Fish River Canyon, Namibia

Despite (or perhaps because of) the excitement of night one on Naomi’s roof, neither of us slept particularly well! Some of you may remember that Matt sleeps with a CPAP machine for his sleep apnoea and this turned out to be a disaster during our Scottish cycling trip when he didn’t/couldn’t take it with him and I reached the point of wondering whether murder of suicide was the best option. Since then we’ve bought a big battery which will power him for 2 nights but, what we’d failed to take into consideration, is the warmth of the Namibian night – every few minutes the battery fan would click in to cool it down – so much for drifting off to sleep listening to Africa!

Fortunately, the bed is (surprisingly) comfortable so we drifted off in the end. But there was another reason for not sleeping well – we were waiting for the alarm. Why on earth had we set the alarm, I hear you cry? One reason and one reason only:

Every lodge/game reserve offers a number of different activities – evening game drive, horse riding, quad biking etc, etc. Bagatelle asked us if we’d like to go to the cheetah feeding. Errr, does the Pope have a balcony? This is the woman who got inordinately excited about feeding giant tortoises. OF COURSE I want to go to cheetah feeding!

Cheetah feeding was at 8am (they eat early and late and rest during the day – hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like someone else I know 😀). The lodge was 1km from our campsite so we had to get up and pack everything away – at the risk of pointing out the flaming obvious, you can’t drive around with your roof tent erect!

I’m pleased to say that the alarm went off at 6.30 and we were at the lodge for 07.50 – phew!

Cheetah numbers globally have decreased by 93% in the last 100 years and the current estimate is that there are about 7,500 left in the wild. Namibia has an excellent rescue programme for orphaned cubs (often as a result of the parent being shot for killing sheep or goats) and Bagatelle is part of that programme. They currently have 6 cheetahs, 2 of whom are so tame that we were allowed to get out of our vehicle and stand close to them (no touching!). One of the very tame ones was a household pet (can you imagine?!) and is a bit of a nightmare because he will leap into any vehicle, given the chance, and wait to be taken for a drive! Slightly strangely (to us) Namibia has a strict rule of not breeding from these orphans because they lack the skills to teach their offspring how to survive in the wild. In any event, it was a wonderful experience and they are truly magnificent animals:

After that fabulous start to the day it was a 270 mile (430km) drive to our next overnight stop (remember, Namibia is BIG!).

En route we stopped at the Quivertree Forest for lunch. Quivertrees are a type of tree aloe (and, therefore, not technically a tree) found sporadically over southern Namibia and South Africa. Their name is supposed to come from the Bushmen who used the inside of a dead branch to make the quiver for their arrows. They are declining due to climate change but, encouragingly, there is a big movement here to increase their numbers. They are very slow growing and the biggest trees are estimated to be between 200 and 300 years old:

Not a Quivertree – a Windhoek Aloe!

One of the things which have fascinated us as we drive around are the most enormous nests in trees. In this Quivertree we found the most amazing example:

This is the nest of the Sociable Weaver. They breed communally and you can see the various entrance holes they use. We have become quite the ornithologists this trip and also Quivertree spotters (surely there’s a name for that?).

The recommended navigation app here is Maps.Me (which we have been using for years). You know it’s going to be interesting when you turn onto the gravel road and it says that you turn right after 89kms!

Spot the Quivertree!

Our second night under canvas was spent at the very quirky Canyon Roadhouse. The campsite couldn’t have been more different from the first one but it was still amazing and the communal ablution block was immaculate and with the most stunning Quivertree in the courtyard (can you tell we’re getting a bit obsessed with Quivertrees?!). Matt was very serious about his Braai (even though it was a bit of a disaster and the sausages took an unfeasibly long time to cook and I might have got a teensy bit fractious!):

Luckily I slept really, really well as it was another early start.

Pub quiz time: where is (arguably) the second biggest canyon in the world after The Grand Canyon?

Yup! Namibia!

The “arguably” bit is because it’s hard to gauge the size of canyons – are we looking at length or depth or overall volume? The pedants can argue all they like because, at the end of the day, it’s damned big!

The Fish River Canyon is 161km long, up to 27km wide and almost 550m at its deepest. It’s quite a trek to get there so is little visited but it’s worth it:

The chain with the padlocks on it is the start of a 4/5 day hike through the 80-90km canyon. Definitely not for the faint hearted!

On the way back to Naomi we met this little fellow, who was very happy to pose:

Those of you who follow hopsonsontour on Instagram may remember a classic photograph I took of Matt 31 years ago in the Grand Canyon, USA. Yesterday, we tried to replicate it – not easy with his dodgy knees!

Will he ever grow up?!!

The Kalahari, Namibia

We now have internet for the first time in 3 days so brace yourselves for a plethora of blogs over the next 48 hours – so much to say and so little time!

When we picked up Naomi, Benito (the lovely guy we’ve hired her from) told us that having your headlights on in Namibia is now compulsory, all of the time. It seemed a little odd. Why? In a country with so much sun and so few vehicles? Well, after about 20 minutes from leaving Windhoek it all made sense. With the sun and the heat, the mirages on the road are incredibly deceptive so, at least if you see lights you know the car is coming towards you! It’s actually really sensible and, undoubtedly, has reduced accidents.

