30 december

After yesterday’s events, which we have put to rest reasonably by talking and calling, we can now report on our experiences since Thursday 27 December.

Thursday we left from Swakopmund and drove through Walvisbaai to the east over the C14. This is a dirt road, initially well maintained, which goes straight through the desert. It is yellow in Walvisbaai and changes slowly and gets a red color. This red color comes from, corroding, iron, really! Coming from Walvisbaai, a mountain pass must be crossed and you must pass through a gorge and the road is getting worse. This road goes through a natural park which you can, with a permit, enter. Eventually the road becomes flatter and you enter into the Namib desert. Via IOverlander we had found a campsite, Sossus on Foot, where we wanted to stay. This campground is about 2 km from the main road located in a dry riverbed. The landscape is indescribably beautiful and impressive, see the pictures. We had the last spot on the, small, campground which is run by a Namibian called Boesman and his, Japanese, wife and their two, small, children. They have been living here since 2004 and have bought the place of farmers who have tried to keep sheep in the desert which has totally failed. When they arrived in 2004, the house was still fully furnished and birds lived in there.

Also this place is completely dependent on solar power and gets its water from a source at 260 m depth. By tourism there is income for these people where you have to imagine that their neighbors live 40 km away.

There is, at about 50 m distance, a waterhole where animals come to drink in the evening. Unimaginable to see. Zebras and Spiesbokken (Oryx) we saw drinking and especially those first made a lot of noise! At night you hear the hyena’s around the campground and the stars were unimaginably beautiful.

The next day we drove in the desert with Boesman and told us a lot about the former inhabitants (Bushmen) and the area itself. There is sometimes only 1 mm of rain a year and a banana peel takes about 50 years to digest. Yet there is a lot of life in the desert, especially when there is a lot of rain, locally. He told of an event in which, after a rain shower, hundreds of animals moved to that place within a few days and plants and trees began to grow everywhere. Now, a few years later, there is nothing left of it, see also the pictures. However, there are descendants of zebras and donkeys spotted so it really was a wild party!

Despite the drought, trees grow but they have roots up to 80 m.

Boesman told us about the lives of the Bushmen who were not seen by the locals and the colonists as people. Older hunting licences mentioned that they were allowed to hunt for Kudu’s, Springbokken and Bushman. The name Bushmen (Bosjesman) comes from the Dutch colonists who described that they were shot with poisonous arrows by people from behind bushes (bosjes). These people were completely adapted to life in the wilderness. So she ate when there was food and could eat 10 kg of meat. We saw beautiful pictures of a family of Bushmen with convex bellies after such a meal. The Namas called the Bushmen for that reason San (he who eats like an animal).

On Saturday morning we left the campsite and drove towards Solitaire and from there to Rehoboth. That road went over an impressive pass that was sometimes only a meter wider than the car. Some parts I had to do in the first gear.

In Rehoboth we will stay until 1 January.