“Hundreds of miles of complete b***** all” was Angela’s apt description of driving through beautiful Southern Namibia from the South African border crossing at Ariamsvlei to Ai Ais Hot Springs in the Fish River Canyon area. Not sure the tourism ministry would pay us for that strap line though!

We’d read that Namibia is the least densely populated country in Africa (4 times the size of Britain and less than 2 million people) and you can see why, there is nothing here apart from scrub bushes, sand and gravel. This is not a place for people who like crowds, large well-stocked supermarkets or mobile phone reception (what are we doing here???)

The Ai Ais campsite is there because of a hot spring, and it was a weird experience swimming in a huge outdoor pool with a water temp similar to your bath back home. It also meant that the 32 C air temp felt freezing afterwards.

Despite being in the Fish River Canyon Park, you can’t see the Fish River Canyon from Ai Ais so we headed north to Hobas campsite. From there it was a 10 km drive to the canyon viewpoint. The canyon, whilst nowhere near the size of the Grand Canyon, is impressive and unlike the US version, you don’t have to share the view with many people. There is an 85 km 5 day hiking trail in the canyon bottom from Hobas down to Ai Ais, which I would of course have done but the trail closes from mid Sept to April due to the lack of water so sadly we just missed out!

From Fish River Canyon we headed north and then east to stock up at the regional “city” of Keetmanshoop. Those of you that are aware of our drinking habits will be shocked to read that we are now on boxed Rose wines with ice, like the animals around here we are having to adapt to the environment!

We stayed at the Quivertree Forest restcamp, home to, yes you’ve guessed it, a Quiver tree forest. It is not actually a forest and they are not trees, they are actually large aloes, can be several hundred years old and are the weirdest looking “tree” you are ever likely to see. The name Quiver by the way, relates to the San practice of hollowing out branches to make quivers to hold their arrows. Quivertree Restcamp was also home to two orphaned cheetahs which we watched being fed, a warthog, a young springbok, a young eland antelope, a semi tame troop of meerkats and a 3 legged dog (lost one leg in a fracas with the warthog).

The highlight of our time around Keetmanshoop however was a visit to the Mesosaurus Fossil site on a sheep farm to the northeast. Our host and farm owner, Giel Steenkamp (see www.mesosaurus.com) spent 2 hours taking us to sites on his farm where he has found various fossils but most importantly those of a 240 million year old semi aquatic reptile that lived in the shallow sea here when Africa was joined to South America (Gondwanaland). Giel’s enthusiasm for his subject is infectious and we wish him well with his plans to develop tourism on his farm.

We had the added bonus of seeing a 2 metre spitting cobra on the path in front of the vehicles. We also learnt why Giel’s lambs walk around with large collars on them; it deters lynx and jackals, though the jackals are now eating the lambs from the back end…..ouch!

Aus, to the west, was our next destination. We camped in the volcanic hills there overlooking the Namib Desert and the sun setting on the Namib will be a memory we will cherish for a long time.

Whilst in the area we visited the waterhole at Garub, where you can see the wild horses of the Namib. We were lucky as they were drinking at the time of our visit. Some of you sharper cookies will know that Africa does not have wild horses (apart from the ones in stripey pyjamas), these are thought to be descended from escaped/released South African or German army horses from the 1920s.

A 120 km drive west of Aus and you hit Luderitz on the Atlantic coast, if you don’t hit Luderitz you are in deep trouble, there is nowhere else! The drive there is one of scrub desert turning to sand desert so the Sand warning signs on the roadside seem unnecessary. The Wind sign was obviously recently erected in advance of Angela’s arrival. A more ominous warning sign is that either side of the road is owned by Namdeb (effectively De Beers), we were driving through diamond country and trespassing could mean a year’s imprisonment.

Luderitz is a very strange town; it was founded by Germans over a century ago and has some beautiful buildings from that period, which seem bizarre in such a barren coastal site. The desert reaches the sea here and water has to be pumped 120km from a borehole near Aus. There are no natural trees or even scrub, just desert succulents, flowering still thanks to the unseasonal rainfall that hit the area last April.

Just outside Luderitz was the prime reason for our visit, the deserted mining town of Kolmanskop. Diamonds were found on the ground here in the early 1900s, leading to a diamond rush. At its peak in the 1930s this town had a concert hall, gymnasium, ice making facilities, a power station, a railway, a hospital and some very grand German colonial houses. The diamonds have long gone (trust me, we looked) and the desert is reclaiming the houses. De Beers have moved their mining operations south to the Orange River estuary and out to sea, but 100s of kilometres north and south of Luderitz; from the coast to about 100km inland is Sperrgebiet or Forbidden Territory.

On a passing note De Beers very generously relinquished it’s 100% stake in this vast tract of land and gave the Namibian government a 50% stake in 1994. It may have had something to do with the fact that its 99 year lease on the land was due to expire? On another passing note, the diamonds from this area are very high quality gems. This may explain why the hospital at Kolmanskop got the first X Ray machine in the whole of Southern Africa in the 1930s. What goes in must come out, they also got through tons of cod liver oil apparently, presumably they were not prepared to wait for natural processes!

Our final event at Luderitz was a morning boat trip to see a nearby Jackass Penguin colony (they are well named, we could see the resemblance to a couple of work colleagues) passing various Cape Fur Seal colonies on the way. We were also lucky to see Heavi-side dolphins (named after the guy that first observed them, nothing to do with their buoyancy) porposing next to the bow of our schooner.

If this sounds idyllic it was not, the boat was experiencing engine problems before we went out and the throttle cable broke when we were 100 metres from the penguin island, in an awesome Atlantic swell. Fortunately the crew improvised with a rope from the engine room and we avoided being another shipwreck statistic for this barren South Atlantic coast. Angela’s nerves took longer to repair and that may be our last boat trip!

We decided to stay a couple of nights at the Naute Dam recreation area before going back to South African and Upington. This was a good choice, no showers but a very quiet campsite overlooking the dam and lake. We saw Great White Pelicans, Egrets, Darters (like a cormorant but it spears fish with it’s beak), loads of Grey Herons, Dabchicks, Swifts, Greater Kestrels and Egyptian Geese. Two resident Fish Eagles scared all the birds to death by flying over them regularly to check for the sick and injured.

Whilst in the Naute Dam area we did a 100 kilometre round trip for petrol and on the way visited the Seeheim Hotel, a very strange place in the middle of nowhere which owed its origin to the railway line next to it. The reason for mentioning it is that the owner also has a game farm (hunting) and taxidermy business. The results of some of her taxidermy can be seen in the latest photo album. We stuck to the beer!

A final comment about this stage of our travels, the temperatures are rising. At Naute Dam it reached 39.4 C in the shade, and this is springtime. We may be heading for the Cape area to get some sea breezes and leave the rest of Namibia until later.