I took the first leg out of Windhoek:

And then we reached our first milestone – the Tropic of Capricorn!

Once we hit our first gravel road, the big man took over! Naomi has a “dust hatch” on the side, which we have to open on gravel/dirt roads and it stops dust settling in the boot. We also go into 4×4 so every time we hit a gravel road (which is a LOT) we stop and do that and then do the reverse once we get back to tarmac. We have about half a mile of dirt track to get to our house (which some of our guests aren’t that keen on – tip: don’t bring a low slung car to chez Hopson!). First day in Namibia – 65kms of gravel to the first campsite! Naomi took it all in her stride – after all, this is what she’s designed to do!

Sociable Weaver Nest

The roads are quite badly corrugated so the trick is to pick up speed and zip across the top of the corrugation. We have found that about 60-65 mph (100km/h) is about right – the dust cloud behind is quite impressive! But don’t worry, on Day 1 we passed precisely one other car!

The scenery was quite extraordinary – vast, vast open spaces with the occasional cows and quite a lot of sheep and goats. By the time we reached our campsite (the Bagatelle), the ground had turned red:

En route we had seen lots of what looked like melons on the ground. We found out that they are the Kalahari Melon, not quite ripe yet (they need to be green). They are very sour to our taste but oryx love them and use them as a water source and then, of course, evacuate the seeds, which then germinate again. In this way, there are great swathes of them:

The Bagatelle Game Ranch turned out to be an absolute gem. There are only 6 pitches (so I guess pre-booking is essential – ours was all done by Namibia Tours & Safaris) and they are very well spread out and each one has its own ablution block, which had a loo, basin (and lots of space) and solar heated shower. For our first night under canvas, it couldn’t have been better:

We got the tent up without too much hassle and were ready for our Braai!

Yes, standing on the wheel is the correct way to do it!

But first we went for a little walk, just to see where we were. After all, it’s not every day that you find yourself camping in the Kalahari! And, FYI, although the Kalahari is described as a desert, it’s not actually a true desert as it gets more rain than a true desert should (more than 100mm of rain per year). Technically, it’s a fossil desert.

For our first night we’d treated ourselves to steak on the Braai and very nice it was too!

As the moon came up and the sun set, it really was magical and truly wonderful to be back in Africa:

We have fallen pretty hard and fast for Namibia’s charms!

Windhoek, Namibia

We started Wednesday with sun rise over the Indian Ocean and finished it with sun set over Namibia:

As we took off, the views of the reef around the island were pretty spectacular:

It was a very unhealthy day of airline food and airports and neither airline served gin 😱. For those of you who think I’m obsessed 😂 , I’m actually intolerant to wine (which was a bit of a shock when I found out!) so gin is now my drink. I like to think I’m something of a connoisseur so it was also a bit of a shock when we also discovered that there’s no duty free allowance for spirits between South Africa and Namibia – WTF?!! Luckily our gorgeous hotel came to the rescue:

We are staying at the fabulous Weinberg Hotel, for two nights, which was organised by our travel company Namibia Tours & Safaris and is somewhat posher than our usual abodes:

We had breakfast outside (in the shade, the sun was too hot 😂) and the standard “breakfast tower” was awesome!

Thus far, Namibia is looking pretty damned amazing! The thing that really struck us as we came in to land was that there were no lights. As you come into land in Nairobi or Mombasa or Arusha (Tanzania) at night there are dots of lights everywhere from houses and small villages but coming into Windhoek there was absolutely nothing. Really extraordinary.

Today we have picked up our home for the next 3 weeks. Ladies and gentlemen – let me introduce you to Naomi the Nissan Navara (Naomi is a popular name in Namibia and means pleasantness and sweetness so I’m hoping she lives up to her name):

She’s a bit of a beast after 800cc Suzy the Suzuki!

Matt has been given all of the technical instructions around changing wheels (we have 2 spares and I’m hoping and praying we don’t need either of them), reducing tyre pressure for sand (and then raising it again) which we definitely will need to do, the dust vent for dirt roads (of which there will be a LOT) and other such exciting manly things.

We’ve just been shopping and have filled the fridge, bought fuel for the Braai (that’s barbecue to you and me) and have our route planned for the next couple of days. Namibia is BIG and we are driving pretty much all around it. A couple of maps – the one on the right showing our (sort of) route, starting and ending at the black splodge (Windhoek) and travelling in a generally clockwise direction:

Tomorrow (Friday) we have a 165 mile (265km) drive south to the Kalahari, some of which is gravel, to our first campsite and first night on the roof. We are soooo excited!

The blog may be a bit intermittent over the next 3 weeks as I’ve no idea how often we’ll get WiFi and/or how good it’ll be so please bear with!

In the meantime, more shots of the lovely Naomi:

FYI, Matt is banned from eating beans for the whole trip and, yes, we have made plans for having wees in the night (more of which as our safari progresses, no doubt!).