South of Namibia Trip May 2010

This year we decided to divide the school hols into 3 parts (but we only wrote one part sadly):

A:         8^th May – 16^th May: “Gondwana Collection” camping through the South of Namibia including 3 days in Lüderitz Bay. Just by ourselves.

 A: South

SATURDAY 8^th May 2010 (Christof writes)

Originally we had planned to leave on Friday afternoon already, but Cathy’s workload with the distance education students and all was such that we decided early in the week already that that would be foolhardy and rescheduled accordingly. Also, it is our camping rule that we never (if possible, of course) camp for one night only … far too much effort! But, with hindsight, it that campsite in Stampriet would have bored us for a full day. So, we left leisurely on Saturday mid-morning, just in time for the Super Spar light lunch in Mariental (they actually did ‘roosterbroodjies’ there). After lunch still up to the dam wall of the massive Hardapdam … these days, as a precautionary measure, they open the sluice gates at 70% …  and so it was … full at 70%. The once grand restaurant is still there … but at 14:00 on a Saturday lunchtime, there was no sign of any productive activity there, although all tables were laid … looked like a type of canteen. If only NWR would allow the private sector into these kind of places.

Then turning east, the last 60 km to Stampriet. Here there is a lot of artesian water and evidence of irrigation farming … green field between red sand dunes. If you see it for the first time it is quite unreal. The place we had booked was the camp site of the Kalahari Farm House, after the other one had been booked out. But this place was really still inside Stampriet … mainly known for palm trees  planted in rows and the Afrikaans (Christian-Nationalist) private (= public in UK-speak) high boarding school.

The camp site was, you guessed it: along a row of palm trees, amongst ‘feral’ vineyards, cactus plantations and lucerne/alfalfa fields. Some quite sweet young Flemish couple closest to us at some 75m. Strong winds that afternoon/evening, which died down later in the night.

Alex did a lovely pan fry of pork chops and game fillets, still brought from home. No, neither the lodge nor the local ‘outlet’ at the petrol station had fire-wood. Accompanied by a veg salad including fresh green beans, broccoli and cauliflower.

Sunday 9^th May (Mother Cathy writes to celebrate her day!)

Just as well we only stayed at Stampriet for one night. I really don’t know what we would have done here for a day. We know people in the neighboring farms but you can’t just pop in unannounced and the place where we camped was pretty but once you’ve walked once around the Lucerne fields and admired the prickly pear plantation and lamented the state of the vines there isn’t really much else to do. I woke up early since we had all gone to bed at campers’ midnight ie 8.30 and I had slept the long uninterrupted sleep of the deserving camper. By 7 I had the kettle on and was looking forward to a cup of tea. The family emerged shortly after. Alex was last to get up; Alex is nearly always last to get up. Beatrice had bought me some tumbled stones for a mother’s day present and made me a sweet card. Alex had also made me a card and had signed my surprise present which wasn’t really a surprise because I had bought it myself a while back. His message in the book was very funny, designed around the fantasy that he had found the book himself. He can always make me laugh – often when I am trying to tell him off. Beatrice made me fruit salad while I was in the shower and I enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the shade of the palm trees at a table set on the startlingly green grass of the campsite. We packed up quickly, we really are rather good at making camp and packing it up but we have had quite a bit of practice. Our next destination on our Gondwana tour was the Canyon Roadhouse near to Fish River Canyon; over 300 kilometers away. The drive to Keetmanshoop is one of the more tedious drives in Namibia. The land for the most part is flat and scrubby and can look very barren although this year there was enough rain to make the grass grow and there is a velvety carpet nearly everywhere. We had lunch at the Canyon Hotel in Keetmanshoop and were given a free glass of white wine for mothers’ day, sweet! (the gesture – not the wine luckily). The drive to the Canyon roadhouse became gradually more interesting as we left the Luderitz road. The mountains came closer and the road started to snake a bit between the hills. It was quite clear that there had been some violent rain quite recently. Gullies had been eroded into the road surface and the evidence of flooding remained in muddy areas and water at the side of the road. The rivers still had water in them. The rain must have been very recent because apart from a few enthusiastically flowering opportunist dubbletjies the rest of the countryside looked very dry. We learned later that 40mm of rain had fallen in half an hour a week earlier. The tufts of desert euphorbia, like giant chives, softened the landscape and lent some green to it although the plants themselves are as tough as old boots the illusion of softness was gentle on the eyes. The Canyon Roadhouse is placed in a beautiful setting on a plain between solitary sparsely placed mountain peaks. The campsites are along a dry river bed under large camelthorn trees. The campsite was beautifully appointed; lots of ablution blocks; lots of space between. We made camp quickly – we ARE getting good at this, hardly any fighting! Beatrice and I climbed the hill behind the campsite. The plan was to take a photo from the top but sadly my camera decided not to work. It was very rocky and some of the rocks were really oddly eroded. The kids and I call them elephant stones because they are the texture and colour of elephant hide but these were especially odd elephant stones; more like dinosaur hide. As the sun set we returned to camp. We ate in the restaurant because – yes – it was still mothers’ day. The restaurant was full of antique motor cars, somewhat of an obsession at the Roadhouse one could say since the carcasses of defunct old roadsters are sprinkled around the grounds, some in very unexpected places. It was interesting to eat in a garage atmosphere but it had a nice feel to it. Alex had earlier embarrassed himself with a booby trap in the gents loo that set off a buzzer in the restaurant and relived his embarrassment when his father fell into the same trap and then his mother fell into a similar trap in the ladies. The boy is far too sensitive – must work on that! The trap involved a naked woman and a small door in the gents and a naked man and a small door in the ladies. No elaboration required. We made our way back to camp over a small bridge that spans the dry river bed, our path lit by small lanterns. A very pleasant day

