6.8.06 Skeleton Coast, Epupa Falls, Van Zyl’s Pass (Namibia), Moremi and Chobe NP (Botswana).
(Unfortunately no photos today as the computer is having trouble uploading them so we'll try to put them on next time)
Well hello there all of you! I know we’ve been out of touch for a long time now and you’ve probably forgotten who we are, but never fear we are still here!! We have been travelling around the very north/western parts of Namibia and then already crossed in to Botswana. The internet access has been either non-existent, present but server always down or present but so tortuously slow that we don’t have the time or money to wait for it! So that means that we have done rather a lot since our last blog! I will firstly reassure you that I will put a tight rein on my verbal diarrhoea and endeavour to keep this instalment to the usual length! I’ll cover the real highlights of the last few weeks which are more than enough to write about.
So you last found us in Windhoek and about to go over to the Skeleton Coast. We drove to Swakopmund which is quite a nice town, the second biggest and most popular place in Nam. And from there went north up through the Skeleton Coast National Park. We were hoping to see lots of stunning shipwrecks, but found out that they are south of Swakopmund and not easy to get to nowadays. As it was, we did see one shipwreck (a little disappointing I can say) but one is better than none ‘n’est pas!’ However, along the way we did stop at Cape Cross where there is a huge seal colony. Wow you have never seen so many seals, the noise is amazing and the smell is less amazing! They we great fun to watch and you could get really close to them. The landscape on the coast was very dramatic, all stones and a few rocky hills, a uniform grey all round, it felt as if we were driving around on the moon.
It was just a day’s drive and from there we headed up to a town called Opuwo where we were to meet the English family (the Onians - hi there Gavin, Beccy, Oscar, Billy, Robin, and Jago – how are you all, and how is your travelling going? Hope you are having a great time and look forward to catching up with you soon!). Opuwo was there last port of call before we went right to the north and it would be the last place for us to stock up with fuel and food for the next 10 days. It was a very interesting place where people from several different backgrounds all interact together. There were modern Namibians who were very western in their style, then Herero people whose style has a German influence from when many Germans lived in Nam. and the women wear big Victorian style dresses and funny hats. Then the Himba people who wear clothes made out of animal skins and the women don’t wear anything on their tops half other that fancy jewellery, and the men wear frilly skirts! It was fantastic to see all these people all in the same place.
The eight of us then started our arduous journey along the Kunene river to Epupa Falls. We were told the track was completely 4x4 only and you should be with at least one other vehicle just in case you get stuck. It was really lovely scenery along the river and a few crocodiles to see as well! We had a great time driving such a dodgy track, there were quite a few times when we would get to a particular bit, get out to look closely at it, and then say ‘we’re never going to make it up/down that!’ But our trusty landy always came up trumps, she had no problems at all (phew!) and once we knew what she was capable of we could relax and enjoy the ride!
At Epupa Falls we spent a few days relaxing in a very nice campsite, tired after our tough 2 day drive! The falls are very nice, not quite as big as Victoria Falls, but just as pretty. We went to visit a Himba village to see how they lived and it was very interesting. The women do all the work in the village, even building the mud huts they live in, while the men go out with the cattle and goats finding grazing land for months at a time. It is very important to the women that they look nice and they spend a long time braiding their hair and putting mud on it to protect it. They make beautiful jewellery and headwear from leather and metal, but the most striking thing is that they cover their skin in a mixture of goat fat and ground up ochra (reddy/brown stone). It is all part of their beauty regime, and it gives them a rich brown, smooth appearance, which looks lovely, but stinks a bit to those of us who aren’t used to it!
