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Oh my gosh - how we wished we'd had more time here!
But let's start with the journey, as it was one of those memorable moments that is stuck in the memory in incredible detail. We often find it is the journeys in Africa we've made that offer the best tales and memories.
Not long after leaving Doro Nawas we picked up 4 hitch hikers, don't worry a quick scan of our Bradt guide had told us that this was one of the main forms of transport in Namibia. In return for the lift and bottles of water the women sung us several songs. Local African singers never fail to send shivers down our spine and these ones did not disappoint. After they were done singing, they tried to teach me how to use the clicking sound that so often preceeds or follows words. Now, I have never been adept at langauges and can't even roll my r's, so you can imagine what a hash of it I made. Well, it made our passengers and El laugh heartily. We dropped them off at a small town called Khorixas and drove for another hour or so before reaching the town near Erongo, Omaruru.
Omaruru is an affluent town by African and Namibian standards. Yet even here and in all towns like this you still see homeless or very poor children. We stopped at the supermarket to stock up on food for our journey the next day and there were a couple of such kids hanging around. Typical me shopped for them as well as ourselves and whilst El went off to look for a camping kettle I headed to the car with the food and called the kids over. They were too shy to come close, so I put some bread, fruit, biscuits and fruit juice at the back of the car. They grabbed it all and ran off to eat it. We spotted them on our way out of the car park and drove up to them an wave, they waved back with mouths full of food. Most of it had already been eaten - they were clearly starving. The usual teary eyes and feelings guilt ensued...
Not long after we arrived at Erongo. Erongo is a wilderness area encircled by the Erongo Mountains. The camp itself consists of 10 tented chalets nestled in a secluded valley in a dramatic setting of grainite boulders and breathtaking views. We spent early afternoon sipping tea and eating homemade cake whilst gazing over the birdlife at the waterhole. Early evening we went on a guided sundowner walk/climb up a rocky outcrop and emerged on the top at the other side; I settled in with a G&T and El settled in with his camera, to watch yet another spectacular African sunset. This place should be a boulderers paradise, great handholds but weak rock that cannot take your weight - we know, we tried, it crumbles in your hands before your feet are even off the ground. We would also have been very glad of our Five Ten rubber on the way down - it was steep and very slippery underfoot! The dinner and the wine we treated oursevles too was delicious. We gorged ourselves.
Full and tired we returned to our tented chalet and not long after falling wearliy into our camp beds realised we had committed the no.1 sin of campers. We had brought food into the tent! Noisy scratching and scuffling revealed that we had more than 1 creature in our tent, the torchlight revealed that is was the harmless and cute Desert Rat. We did not, however, want to be kept awake all night by their scratching whilst eating all the food so El spent the best part of an hour chasing them out of the tent and taping up the gaps with duct tape (that's El, ever prepared!).
Over breakfast the next day we again watched the birdlife at the waterhole and gazed out over the mountains whilst musing over our desire but inability to spend more time here. We could easily have spent another day or so here - darn schedules and having to return to work.
This really was a unique environment and we are pleased we got to soak up a little bit of the atmosphere.
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