             

Monday 10^th May 2010

The day after mother’s day (just as well that’s over!!) and I (Alex) feel a bit bad about how the evening ended last night. I woke after a 8 hour sleep with sun in my eyes, so the day already started not so well. Beatrice felt very ill this morning so didn’t eat much, only dry toast. Today we spent the whole day at the canyon lodge not having to worry about packing up our tent and driving, so really relaxed and cool. After breakfast we decided what we were going to do today, and since we were near the fish river Canyon, guess what we decided to do? Yes you guess correct we went to see the statue of liberty! No actually we did go see the Fish river Canyon, in all its splendedness. It was breath taking and very beautiful, I made the decision for my family that I would get them fit enough to do the fish river walk. Which is 85km long so about a four day trip, I’m so looking forward to it!!! We then drove back to our camp had lunch and read. At about three o’clock we went to get ice, wood and we also got cake. Once back at the :camp we started to prepare the dinner meal. Mummy and I went for a walk since it was Beatrice and daddy’s turn to cook today. The walk was fun, but mummy didn’t want do anything dangerous so we had to find the safest way up and down hills. We arrived back to see that the food was nearly done, so we waited a bit, Beatrice and I  watched a movie on the laptop. The food was excellent. We watched THE HANGOVER after dinner and then went to bed, so sleep well. : )

Alex

Tuesday 11^th May 2010

 ( Beatrice)

Today was more driving than anything else. I woke up earlier than the rest (as usual), so I had my first breakfast (a bowl of Cornflakes never fails!!!) while I watched “Big Bang”. After the rest of the crew woke up we packed up camp ate breakfast (my seconds… what can I say? I’m not called ‘Breakfast Queen” for nothing!!) which was toast kindly made by my very own mother. So we left camp and fish river behind us and off to Aus, the place where the horses roam free etc… but what they DON’T mention is that it is freezing!!!! I mean totally cold!!! Brrrrrrrr…

But before that we were ‘on the road again’.

Mummy and Daddy were rather cruel to us. We weren’t allowed to watch anything at all. 280km of nothing!!! But we got HARIBO so we weren’t that let down … but don’t get me wrong we weren’t full of glee, especially after our mother (yes, you know who I’m talking about) made Alex and me stand next to a sing post saying : RECENTLY RELOCATED ANIMALS PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY. (Yip, she went that far…) so we kept on driving. I started on my German homework and listened to music.

We arrived at the Seeheim hotel, on the main road from Keetmanshoop to Luederitz. There was a springbock, an oryx, sheep (mummy thinks that the oryx probably thought it was a sheep too) and chicken. It was not that interesting except the parrot that could whistle. Off again to Aus. It was rather amusing because it was such a small town and so when we went to a store there was hardly anything!!! And if there was something it was in the place one would never have suspected (there was a candle by the flour!!) It was like a scavenger hunt. We went to the butchers since we are having braai!!! Yess!! And then to the restaurant ‘Bauernhof’ it was really tasty and the portions were very, very generous!! (we had ‘light meals’ which was the equivalent of a main dish!!) and for dessert … wait for it… fried ice cream!!!! Gasp! Its soooo tasty!! Ice cream in a batter deep fried with a caramel sauce!!! Yummm… heavenly! Then to the camp site. I saw a t-shirt (so cute) but it was so over priced!! Hmmm.. how sad. Anyway so I’m now sitting at the table with my German homework next to me, watching Alex and Mummy making beer bread while Daddy is reading the newspaper. It is already quite dark, my hands are freezing and its only 5.30!!! the braai is going to be great and the best thing is I DON’T HAVE TO WASH UP!!! =)

