Most of the time all 5 kids rode with me in the combi.
The first day we drove over an absolutely gorgeous pass leaving the Hochland Highlands where Windhoek is (we are at about 5,000 feet in elevation in Windhoek) toward the desert. We stayed in an extremely remote campground/lodge, which felt like it was at the end of the earth. It was about 30 kilometres off the “main road” on an extremely bumpy road, with the main road being a gravel road with nobody on it. The proprietors had been living in the desert along time; the man wore only shorts and nothing else, walking around barefoot on all of the sharp thorns. Our campsite was up in the rocks, and had an amazing view where you could see forever. The kids had a great time exploring the rocks, though I wasn’t too happy when they found a Scorpion. The campground was a lovely place, but the rocks formed sort of a wind tunnel.
In the middle of the night, the wind kept blowing down our tents and it was sort of miserable. At one point, Maxine and Alice got out of their tent, and the wind actually blew their tent away over the side of the cliff!! We all ended up sleeping in the car. The next day a worker brought it back, as she had found it stuck on a game fence a few kilometers away. After we had recovered from our windy night, we stopped by the lodge, and the owners of the place took us to see their pets, an orphan zebra and a donkey (apparently, the zebra and the donkey are “married”). The owner gives the zebra, named Linus, a cup of coffee every morning. The zebra came running down the hill for the coffee, sort of like I do in the morning for my coffee, and drank the coffee from the mug. The kids all got to ride the Linus the Zebra bareback, which was fun.
Off to an auspicious start - flat tire!
Entrance to Rooiklip - another 30 K to go.
Our campsite
Kids at sunset
Linus drinking coffee
Alice riding the zebra bareback
We then headed for our main destination, the Gobabeb Desert Research Centre, which is run by the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia. The road were pretty desolate on the way to Gobabeb, as you need a permit to enter this fragile part of the ecosystem. We saw some Ostrich, Springbok and Gemsbok on the way, and had a few instances where the combi went into sand pits in the road and was covered completely in a cloud of sand. We took a little break in a cool cave, and also drove by the Tropic of Capricorn.
Cave
Tropic of Capricorn
We were able to get permits and an invitation to visit because we were on the Fulbright programme, and because the person we were talking to was a student from Grinnell College who grew up in Minnesota! Gobabeb is almost 100% off-grid, making use of the almost universal Namibian sunshine to power itself with solar energy. The interest in solar energy is growing in Namibia, but I am surprised still at the resistance to solar energy here. There couldn’t be a better place for solar energy in the world.
Gobabeb Entrance
Touring the Solar Panels
Gobabeb lies at the intersection of the white gravelly plains type of desert, the red desert, and the dry riverbeds. As far as we could tell, the main research activities were documenting the insects, plants and other wildlife in the area. We were surprised that there weren’t actually more scientists there, as they have a great location and great facilities. While we got a tour of the facilities, the highlight of our stay at Gobabeb was going on a self-guided nature walk through all three landscapes. The kids, of course, preferred climbing the red dunes and running down them!
Kids on the hike
Gobabeb from the Red Dune
Climbing up the Dunes
Girls by the red dunes
The Riverbed
The next day we left Gobabeb, stopped in for refueling in Walvis Bay, and then headed for an area known as the Welwetchisa Plains. Welwitschia are Namibian plants that have only two leaves and lives for more than 1,000 years. It is a desert adapted plant, gaining its moisture solely from the fog that comes off the ocean. This area is quite a barren part of the country, and one part of it is called the “moonscape” as it resembles the moon. We saw the largest known Welwetschia plant there, which is about 4 meters wide and 1 ½ tall. While this region is a protected region that requires permits for entry, all care for the environment goes away when mining is concerned. There is a “uranium rush” occurring in Namibia, where lots of prospectors think they are going to get rich off of uranium. The government allows uranium prospectors to prospect anywhere, so it was very disconcerting to see all of this completely unregulated activity happening in this extremely delicate environment. They founder of he Desert Research Foundation of Namibia is quite upset about this, but is trying to get the Uranium prospectors to try not to ruin the entire desert in their quest for uranium. See this article here if you are interested.
Ruby at the Moonscape
Welwetschia Plains
The famous Welwetschia Plant
Uranium
Picnic in the Swapok River Valley
We camped that night at one of my favorite campsites we’ve stayed at in Namibia, called Bloedkoppie, which is Afrikaans for Blood Hill. The campsite was at this huge orangish/reddish hill, a granite inselberg. At sunset, the rock turns bright red. Of course, we all had to climb to the top of this rocky hill, which had amazing views. On the climb up, you see rock sculptures made from the erosion, which were quite beautiful. There were six campsites at Bloedkoppie, but it was only our group and a German couple in the whole place.
Bloedkoppie campsite from on top of the rock
Rock Sculpture
Ruby on top of BloedKoppie
Another view from on top of Bloedkoppie
We stopped by an old German fort on the way home
And climbed up another pass.
This whole trip I kept thinking, if this beautiful place was anywhere NEAR the United States, it would be overrun would tourists. Instead, we hardly saw a passing car the whole trip.
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