Namibia Part 1 - The Big Empty ....

When my mate Corey first made tentative enquiries about travelling around Africa this summer ... i sent him a 6 week plan that would have rivalled Livingstone's adventures .... but rather selfishly made sure I included all the bits that I wanted to travel to as well ..... and rather fortuitously - on the basis of his law firm advance - he decided to take my word for it ... and embarked upon his own re-colonisation of africa journey ....

I decided to join him for the middle bit .... and in typical fashion managed to convince a few others that it would be in their very best interests to come along with us .... Peter from cape town for the first four days (all part of my very cunning plan btw ... on which more later .... but lets just say i'm the new cupid) ... and then Ami all the way from london for the second four days .... frankly anything and anyone so that corey didn't tire of my company and fling me out into the desert ....

Our schedule was hectic (see blue line on the map) .... 8 days to traverse huge distances that most people do over at least two weeks .... on a tight-ish budget ... and in a two-wheel drive against all advice to only use a proper 4-wheel drive (our budget and my abhorrence of SUVs precluding us getting anything more substantial than a small VW polo) .... speaking of the two wheel care hire - amazingly when we arrived in windhoek to pick up our car that we'd booked with the super-dooper all inclusive uber coverage .... they then asked us if we wanted to purchase the additional wheel, window and hub-cap insurance ... apparently in namibia - these bits aren't recognised as actually part of the car ... and so need to be covered separately (what a scam! we thought) .... however - for any of you thinking of doing this trip - after our two punctures, four hub-cap losses, countless window chips and under-carriage GBH (caused by Corey - not me!) .... buying the extra insurance was probably the best decision of the whole trip .... so just a bit of advice ....

So firstly the common bits ... namibia is HUGE ... and very dusty (natch - being one big lump of desert) .... and the roads are a pile of pants - being either sand, gravel or the worst - made up of small and very sharp rocks that embed in your tire and then rip it to shreds .... the boys taught me that driving when your car is out of control is FUN .... but that when faced with a daily drive of 6 hours for 8 days - you need more than one ipod ....

Our adventures started in Soussousvlei - the classic Namibian landscape .... gorgeous flame-coloured dunes .... smoky Namib-Naukluft mountains in the hazy background ... but instead of the desolation and loneliness we were seeking - we found queues to climb the dunes (prompting Corey "I want my own private dune ... I'm not sharing") .... and foreign tourists galore ....

However nothing could take away from the magic of the desert and especially the incredible "other-ness" Dead Vlei - or Dead Lake .... apparently the site of a lake many hundreds of years ago where the trees although also dead are preserved because of the total lack of moisture in the air (not helped however by the water bottles we found stuffed in one of the tree trunks by some idiot git tourist ... ) ..... making it almost a place of total Un-Life .... surrounding by monster towering dunes protecting it from any chance of growing things invading and restoring nature ....



That evening - we took some ATV quad bikes though the more mountainous bits .... which contrary to what the boys will say - i was fast at .... but just not as carelessly speedy as them ... and watched one of many great African sunsets (I'm not sure what it is - but nowhere does the sun set as spectacularly as in Africa) .....

But the other highlight of being in Sossousvlei was an amazing hot-air balloon ride at dawn .... watching the sun rise over the dunes - just indescribably breathtakingly joyously beautiful .... deserving of some lyricism that i'm certainly not capable of - the sort of scenes you just gasp at .... and want to hold in your mind forever .....