PS: the braai was delicious!!! And the beer bread wasn’t such a disaster as mummy and Alex thought, but after we scraped the black off it was quite edible… actually it was perfect inside (just had to get to it)… and (don’t get too jealous hahaha) chocolate!!! Rittersport Haselnuss!!!! =P bye

Wednesday 12^th May (Christof)

Relaxed late morning at the Aus camp site. During the night there was a change of direction of wind and it had gotten warmer (very rare!). Later we drove down the 20 odd ks to the feral horses, the main attraction in the vicinity. Here they come to an artificial water hole which they share with oryx and ostriches. Apparently ancestors of left-behind horses by the Schutztruppe during World War II.  But after an hour, the only thing we could see was … well … more of the same. So back to the camp and then soon on to Aus to ‘do’ some lunch at the now familiar Am Bahnhof restaurant. Also got the newspapers at the nearby shop.

After lunch a short drive to the left-over ruins of the German PoWs near Aus. To me the best part of the anecdotal evidence was that the approx. 1500 Germans, who knew the extremes of weather here, started making sun-dried bricks for their shelters without delay, while the guarding 600 SA troops took over a year of suffering in their tents, before buying bricks off the PoWs.

Later, towards sunset Cathy, Alex and me did a wonderfully scenic and well-marked ‘Sunset trail’

from the campsite. While it had been signposted for 1 hr 45 minutes we (hardly the family’s show-off athletes) took about 1 hr 10 minutes.

When we came back, Beatrice confessed to having forgotten to light the fire for grilling, but within minutes we had it going. Cathy & Alex managed to make some quite good ‘rooster broodjies’ which were a definitive improvements to the previous nights’ rendition.

As soon as it got dark the temperature fell dramatically. You could literally watch the digital thermometer on the dining table drop.

 The night was bitter cold (+ 2^◦ )  but with our equipment it was no problem. 

Thursday 13^th May – to Luderitz (Cathy)

We all got up quite early to a very cold morning. It was 5 degrees as Beatrice and I made for the ablutions. As the sun rose things looked a bit better but my idea of an early morning walk was stillborn due to the cold wind and the absence of takers. After breakfast we packed up our camp and headed for the coast. The landscape that you drive through to reach Luderitz is really spectacular; un-capturable in a photograph and I really have tried. You just have to be in it to understand it; the distances are so far and the space is so big. We passed the horses, still there, but they didn’t seem to have moved much since yesterday. After a while all the spectacular nothingness got a bit boring and we began counting telegraph poles and spotting sequences in the construction – yup the landscape is grand but it goes on a bit. Just as we were starting to spot sequences in junction boxes and I began to get excited about the perspective of the electricity pylons as they marched across the desert, mercifully we spotted the coast and the topography announced that Luderitz was imminent.

The last time that Chris and I were in Luderitz together I vowed, as we fled the town, that I would never be back. The wind had been vicious and had not calmed down in the evening as Chris had predicted. In fact it had revved up  in the evening to such an extent that we practically had to hold the tent down. We had camped on Shark Island and it was not enjoyable – cold, damp, hurricane force winds - not at all. We had warned the children to brace themselves and booked into a backpackers so that we would not have to suffer too badly. So of course when we arrived in the town they were experiencing a calm balmy day, brilliant sunshine, sea as smooth as a mill pond.

We went straight to Shark island to show the kids the scene of our suffering and more importantly to explain the real suffering of the prisoners kept there in the bad old days and as we were expounding Alex shouted ‘look – a whale!’ And it really was, out in the bay – a whale, having a whale of a time (sorry) – at first we thought it was more than one whale, later we found out we were wrong. What a complete thrill! – I have always wanted to see a whale and totally unexpectedly my wish was granted within ten minutes of arriving in my least favourite town in Namibia.

We went to the supermarket and asked for information from a woman in the queue who turned out serendipitously to be the person from the information office and we found our backpackers’ which was a little shabby but perfectly comfortable. Then once we had dumped our stuff we did the tourist thing and headed out to Dias point. On our last visit the point had been so wind whipped that we hadn’t dared to climb the steps up to it. This time there was even an octogenarian at the top who merrily skipped past us down the steps. A little café had opened at the point and we stopped for a drink before moving on to Grosse Bucht an absolutely beautiful beach, a perfect curve of fine black sand, totally deserted. Alex had been dying to try the sea and soon took his chance in the freezing water, first paddling, then shedding his shorts and wading and finally shedding his T-shirt and diving right in. Fortunately he did not stay in long due to the cold, fortunately Chris had a towel in the car and fortunately I had not yet heard the story of the great white shark caught off the beach a couple of years ago. Apparently the current washes dead and injured seals into the bay and so sharks are frequent there. We briefly visited one other small beach and Alex naturally left his flip flops there – more later.

