NAMIBIA to mark my territory and break my neck. And then get eaten by hyenas. I start my journey with a 520km drive up the B1 from Windhoek to the Damaraland and Huab Lodge, a halfway house on the road to nowhere. For the first three hours, the road is smooth, shimmering tarmac. Then I reach Outjo and take the C35, the first of the bone-shaking gravel roads. Two hours later, at a lonely spot marked by a large, dead python, I turn onto the D2670. It's mostly dust, so I use the tyre deflator to get more grip. A lappet-faced vulture watches from a rock. I know what he's thinking. It's just 30km from here to the lodge, but it takes an hour. I thought that two nights at this eccentric little camp — eight thatched huts overlooking the dry bed of the Huab River — would be enough, but I was wrong. The birdlife is astonishing: I count 26 species from my terrace and, as we're drinking sundowners, nightjars are hunting around the bar. At dawn, the riverbed is a alive with wildlife: oryx, giraffes, zebra and kudus commuting along its sandy path. That afternoon I spend a thrilling four hours following the spoor of a huge leopard that ultimately does what leopards do best and vanishes like a Cheshire cat. A giant eagle owl watches wisely from a tree. I know what she's thinking, too. It's only as I'm leaving that I notice the swimming pool and nearby hot spring. I told you two nights wasn't enough. Four hours east, past the gold mines and cattle farms of central Namibia, a track off the B1 brings me to the Mundulea Nature Reserve: 120sq km of former cattle country that's being returned to nature. Black rhinos, cheetahs and giraffes are among the species that have wandered back in, accompanied by zebra, roan antelopes and black-faced impala. It's dark by the time I arrive. Entering the camp is an experience somewhere between Edgar Rice Burroughs and Apocalypse Now. Bleached skulls, flickering hurricane lamps and twisting paths leading to big, simply furnished safari tents. By the campfire, owner, guide and conservationist Bruno Nebe is expounding on pangolins. On another fire, sorcerer's apprentice Patrick is cooking a three-course dinner — baking ‘ IF YOU GET LOST, BREAK DOWN, OR UPSET THE ELEPHANTS, IT CAN BE A ONE-WAY TRIP ’ bread in an oven made from an old fire extinguisher. Apart from some iffy solar, there's no electricity. No phone signal. No wi-fi. Owls, jackals and a distant leopard provide the background music to a safari camp so remote that Bruno only opens it when he has enough bookings to justify the expense. Lucky for me, then, that Tim and Pauline are here. Early retirees from the UK, they did Route One last year, but knew instantly there had to be more to the world's most beautiful nation. So this year, they rented a 4WD and went off the beaten track. Together, we spend three days walking with Bruno. It's like being shown Africa by Gandalf. He dodges jade-green boomslang snakes lurking on low branches, tracks his beloved pangolins with a radio antenna and, at one point, drops a rock into a dark shaft in the karst and blithely mentions that he doesn't know how deep it is because when he climbed down he ran out of rope before he hit the bottom. I part company with Tim and Pauline in the dusty, low-rise town of Otjiwarongo. They're off to explore the rock paintings of the Erongo Mountains. I'm heading northwest into the Kunene, an otherworld of unclimbed peaks, sparkling gravel plains and river canyons running into a fogbound dune belt, where they disappear before reaching the cold Skeleton Coast. With skill and the right kit, you can self-drive the Kunene. But if you get lost, break down, or upset the elephants, it can be a one-way trip, so it's best to park the car and call Caesar Zandberg, one of the three best desert guides in Namibia. If you thought your rental 4WD was well-equipped, wait until you see Caesar's chariot: a 4.5-litre turbo-diesel V8 Toyota J7 Land Cruiser with a snorkel, twin fuel tanks, solar panels on the roof and enough kit to turn any shady corner of the Kunene into a luxury tented resort. I join Caesar a week after unusually heavy rains have hit the Kunene. On past visits, the place has been as dry and bleached as a lost tourist's bones, but it only takes a centimetre of rainfall to unleash life. The hills and plains are covered in bushman-grass baize, and streaks of bright yellow devil's thorn flowers stretch for miles like an industrial custard spill. Most excitingly, the Hoarusib River is flowing, bringing waters of life from the Giraffe Mountains. Caesar drops T-bone steaks the size of telephone directories onto the woodfire grill, tosses a salad — a Caesar one, obviously — and refills my drink. 52 worldtravellermagazine.com
These pages, clockwise from left: Little Himba boy wearing traditional jewellery; moon rising over a dry river valley; Vingerklip finger rock in the evening light, near the Vingerklip Lodge; a black-backed jackal worldtravellermagazine.com 53
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INSPIRED BY ISSUE 134 | JUNE 2019 |
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- Page 31 and 32: SUMMER TRAVEL 2019 Beat the crowds
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