We're back in school starting our third and final term of the Namibian school year. But just before we launched into this term we had a 12 day holiday.
Our main mission: to hike the steep, wide & adventure-loaded Fish River Canyon from the Hobas viewpoint until Ais-Ais Hot Springs, a mere 85km as the river flows. All in 4 nights, 5 days. Recommended by a teacher at Stelly's (thank you Kevin Smyth!) before we left, it was a goal we have had in mind since we decided to come to Namibia.
Our main mission: to hike the steep, wide & adventure-loaded Fish River Canyon from the Hobas viewpoint until Ais-Ais Hot Springs, a mere 85km as the river flows. All in 4 nights, 5 days. Recommended by a teacher at Stelly's (thank you Kevin Smyth!) before we left, it was a goal we have had in mind since we decided to come to Namibia.
Our first adventure occured before we hit the canyon. After driving for 2 days (we live near Angola, the canyon is very close to Namibia's South African border) our car wheel started making a terrible noise. I correctly ID'd it as a busted wheel bearing, a common problem of bicycle wheels. Fortunately, we were just outside Keetmanshoop, which houses the most petrol stations per capita and we found a mechanic. One wheel axle and a night in Keetmanshoop Caravan Park & we managed to make it to the canyon...only about 5 or so hours behind schedule.
The trail starts at the most majestic part of the canyon--long U-bends and steep steep cliffs (see photos). The first few kilometres involve basically climbing down the cliff-side using metal chains and all 4 limbs. Your packs are fully loaded at this point too so after a few hundred metres of vertical decending your legs are pretty quakey. Luckily the descent only lasts about 1h 45min and then you're on "flat" canyon floor.
Once we got to the bottom, we only did a few kilometres of hiking before we set up camp, as we were told that due to our youth we would probably make it to our second day destination (about 15km) down the river, by maybe noon. WRONG!!!! Day 2 was a LONG slow day. The first 7-8km were slow trudges along steep cliffsides, hopping large rocks, with some boulder & sand trudging for good measure. And boy that sun is hot at mid-day. At one point we chose the "wrong" side of the river and had some pretty angled walking to do and had to take off our packs and pass them at a few locations. Eventually that fun stuff ended and our last few kilometres went quickly. We made it to the Palms & Hotsprings of "Palm Springs" just as I was about to give up & set up camp rather than hop another boulder field. We spent the evening limping around camp and trying to enjoy the way too hot hotsprings.
Day 3 the terrain became "easier" and we increased our daily speed to about 25km. What easier means is that you no longer have to scramble or climb but find the terrain starts to follow a familiar pattern....Deep Sand Walking for 2km, Rock/dirt walking for 2-3km, then 1-3km of large boulder hopping, then repeat. The dirt walking allows you to forget momentarily how awful you felt hopping boulders or trudging in the sand. This day allowed us to look up a little more and we saw many new creatures-- really awesome scorpions, baboons galore, klipspringer (cliff jumping antelope),wild horses and Chris even spied a rare Cape River Otter. The end of the day ended with what the map called "the boulder field"--which terrified me as I thought we'd already passed about 10 of these already, none which got a title on the map. Yup, another couple kms of boulder hopping...not as bad as imagined, but enough to make me force the group to call it quits for the night.
Nights on the trail were all that you hoped for--warm winds, wandering animals, star & moon-filled skies and lots of silence. We were lucky to have water the whole way (sometimes the river is dry at the end) and we treated the water the same you would at home--except we doubled the dosage of chlorine drops. Southern Namibia is fortunate to not have as many of the scary water-borne diseases that tropical Africa has, so we took advantage of this.
Day 4--Lots of hiking just like day 3 except we got to do 2 short cuts to save time and distance. Took a short visit to Von Trotha's grave where he died while fighting the Nama with the Afrikaaners around the turn of the century (or fighting them off their land basically). Another nice night with more baboons and howling jackals and then a quick 18km and we were at Ais Ais--which is a just redeveloped hotspring resort. So we ended up camping in paradise and had a luxurious dinner out and spend a few hours in their hotspring pools. Not a bad way to end a hike, eh?
The rest of our vacation was spent meandering our way up north. It included some time in Windhoek to buy some luxury foods (ex. tortillas & sprouts), a night at our favourite mountain, Spitzkoppe, a visit with a friend, a petrified forest & the San rock engravings at Twyflefontein (which are awesome!) and some cheetah petting time. Our last night camping was in Damaraland in which we had the Planet Earth "desert elephant" walk into our campground as we were checking in. Awesome! We also had to evacuate to the car in the middle of the night as I awoke to the trees nearby being torn down... in the morning we had elephant footprints about 6m from our tent. Cool.
I must admit, it seems pretty easy in Africa to have a really kick-ass vacation! For more photos of our trip go to our flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/31870881@N06/
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