South Africa • Namibia • Botswana • Zimbabwe
This was probably the oddest trip I have taken, and a very mixed experience. I went with Dragoman, who specialise in long drives across continents. Their monstrous vehicles look like something Dr Frankenstein created – a truck chassis as a base for driving across the long and sometimes difficult terrain, with a bus upper bolted on to hold passengers. This particular route was from Cape Town all the way to Cairo, with getting on/off points along the way. My itinerary was from the Cape to the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, driving through western South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.
The basic cost is relatively cheap but that meant camping pretty much every night for a month. Everyone is expected to contribute to shopping, cooking, cleaning and packing up. We paid into a kitty for food and petrol. Normally they expect about 20 travellers, but ours consisted of seven people only: three young Germans, four English, plus an English guide and two local drivers. I was surprised the trip was running with so few of us.
Despite the low turnout, it was a non-stop saga of emotions – affairs, fallings out, and spoilt, entitled, ugly first world behaviour. Our guide announced on the first day that this was the last time he was doing this trip as he was ‘fed up of it’ and we had to suffer the consequences of his negativity. He had clearly checked out, rolling his eyes about everything, being unhelpful. He was even sleeping with one of the group, which we all knew despite them sneaking around like teenagers. I couldn’t quite believe I was stuck with this lot, I found myself wishing that there had been a few more on the trip to dilute the effect. None of this is Dragoman’s fault, I like the idea of a very basic trip, but I would be reluctant to travel with them again.
Enough of the negatives, I saw a lot of very wonderful things in a month – vineyards, desert, big game, tribes, ocean and river, and the mother of all waterfalls. To see so much variety inevitably meant long days driving – sometimes that’s all we did for a couple of days. But when we did stop to see something, it was usually spectacular.
I started in Cape Town with a couple of days ahead of joining the group. I wasn’t here long but I didn’t warm to the city. I found it hard to find the its heart not helped by the awkward layout around Table Mountain. I spent an afternoon at the aquarium but struggle to remember much about it. The highlight was getting out of the city to the Cape of Good Hope, not quite the point where the western Agulhas current and the eastern Benguela current slap into each other, but close enough to make the coastline dramatic and dangerous.
We drove back via Boulders Beach to see the African penguins. This may be the only time I will ever see penguins in the wild and they didn’t disappoint.
The next day I met the group on the other side of Table Mountain and we set off north. Our first night was in a vineyard in the Cederberg mountains. I am not a wine expert, and I usually find it all a bit of a bore, but I loved the wines we drank here, and I have sought them out ever since. We swam in a sweet little pool, enjoyed a braai, and drank lots of wine watching the sun set before pitching our tents for the first time in their backyard.
My tent was called ‘zebra’ and I had a comfortable night. The next morning we realised how careful we would need to be packing the tents up as one of them had a large scorpion underneath.
We stopped at Springbok, and old copper mining town and you could still see traces of minerals in the rock. I changed some money which was much harder than it should have been in a border town, and we bought some food and then crossed into Namibia. At the crossing, some intimidating South African police officers got on our truck and warned us about carrying anything illegal. One of them was leaning on the onboard chest freezer that contained a lot of contraband meat we were taking with us. Luckily he didn’t ask to look inside. We arrived at the Felix Unite camping site quite late but in time to see the last of the sun over the Orange River.
The next day I spent the morning reading and swimming and then we drove to the lovely Ai-Ais hot springs. Some of the pools were extremely hot but the main pool was the perfect temperature and empty so I had my second swim of the day. Normally this place is full of tourists but we were travelling off-season and it should have been raining.
The area is dominated by the stunning Fish River Canyon, one of the biggest in the world although few people, myself included prior to this trip, have heard of it. The view above would be even more spectacular when the river was flowing at full force.
The quiver tree, so called because its hollowed-out trunk was used by the San people to hold arrows.
Pale-winged starling. I had brought a small book on birds of Southern Africa with me and I ticked off many of them while I was there.