From there our route to take us down south again to Purros for the desert elephants, was again 4x4 and we would come across a very well known (in these parts) pass called Van Zyl’s Pass. It’s notoriety stems from the fact that a- you can only go one way along it, which is down, because it is too hard to drive up, and b- many people turn back because it too hard for them, and c- it is known as the ‘car-breaker’ because if you do make it down, you can end up needing a mechanic at the bottom! Of course there is an alternative route for those who do not wish to attempt such a brutal challenge, but we decided that we were tough enough to try it and we had heard some people say it wasn’t as bad as all that!!!! The majority of the pass was fine and no harder than what we had already covered to Epupa. However, the particular section that we had been warned about proved the myths to be right! We got to the top of a hill and the track took you straight down in to the Marein-Fluss Valley the other side. The view from up there was stunning, but the realisation of how you got down was very sobering! The whole downward section went over about 3km, but near the top was a small bit only about 20 metres long, but very very steep and there were huge rocks, loose rocks, tight corners, big crevasses and the road went close to the edge of the hill so you had a sheer drop next to you! We all got out to walk the route, as if we were horse riders walking a course! But you really needed to check what you were going over, which was the best way to do it and strategically place a few extra boulders in parts to help you on your way. After lots of intense discussion and analysis, brave Gavin went down first (they had a landrover too) and watching him do it nearly brought tears to my eyes – it looked really bad!!! It was my turn then (Jas and I had been sharing the driving, but I thought I should do this bit having more car experience than him), but I found that I was just too worried that I might make a mistake and lose control of the landy. No matter how much the others reassured me that I could do it, my nerves got the better of me and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and let Gavin take the wheel (thankfully he was happy to do so!). To his credit, Jas did want to carry the gauntlet, but I didn’t want him to do it either, and Gavin had much more experience with landrovers and off road driving. Gavin made it look much easier the second time and both Jas and I were a little annoyed we didn’t try it ourselves after all, but better to be safe than sorry, especially as we were miles and miles away from anybody, including a mechanic and a hospital!! But once that small section was done, Jas and I carried on driving the rest of the pass and there were more almost as hairy bits to come, which we tackled bravely ourselves! At the bottom of the pass was a pile of stones which people who had successfully completed the pass had written their names and put the date on, to signal their triumph of reaching the bottom, just like putting up flags at the top of Everest! It was very gratifying when we placed our stone on the pile and could say that we too had conquered Van Zyl’s Pass!!!
From there we drove through the valley, spotting the occasional oryx, springbok, and zebra, and sped on to Purros. It was a nice change to get the landy moving at more than the average of 10km/hour that we had been doing! Purros is a small collection of brick houses in a desert valley area with high hills around. We stayed at the only campsite there, which is next to a dried riverbed and has elephant visitors from the desert. We awoke one day to the sounds of breaking branches and peeped out of our tent to see an elephant having his breakfast not far from us! We went for a drive in the surrounding area with a guide who helped us track down a family of desert elephants with young, which was very nice to see. There is not much that distinguishes a desert ele from any other ele, just it’s adaptation to living in the desert. But they are very rare and apparently in this area there are only about 50, compared to several thousands in other parts of Africa.
Whilst in Purros we came upon the opportunity to buy a goat to eat. It’s a long story but in a nutshell, the guide we had hired said that if we wanted to we could share a goat with him and he would organise for us to go and get it and then he would kill, skin and gut it and we could have half the meat. Now I imagine you are thinking this is not a particularly nice thing to do (especially the vegetarians among you), but we thought about it for a while and decided that it was an experience the Onian’s children would not easily get anywhere else and it is an important lesson in life that if you want to eat the meat in the shops you need to know how it gets there and what cute animal it was before. So we were taken to a farm about 5km away, where they had chosen a goat for us, ‘Frank’ as the kids had named him, and we transported him still alive back to campsite on the top of our landy. It was a very odd scene! Back at camp, our guide (Burtus) swiftly and humanely killed Frank with a couple of other guys. They very efficiently skinned Frank in a couple of minutes and then proceeded to remove the insides and divide the meat. Watching the process was saddening but also very interesting for all of us. As we tucked in to leg of goat that evening we said a tribute to Frank and toasted his life! In fact we toasted him for the next four evenings as we made our way through various parts of him!
From Purros we travelled back to Opuwo, to re-stock and re-fuel. We had spent a really lovely 8/9 days with the Onian’s family, we all had a great time. But we were now to head in opposite directions so we said our goodbyes and they went south and we went east towards the Botswanan border.
