We left Swakopmund around 9, after filling up with diesel and water and making final preparations for the next leg of the journey – a 5 day trip to Epupa Falls. Today’s journey was 300km to Brandberg.
As we left Swakop, the sun came out for the first time once our arrival in the town. The first stretch out of Swakop was a 70 km drive, on a salt road, past Henties Bay. We passed salt pans and a salt works near to the sea, on our left. Then we came across miles of beach littered with ablutions, I thought this rather strange, until Gray explained that this was a popular camping area in summer. Next was either Mile 14 or Wlotzkbaken, I'm not sure as it was not signposted, but it was a quirky area with a colorful array of houses. To our right was flat desert area dotted with a seaweed looking type plant.
This area is not called the Skeleton Coast for nothing, we stopped at the Zeila Wreck, a fishing trawler that was stranded, almost to the day, 7 years ago. It was sold to an Indian Company for scrap, but came loose from its towing line on the way to Bombay. It cannot be rescued any further, as it lies just off shore. We walked down the beach and I dipped my feet in the cold Atlantic Ocean. The wreck has become a bit of a tourist attraction and there are peddlers selling stones and crystals. Unfortunately, one of them stole George’s slops that he had left near his car, we left the area decidedly irritated. Our first bad experience in Namibia.
From Henties Bay we headed north along the coast to our next via point, Mile 108. Along this stretch we passed more salt pans on the sea side and the area to our left was covered in black dunes – dunes covered in black volcanic rock. There were homemade tables with large salt crystal chunks with honesty boxes dotted along the road.
We turned left to Cape Cross Seal Reserve. The history of which is important as it was thought to be the point of the first European landing in January 1486 by Diogo Cao/Diego Cam. He was a navigator under the command of King John 11 of Portugal. He was probably attracted to the coast by the mass of seals and erected a limestone cross. The original is in a German Museum and a replica resides in its place. The seal colony consists of thousands of seals basking on rocks and on the sand. The surrounding sea is also filled with seals, surfing the waves, at first I thought I was looking at kelp. The smell was disgusting and left you with a metallic taste in your mouth, there was also a continuous plaintive, baby like, cry that permeated the colony. Despite this we spent a good ¾ of an hour ogling over them.
My experience with seals has been rather hairy at times. I was once attacked by one, while scuba diving on a wreck, at 30m in Hout Bay. Luckily he preferred my pink fins (that bear the scars of his teeth marks) to my blue wet suit.
Back on the road we passed Doep se Gat, Predikant’s Gat, Adri se Gat, Bakleigat and so on. They are just names on a map and fishing sites, I guess, as there is nothing there but a barren coastline.
At Mile 108, there are 5 basic holiday chalets, we turned right onto a gravel road, leaving the sea behind us. A few kilometers down the dark grey/brown road we were rewarded with pronking springbok. It is a miracle that they survive out here, the area is reminiscent of pictures of the surface of the moon.
We stopped to take pics of the amazing welwitschia plants. The plant is endemic to this area. It is a unique plant and is protected by Cites.They live between 1000 and 2000 years and the leaves grow from 2m to 4m. The plant grows only 2 leaves over its lifetime, the bunches of leaves seen are actually splits of the original pair. It was a pleasure to have some respite from being rattled around on the badly rutted gravel road.
Sometime later, in the middle of nowhere, we took a sharp right turn onto a track, to the middle of nowhere …. The road was so bad we were traveling at around 20km an hour. We did eventually land up at the Messum Crater, after having stopped for a picnic lunch around 1 o’clock. Yesterday's homemade rolls and Marula drink tasted great. The road to the crater was lined with various sizes of welwitschia plants.
We stopped at Bakkrans, an historical cave sight at the side of the immense crater that was hit by a meteorite millions of years ago. We then headed along the crater floor, surrounded by mountains, probably pushed up by the blast.
The journey continued, a fair amount of the time, we had no tracks on follow, we were following GPS coordinates. At one point we rounded some mountains and Brandberg, our destination and Namibia’s highest mountain, could be seen in the distance. The route around the huge mountain took us the rest of the afternoon and travel weary, we arrived at White Lady camp site at 5.
Rather than camp in the middle of nowhere, or rather somewhere at the base of Brandberg, we elected to drive on for an extra 50km to a camp site attached to the White Lady Lodge. We had dreamed of seeing one of the desert elephants, rhino or lion. It was only a dream … as we arrived at White Lady, there was a desert elephant foraging in their garden area. We were warned that he had trashes 2 tents the day before and to be careful about leaving food, specifically fruit lying around. Undeterred we set up camp in the bush, had a great braai and were in bed by 8:30.
Much as I enjoyed and appreciated the great restaurants, shops and comfortable bed in Swakopmund, lying here on my thin mattress on the hard desert ground – I can't help thinking that today I had explored well – lived life to the full.
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