We set off on a 75km 4x4 trail at 9.30am and arrived into camp at 4.30pm!! 7 hours at speeds of anywhere from 5 – 40 km/ hr…plus an interpretation from a broken sign that had been jigsaw puzzled back together so we tried to imagine the direction of the arrow and add a bit of “Bushland Newspaper” (i.e. tracks in the sand) navigating and end up taking a 2 hour detour around the contrasting black and red colours of the Brandberg mountain corners and in and out of river beds. We encountered 30+ ostriches racing across the veld and just couldn’t keep up to them.
I felt a bit like Meryl Streep being driven by Robert Redford in the scenery of Out of Africa however snapped back to reality world when the GPS gave the reading “Route calculation error. No roads near starting point”. We used the GPS for distance from our destination since it couldn’t plot our route. It had our spirits soaring and sinking in minutes as it would show us getting close to the campsite and as we’d round a corner and the road would change direction, it would have the campsite getting further and further away. We eventually drove through the Ugab River dry riverbed and arrived at a settlement and got directions from an elder to put us back on track. The children must be used to the sight of lost 4x4 travelers as they asked in Afrikaans for cookies and chips!
In 7 hours we saw 3 vehicles!!..a busy day on the Namibian roads!! Roads...can you really call it that? Today’s roads were a 4x4er’s dream! Navigating over all sorts of bumps, rocks, sharp stones, deep sand, missing sections of road, and in and out of dry riverbeds. What an adventure passing oryx, springbok and ostrich along the way.The night before at Aba Huab Campsite, 5 elephants walked through camp. The bull elephant popped by the bar, blew water all over the place then proceeded to walk through where we set up camp. Fortunately no repeat performances.
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