We passed relatively easily in to Botswana, in fact it was so simple and quick that we were almost disappointed! We went straight to Maun to find out about going on a mokoro trip in to the Okavango Delta. It’s one or maybe even the highlight in Bots. so unfortunately it is very expensive to do. We decided to take a couple of days to think about it and relax in the very nice hotel that we were camping at. We did treat ourselves to a scenic flight over the delta, which was quite cheap especially when we found a German couple who we shared to cost with. It was fantastic to see it from this perspective and we saw elephants, giraffe, springbok, crocodiles and buffalo. Back at the hotel campsite we met a Swiss couple who we had previously seen in Windhoek, Markus and Tanja (hello you two, hope you are well and continuing to have a great trip! Hope to see you in S. Luangwa soon!!). They were on their way to Moremi NP and as we still weren’t sure what to do about the mokoro trip we decided to go with them for a few days whilst we made up our minds. We were told that the campsites in the NP were very basic and because there were no fences around them, often had wildlife visitors during the night, so we had to be very careful. The first site we stayed at was called Third Bridge and after a fairly non eventful drive to it we settled down for the evening and began cooking. It was not long before we had our first really wild encounter in the form of a very big spotted hyena which came out from behind the landy to check out what was for tea! Of course we were all stunned and Jas and Markus quickly picked up some sticks and scared the hyena away with relative ease. From then on it regularly came to see us and none of us were worried about scaring it off! It wasn’t particularly menacing by itself! Later on though after we had gone up in to our tents, the hyena came back with 2 friends and were running around the camp, howling and whooping and cackling, scratching around trying to find food leftovers and fighting between themselves. They made lots of noise and showed us how a group of them meant business with teeth showing and hackles up. We were glad to be up in the tent, as they moved around right below us and we could see the whites of their eyes!! They eventually left us in peace, but it was an incredible sight, we only wished we had taken our cameras up in to our tents that night!
The next camp we stayed at was Xakanaxa and again we didn’t see much during the day, but were treated to more animal magic at night! We had camped near a river and again whilst eating tea, we heard the unmistakeable sounds of a hippo in the river. Slowly we realised that it was getting closer and so when checked on its position with the spotlight and made plans for a quick retreat if necessary! The hippo decided he wanted to come out of the water right up by our landy and was not really bothered that we were in his pathway. So whilst we were safely positioned behind the landy he casually walked past us on his way to some more water the other side of the camp. That was close encounter number two, but the most dramatic was yet to come!!!
Moremi was not as great as we had hoped so we and the Swiss, and a German family who we had got to know as well, made our minds up to travel further on to Chobe NP where we had heard better animals reports. It was a day’s drive from one park to the other and we stopped at Savuti camp, again a fenceless site open to all!! We saw many animals during the day including a cheetah which was great, but little did we know that the night was yet again to provide us with the most drama! In the middle of the night we awoke to the sounds of an elephant eating a tree nearby. Jas and I watched it from up in the tent and so did the others. Then he began to come closer to the vehicles, and closer and closer. Soon he was right beside our landy and Jas and I had to move back inside the tent because we were a bit nervous that he was so close! We could hear him sniffing our table and chairs and we were as quite as mice so as not to disturbed him! Then he went over to the Swiss guys truck and he was so close to them that Markus touched the elephant through the mosquito netting of their tent!!! He moved over to the German’s tents (Andreas, Hieke, Nicholas and Nina – greetings to you all, hope you are well and the rest of your trip was great!) and spent what seemed like ages peering in to their tents. Then he found their rubbish bag and rummaged through it to see what he could find to eat! We were all getting a bit tense now just in case the children got really scared and at one point they wanted Jas to climb down in to the landy and start it up to try and scare the elephant away, but luckily he then moved away for more tree tea! It was about 4am and we were all so wide awake we got up and dressed quickly and were talking about how amazing this all was, when the elephant decided he wanted to check us out a bit more. So we hurried back up to our tents, but Jason chose to get in to the landy. The elephant came over to have a scratch on the tree beside the German’s and then through the front of our tent I could see he was heading towards us again!! He came right up to the landy and was nudging against it so it was rocking!!! I was pretty scared now and was in the tent, on my own, being as still as possible and not making a noise in case his trunk came to investigate me!!! He was sniffing around the top of the landy and Jas was below me watching his trunk move around above and then along the side of the landy!! We could hear the tusks scraping along the landy and Jas was quietly calling up to me checking that I was alright! My goodness we were both quite tense and I lay in the tent really willing the elephant to move along and go back to his trees! The seconds felt like hours but eventually he got bored and moved away to some trees and finally we could breath again! I can safely say that is the most nervous I have ever been and I wouldn’t want to be quite that close to an elephant again! As you can imagine we spent ages talking about the night’s adventure the next morning!