The first wild animal I saw was one of my top ten favourite animals – the mad-looking giraffe. Really, it shouldn’t have been wandering in this dry terrain, but the late rains were forcing animals were moving far and wide in search of water.
I saw lots of different sorts of antelope in Africa. These are oryx which, we were told, ‘never run’, but started running as soon as our juggernaut pulled over to say ‘hello’. We also saw kudu and springbok along this road.
The drive to Sesriem campsite and the Namib-Naukluft Park was very long, but the scenery was spectacular, Namibia is a geological wonder – so many beautiful, colourful, ancient rocks. We passed what is known as the Giants Playground so called because of a legend that giants moved these huge boulders, and stacked some like Jenga blocks. Apparently they came out of the ground about 180 millions years ago. This is the place to come for mind-boggling, deep-time numbers.
Equally wondrous are the many termite mounds that you see along the edge of the road and look like chimneys of something living underground, and the nests of the sociable weaver birds who are one of the few birds that build community nests. There was a spectacular example of this at the campsite.
We got up very early to get to Sossusvlei and climb the famous Dune 45. The red sand is made up of dust that has blown here from the Kalahari desert and is about five million years old. Climbing a sand dune looks easy, but every footstep sinks into the sand and it took a lot of energy to get to the top. I was glad we had got here early as it looked stunning in the sunrise with one side shaded.
Our exertion was rewarded when we got back down with bacon sandwiches. This pied crow flew down and stole one of them out of someone’s hands – luckily not mine.
Footprints photo
Nothing could prepare me for the weirdness that is Deadvlei. The word ‘vlei’ means marsh and the dampness had allowed these camel thorn trees to flourish a few hundred years ago. Around the 14th century the climate changed and the vlei became dessicated causing the trees to die, but the heat was so intense that the skeletons survived and created this very strange environment. It looked like a stage set, the trees are almost like cardboard cut-outs set against the white salt pan ground, and surrounded by the colourful dunes. This is definitely one of the places on this trip that made up for all the long days of driving.
Afterwards we drove to Bosmans Farm Camp via Solitaire where we found a bakery that had been opened by a Scot called Moose McGregor, and famous for its amazing apple pies. Very tasty but not what I expected to be eating in the desert.
The drive to the campsite was the hottest yet. When we got there I noticed a tempting swimming pool and I wondered why it was completely empty as it was insanely hot. I got in anyway and discovered why: the water was filthy with lots of things, some of them alive, floating around. The woman from the bar came out and asked if I was enjoying my swim. Yes, I said, but casually mentioned it was a bit dirty. Apparently they don’t use any chemical cleaners ‘because of the leopards’ who come down at night and use it as a watering hole. I was basically swimming in leopard spit. Luckily the site had fantastic showers.
After the drama of the vleis and the sand dunes, we went to the calm Walvis Bay to watch the flamingos, lesser and greater, and then to Swakopmund to have a break for a few days. The whole group was supposed to share a dorm here, but I spent a bit of money and upgraded to a single room. It was so nice to be on my own.
It feels like quite a small town but it is the fourth largest urban area in Namibia. I loved that it’s where the Namib Desert hits the Atlantic Ocean and it would have been wonderful, but unaffordable, to do a scenic flight along this coast. There is a lot of other things to do around here like sand surfing and quad biking but they’re not really my thing. I spent the time reading, doing my washing, and getting supplies. We were delayed leaving town by two of our small party who had forgotten to get their required yellow fever jabs before the trips. So our time was limited along the coast which was a shame as it’s the Skeleton Coast famous for its shipwrecks.
We did get to the Cape Cross seal sanctuary. I don’t have much affinity for seals on land – I have always felt they look curiously unevolved as they flop about aggressively compared with their agillity in the water. But it was interesting to see their community up close and personal, although there were lots of dead pups around, mostly killed by rival adults, and the smell was quite intense.
