namibia is now a stable, multi-party parliamentary democracy. It’s also largely considered free of malaria, which we found very welcome – and in another measure of political stability, its currency is equivalent to, and directly interchangeable with, the South African Rand. So we were looking forward to this being a mercifully hassle-free part of our expedition!

Mainly, at least. The capital, Windhoek, is a fascinating blend of modern architecture with Bavarian and even Alpine-looking colonial buildings – but the guide book we were relying on made it sound absolutely horrible, painting a picture of a

The architecture in Windhoek is remarkable, with the influence of the colonial era very clear. While the rest of Africa fell mainly under French and British rule, Namibia became part of the German empire; today, its towns and cities are reminiscent of those in Bavaria and even the Alps. They’re notably very clean and tidy, too, which is in marked contrast to many other parts of the continent

Above left, centre: Swakopmund is another of Namibia’s main cities, and once again there are areas in which it resembles Europe – half close your eyes and you could be looking at Southend Pier here. In other ways, though, it’s distinctly African

Pics: Swakopmund, Namibia by Domenico Convertini @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

Above right: Sand boarding is one of the most common reasons for visiting Swakopmund. As the name suggests, it’s like snowboarding, only on sand, meaning you travel more slowly and it doesn’t hurt as much when you stack. Which, as you can see from the tell-tale patch of sand here, does happen…

city whose streets were taken over at night by gangs of armed robbers. To us, it really didn’t feel like that at all – even when we put the theory to the test by accidentally leaving the Range Rover unlocked overnight with all our valuables in it. Fortunately, everything was still on board in the morning.

Next we headed for Swakopmund, which is on the west coast of Africa. As we passed through the Namib Desert, descending towards sea level, the temperature dropped from a scorching 37 degrees to a breezy 20 degrees over a distance of no more than about 20 miles.

We realised here that we had now driven to the shores of no less than five different seas: the English Channel, Aegean, Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. And now we were on our way to the Atlantic.

Swakopmund is a combination of German, Swiss-German and South African influences. There were lots of European cars around (including the Mark 1 Volkswagen Golf from the 1980s, which were still being made in Southern Africa up until 2009) and the architecture was very reminiscent of southern Germany. Swiss and German guesthouses lined the streets. A small African curio market was the only thing that gave away the fact we weren’t in northern Europe.

Along the seafront, the houses had all been painted in pastel colours. A house with a traditional thatched roof and a very modern looking full glass front stood out like an elephant in a ballet. Come to think of it, there were quite a few ‘elephants’ around with tacky wildlife paintings on the external walls.

We circled surreal Swakopmund, taking it all in. Our home for the next few days was the Sea Breeze Guest House, where the room we stayed in was large enough for five people with its own kitchen, garden and balcony. We took the opportunity to unload the entire contents of the Range Rover, spreading out our giant map of Africa on the table and setting up our laptops. The accommodation quickly became a Lilongwe Down situations room for planning the next phase of the trip!

One of Swakopmund’s principal attractions is sand boarding. This sport is exactly like snowboarding but much slower and easier on your backside if you happen to be a beginner. We drove to the very precisely named Dune 7, where we were met by a man with four snowboards and a decent quad-bike which acted as a desert chairlift. The dune was more of a small hill in skiing terms, but since Nereide didn’t know anything about boarding and Raymond wanted to sledge down, it was quite big enough.

As it turns out, it was pretty easy to board down in a slow diagonal or a straight line without wiping out. Meanwhile, however, Raymond sledged down at an uncontrollable speed and in an uncontrollable direction in complete hysterics.

Then something astonishing happened. It began to rain.

The Namib Desert has about 5mm of rainfall annually, which means it normally only rains for about ten minutes each year and that’s it. It had already had its entire year’s quota the week before we arrived and now it was going to be doubled! Needless to say, any downhill movement after that was completely impossible.

Another great activity in Swakopmund is quad biking the Namib Desert. We hired a quad each, along with a guide to take us through the desert for a couple of hours. The view of the orange sculpted dunes juxtaposed against a perfect, cloudless blue sky was like nothing else. There was a cool breeze keeping us from feeling the harsh sun on our backs. Sand tracks led us over the top of dunes, round the sides and through steep drops and jumps which were very reminiscent of skipiste topography.

The view of the desert was all-consuming, stretching out for miles in front of us. The dunes

were big enough to hide a person lagging behind as we rode between and around them. We rode through craters, pushing hard on the power to reach the top of the bowl before turning into steep declines full throttle, the wind racing against our faces. Great fun!

Aside from tourism, other key industries in Namibia are salt and uranium production. We went to see the Walvis Bay salt works, which is close to Swakopmund. Salt is produced from pans of seawater evaporated by the sun, which in turn produces an unusual phenomenon: the seawater turns different colours at each evaporation stage. Some of the pans were blood-red, some seaweed green and others Pink-Panther pink. Very unusual.

None of this was asking any particularly searching questions of our Range Rover, but that changed when we made tracks towards Fish River Canyon. Located some 375 miles south of Windhoek, this is reminiscent of the Grand Canyon – after

Main picture: Werner Bayer

which it claims to be the second largest in the world.

The road out of Windhoek wound its way to over 2000 metres before gently descending into vast, open flatness where you could see for dozens of miles at a time in all directions. This was broken up by some jagged mountains far in the distance. For hundreds of miles at a time, we would see virtually nothing, which impressed upon us Namibia’s incredibly low population density – just two million people in a country about the size of Germany.

Out here the temperature was starting to feel a great deal cooler and fresher, something we had noticed as soon as we drove south of the Kalahari Desert. For the first time in months, the jeans and jerseys were re-emerging from deep within our luggage.

To access Fish River Canyon, we had to drive down about 45 miles of gravel tracks. Always a test of a vehicle’s traction, not least because unlike in the rest of the continent, untarred roads in Namibia are smooth – allowing you to maintain speeds of 60mph or more, always accompanied by a huge plume of dust behind the car. The landscape was mountainous and rocky and there was a total lack of any vegetation, apart from the odd Quiver tree.

Then we were there, and the Fish River Canyon opened up like a vast gash in the flat landscape of the desert. Whether it really is the world’s second biggest is open to question but we could see for miles along the gorge and the Fish River itself was very narrow at this point. The river only flows from March or April for about six months before drying up and at this stage it was still only a trickle.

We took a good walk along the edge of the canyon and were struck by the totally unforgiving nature of the landscape; sharp rocks underfoot, no shade anywhere and no water or vegetation. This is a place where you need to be totally self-sufficient otherwise you run into major trouble very quickly.

Having put in so many miles to reach the canyon, now at last we were close to the South African frontier. And the excitement was definitely rising as we continued towards what was going to be our final border crossing.

Not that we were in a hurry to leave. With its pretty towns, fast roads, great service, civilised culture, kind people and good places to eat, Namibia had been a welcome surprise. It was a positive surprise, and somewhere we had thoroughly enjoyed visiting.

But now it was time to get yet another stamp in our passports. Although we were still some way from Cape Town, after this we would have plentiful fuel stations, excellent places to eat, first-world health care… even the AA! In fact we both had a creeping feeling of guilt that this was about to turn into a glorified holiday. Though having driven 13,200 miles to get there, we reckon we had just about earned it!

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