Date of Entry:  November 6th 2016

Date of Writing: March 6th 2017

We meet Franziska and Dorothea From Switzerland who will be joining us for the rest of the tour up to Victoria Falls and seem like two very friendly people coming from Switzerland and adding to our german speaking population in the truck. Revel in that Norman.

All together after the included breakfast at the hotel we sadly bid goodbye to our comfy beds of the hotel all thinking about the tents we will be living in for the next while and then leave the city of Swakupmond behind.  I had fun here, but I’m not upset to leave as I know that the most impressive things Namibia has to offer are not to be found within it’s cities.

Leaving Swakupmond we enter the region I really wish we had more time to explore, the skeleton coast, as of now it’s really more of a transit trip through the area as we heard further north towards Etosha National Park and our first true safari experience.

We drive along the well paved highway alongside the southern atlantic coast of Africa pulling over and stopping at one place where locals have gathered seal bones and formed them in the shape of humans.  Offshore there’s also a wrecked fishing vessel though I feel like this is just the touristy glimpse of the skeleton coast as to explore more deeply I think you need time, contacts and a vehicle capable of crossing a desert.  Still, it’s beautiful.

The local guys here on the beach get a bit pushy and negative asking for donations from us and trying to sell some random gemstones pulled from the earth as we get back into Peter Tosh and drive onwards for another long day.  The truck has been cleaned which is nice for us but knowing how many more Km’s we have to cover in the coming weeks it does feel a little like a prison, though it helps that now I get two seats to myself.

We drive for hours eventually leaving the rough waves of the skeleton coast behind and cutting inland towards our campsite for the night at spitzkoppe, home to huge monolithic rock formations in the depths of the northern desert and also some truly ancient cave paintings.  We don’t get there for a long while but the land here is so flat that you can see these rocky mountains from miles away and we stop for a bathroom break (Hooray for bush toilets)  and photo op still a good distance from our campsite.

It takes a long time but eventually we do reach the entrance to the camp area which has recently changed ownership.  All along the road back in the unbearable heat we’ve found locals selling gemstones and I half wish we could stop just to offer them some water. IT’s crazy hot here.  At any rate we check in, Honory books a local guide to take us to the cave paintings and then we drive another 15 minutes or so through the maze of monoliths to our isolated campsites under one of the biggest mountains here.

We pull our tents out of the bottom of Peter Tosh and I get to work getting it up in the heat and grabbing a sleeping mat and my bags out of the locker getting all set up in the one tiny corner of the campsite that seems to have some sort of cellphone reception to talk to Renata.  Then our tour guide has arrived and takes us on a walking tour through this incredible rock formations that remind of cappadocia in Turkey and also the meteora monastary’s in Greece, both incredible must see places. We catch site of a rock dwelling rodent jumping around the rocky outcrops with surprising grace and proving quite difficult to photograph.

We explore the area thoroughly before our friendly guide takes us to the famous ancient cave paintings preserved by some overhanding rocks above.  They are a bit faint, and lacking in detail, but they are really cool and depict animals and many other things on the stone.  Add in the fact that they are estimated to be between 2000 and 4000 years old.  That’s fascinating to me and ignites the imagination as I try to picture these people painting these things, telling stories around them, and just there general existence in this barren wasteland.

Eventually we move on from the cave paintings and kept walking through the cool landscape spotting some friendly cows and some fascinating tree species unlike any I’ve seen to this date.

Back at the campsite everyone else opts to pass out in the late afternoon but I decide to go on a little climbing adventure up to the top of the one of these little mountains.  It’s brutally hot and I have limited water, but with music as motivation and just a little blood spilled getting up I make it to the top and find a perch with an amazing view to watch everything unfold below me.  I wave to my friends below and then get to reading and unwinding in this unique natural wonderland.  I’d heard nothing about this place before arriving but it’s exceeding my expectations, even before the sun begins to go down.

As the sun sinks lower and the temperature cools the fellow Nomads from the truck come up and join me atop the huge stone monoliths to watch a burning ball of fire descend out of ever changing skies towards the endless African Horizon.  It is bloody spectacular and I eventually find a great little nook in the rock at the edge to watch it undisturbed by other people, music in my ears letting me feel like I’m alone up there.

As the sun sinks lower and lower the heat dissipating and even the rocks starting to breath out the heat and get a little cooler the sky turns even more the colour of fire and I head back towards some of the others, finding one of the other overlanding trucks worth of people up there talking loudly and incredibly obnoxiously.  I’m suddenly very thankful for my group of people, though now I’m more interested in using them as photo props then heaving any kind of conversation.

As the sun sinks lower and lower we all eventually decide it’s time to return to camp. The climb down the rocky mountains would be treacherous in full darkness and so we wave goodbye to the sunset and head down in the afterglow fast as we all can.  Honory is making dinner and I’m sure it was delicious (Oryx stew)  but I’m exhausted and not that hungry any more so instead I head straight to bed and wake up the next morning feeling very refreshed.  Early to bed is crucial on these trips if you want to enjoy them, as we always seem to get started quite early.