The rock formations at Spitzkoppe (‘pointed dome’ in German) are more than 120 million years old. Namibia is the place to go for mind-blowing, deep time statistics. Spitzkoppe is a special place for many reasons and one of my favourites. As well as the rock formations, there is a lot of rock art, thought to be 2000-4000 years old, left by the San people.
One of the locals took us on a walk to see some of it. It’s thought that the bushmen left messages for others, or they may have had spiritual meaning, but unlikely to be just decorative. There were pictures of rhinos, lions and, on one wall, we could see an octopus. We were miles from the sea there, so that shows how far and wide they wandered. They also emptied ostrich eggs, filled them with water, and buried them for future use.
I didn’t see much wildlife in this very dry place not helped by very late rains. But I did find this neat little nest – possibly a weaver bird?
Later, I turned my back on the bickering group and pitched my tent facing this view. I would never have got this spot in the high season. I enjoyed a peaceful evening contemplating the ages of these rocks and feeling very insignificant (in a good way).
We spent a couple of days camping in Etosha National Park. What a beautiful place it is and vast – 22270km². It was a chance to see so many of the big animals in one place.
There are several watering holes in Etosha, all looking a bit dried out as they wait for the rains. Lots of animals gather around them and it all seems very civilised as long as the lions don’t turn up.
Near the Okaukuejo campsite where we were staying, there was a floodlit watering hole where we watched black rhinos and elephants come and drink. The rhinos are endangered due to the Asian market for their horns, and it shocked me to learn that poaching even takes place within the park itself despite being the most important custodians of the species.
During the night I could hear something next to my tent making very lion-like noises. I asked one of the rangers the next morning what this might have been. ‘’That was actual lions’ he said, ‘You pitched your tent right by the fence, they could probably smell you’.
We spent some time watching the lions including this mother and her cubs. She was obviously wary even though we really weren’t that close. One male lion did come by our truck and roar his disapproval.
Etosha is located on a huge salt pan and its name means ‘great white place’. Apparently, when it’s at its whitest, you can see it from space. In the foreground Blue Wildebeest.
On our second evening we were heading back to the campsite and we saw a few jeeps parked ahead. They were not happy about our monster truck approaching and we found out why – a juvenile leopard had been spotted in the scrub. We parked a little way off and sat quietly and luckily he passed us before disappearing. They are usually hard to spot – their coats blend perfectly with the scrubby background. They also spend a lot of time sitting in trees.
The Big Five Game are the animals that were traditionally the hardest to hunt on foot. Thankfully the name is now used more by tourists to refer to the five big animals to spot in Africa. They are rhino, elephant, lion, leopard and African buffalo. When we left Etosha, we had seen four of them.
We drove further to northern Namibia and stayed at Roy’s Farm. A lovely campsite and a touch of luxury – we were camping on grass for the first time since the vineyard! I did lots of washing which I hung on a proper washing line and it dried really quickly. I drank a couple of cocktails and lounged around in the pool. Later on, we went to their sweet little watering hole and saw tiny dik-dik.
We visited a San settlement, specifically the Jul’hoansi. These people were traditionally nomads, traversing vast areas, but were dispossessed of their ancestral land during the apartheid era, and struggled during the AIDS crisis. Now, they have very few rights and live in comparatively cramped western-style settlements. Many of them live in extreme poverty with alcoholism becoming a big problem.
They dress down into traditional clothing and do demonstrations of crafts and bushcraft for tourists. Although it was interesting, it was a display that was understandably half-hearted. Tourism seems an obvious source of income for these people, but it needs to be done in a way that uses their innate bush skills in a practical, rather than performative, way. It was disappointing to learn they had been driven way from Etosha NP which would have given them a chance to do this (although I believe they since have been given land there in 2023).
Our last night in Namibia was the Rainbow Lodge on the banks of the Okavango river, close to the border with Botswana. We arrived late, and left early so didn’t make the most of its beautiful setting.