In the evening we went to a fish restaurant that lied to us. It said on the menu FRESH fish and it most definitely was not. Not going there again – Ritzi’s we’ve got your number! The kids had pizza which was the better option. Alex ordered vegetarian pizza which made me catch my breath in surprise until he asked the waitress to hold the vegetables and substitute mince and bacon – that’s more like it; Namibian vegetarian pizza, mince and bacon don’t count as real meat. We began to realize what a very small community Luderitz is. The chap who runs the backpackers was at the same restaurant as well as a good number of the residents – maybe it was the only restaurant open in town? But no – I just think this is a very small world stuck on the rocks at the edge of the desert in between two vastnesses - three if you count the sky. Secure in the knowledge that we had booked a boat tour and that there was a good chance a) that the water would be calm and b) that we would see the whale again; we retired to the backpackers for the night.

  

Friday 14^th May

Hi, it’s me (Alex) again.

It’s my turn to write today’s blasted dairy, these holidays since the parents are also writing the holiday dairy with us its gotten really annoying we used to enjoy reading and writing our diary, but now it’s really stupid. So don’t expect anything interesting today.

So here it goes, today we decided to go on a boat cruise of Lüderitz bay to see dolphins, penguins and seals so the usual. It was very nice, we even saw a whale. it was our first time and the sight was spectacular, it jumped out of the water 46 times which was a record even for the guides on the boat. On the cruise I discovered that I actually like ousters. We finished the cruise and went then to spar to shop for lunch stuff. I made chicken salad for lunch which no one except me liked. The day before I had lost my flip-flops on a beach so today we went to find them and we did. For supper my father made Lamb stew it tasted really nice.

Saturday 15^th May (Beatrice)

We woke up early and set out for Koelmannskuppe. It was very interesting…

We first went on a tour, before we could really explore everything. The tour guide (also called Stefan) had this rather funny tactic, where he would tell the group something, say that one can quickly look around and that he will be waiting outside, then he would just ‘switch off’ completely!!!! And when everyone gathered round again he would ‘switch on’. Mummy and I found this particularly amusing. But every time Mummy or I so much as glanced at each other Alex would get a frenzy and hiss at us to ‘stop it’. That was incredibly annoying!!! But he got over it soon after. We explored most of the houses, except the principals because the only thing that was holding it up was the dune, that practically flooded the house (it was seeping in from the roof!!!) or in short term one can just say it was unstable. There were so many beautiful houses, with big windows, 2 stories, verandas, fantastic stenciling on the wall (Mummy went, I think, rather crazy about them. We have at least 11 pictures of just stenciling on our camera!!) etc,, it was BREATH TAKING!! And just to think those people abandoned all of that just because there were bigger diamonds in the Orange River!! And they left all their furniture behind!!! (trust me the furniture was really pretty…) although they could not have carried all that with on ox wagon to Orange River…hmm would you have stayed?

Anyway there was a nice little café where when it said ‘home made hot chocolate’ it was!! Well… one gets hot, foamy milk (delicious) and two little chocolates (they made them their selves!! Jumm!!) then you literally make it yourself by putting the chocolates into the milk and stirring. You have got to try it!!!

Random facts that I have learnt today

- the diamonds there were as big as the top of a match stick

- the diamonds were on the top of the sand (so they just sieved the top layer of earth)

- the diamonds were as common as muck. School children just picked them up on the way home!!

- the workers had very creative ways for trying to smuggle the diamonds :

            - putting them in shoes

            - in arrows, so they could shoot them out of the area and retrieve them later

            - in a tiny back pack on pigeons

            - on/ in their own bodies

- but then they had their first ex-ray (the first in Namibia) so they became sophisticated

            - putting them in their watches so the ex-ray might not sense it

            - in the wire of note pads… etc

- the diamond rush lasted 51 years

- after the diamond rush the place was deserted 

- the first air conditioned room in Namibia (the butchers shop- got the cold air from the ice shop next door through a vent into the ‘fridge room’ and then through an open able flap into the store.) 

- the people were incredibly rich (imported caviar and champagne from France!! Or just look at their clothes (silk, fur coats you name it)