Whilst driving around Chobe we spotted a lion drinking at a nearby waterhole. We hurried over to get a closer look and found to our joy and amazement that it was in fact a pride of fourteen (yes – 1,4) lions - wow what a spot!! We watched them drink and some nearly mature cubs play around for at least an hour, it was brilliant! We saw lots of elephants amongst other things and generally had a great time around Savuti. We moved on to another camp called Ihaha and it was to be here that we have had the treat of our stay so far! One morning while out scouting around, Jas was using our extra big binoculars to search the horizons for anything interesting and he spotted a lion further along the riverside. As quickly and quietly as we could we made our way over to it and found a pride of 7 lions, one of which was a cub about 1-2 years old, 2 young males and the others females. They were happily lounging under a tree right by the track and we manouveured in to a good position about 15 metres away. They we relaxing and not doing too much but we thought if we hang around here long enough they will eventually get up and go somewhere and then we will be right on their tail. Well what was about to happen we wouldn’t have guessed in a million years! Suddenly one of the females got up and was intensely looking to the bushes her body in the ready to stalk position. Then another female moved around to the other side again staring in to the bushes. I looked towards the bushes to try and see what they had spotted and was surprised to see a warthog heading directly for them. The warthog suddenly realised there was danger and began to move away, but the two females came towards him from either side and the only way the warthog could run was through the middle of them. Tragically for the warthog he didn’t know that waiting in his path was the other 5 lions and as soon as he began to run between the females the others were ready for him! They all surrounded him and without hesitation attacked with their claws and teeth, pinning him down as they started to tear him apart, literally! Now try to imagine all this unfolding right before our eyes no more than 15 metres away, we were so fortunate that the lions didn’t move at all, this poor warthog had run straight in to them, so we had ringside seats for the whole kill. The warthog had no time to think about what was happening and in just a few minutes he was ‘no more’ and the lions were gorging themselves with noisy enthusiasm! Obviously whilst this going on Jas was taking as many pictures as he could and I had quickly got my camera and was videoing it too. We carried on until the lions had finished devouring the warthog and were ready to lie in the sun for a snooze after all the activity. Then we had a chance to appreciate what we had just witnessed and couldn’t believe our luck and knew that we had seen something that many people only dream of seeing, it was absolutely amazing!! Not long afterwards they went to have a drink and then moved away from the river in to some scrubland and we lost sight of them. But we had spent about 3 ½ hours with them and we would never forget it!
Also that day we found around 60 vultures taking it in turn to eat a dead buffalo calf, which was also an incredible sight. They were constantly fighting with each other over whose turn it was! And Jas had another one of his dreams come true when he spotted a black egret, which is quite a rare bird that sits in marshland and wraps its wings around in front of it to form a canopy that makes a shadow over the water so it can see the fish better. It’s quite lovely to watch and Jas was very pleased to have seen one at last.
We are now on our way back to Maun to do the delta trip which we were supposed to do a while ago!!! After that we’ll be heading up to Zambia and Victoria falls.
Sorry that yet again I’ve written far too much, but it’s very hard not to!! Hope you are all very well and are enjoying yourselves whatever you are up to.
Bye for now, K and J xx
