2Taylors

The owner at Sophia Dale let us use their internet connection before we left without charging us for it, which was really nice of him and allowed me to get some posts up to date.

We had an easy drive to Spitzkoppe where we camped last night and again tonight. The camp is community run and the sites are scattered throughout the area in between the huge rocks. We are staying at site 9 which is sheltered from the wind and has a reasonably level spot to park the car so we aren’t sliding out of bed.

Last night we had our first bush shower as there are no amenities unless you want to drive a couple of kilometres back to the gate. It was pretty luxurious really as we have a hot water unit with a shower handle attached to it, and whilst we have to be quick to save water, it definitely makes you feel much cleaner.

Last night whilst we were eating dinner we had a Spotted Genet walk about 3 metres from where we were sitting. It is only small like a cat, but neither of us had seen one before so it was pretty cool. There are also lots of colourful lizards running around on the rocks.

The rocks around the area are large and red and quite scenic. It is popular with climbers as there are some vertical rock faces for them.

Today we are having a rest day at Spitzkoppe, allowing us to catch up on some washing, clean out the car and let it dry out (I think the tap for the water tank got opened a little whilst we were driving over some really rough roads the other day and the carpet is now quite wet and makes the whole car stink).

We will head off to the Skeleton Coast tomorrow.

Today we visited the rock engravings at Twyfelfontein, the Petrified Forest, Burnt Mountain and the Organ Pipes. The rock engravings were really interesting. They believe they are between 2000 and 6000 years old and were done by the San Bushmen as a means of communicating to other tribes. The engravings are all of animals and their footprints rather than people. There engravings of seals and penguins which means the San people must have travelled inland from the coast which is over 100km away.

Burnt Mountain looks to me just like a heap of gravel rubbish dumped beside the road from roadworks, but I guess everyone sees things differently.

The Organ Pipes are a bit of an oddity. They are rocks that have formed into tall, split pieces of rocks that resemble organ pipes.

The Petrified Forest was simple, but to see the trees was pretty cool. They still look like fallen trees, bark and all, yet they have turned into stone. They apparently travelled here from central Africa during floods. The guide here was pretty unenthusiastic, unlike our guide at the rock engravings unfortunately as I am sure we could have learnt a bit more about the place, but it was worth a look.

We left the area and headed towards Palmwag where we got our first puncture about 20 minutes from where we were staying. No big deal and easily fixed, but annoying to have to get the jack off the roof and change the tyre. We were lucky though that it happened on a nice flat piece of road and that we realised earlier that we didn’t have a wheel brace with us and bought one. The hi-lift jack though decided that it didn’t want to go down so we had to kick it out of place (not so good).

We stayed the night at the Palmwag Lodge camp. The camp is quite expensive compared to other places, although we did get a site to ourselves with our own shower and toilet. I do not think though it is worth the money unless you need somewhere where you can eat in the restaurant.                          

The road to Epupa Falls was far better than expected. There were lots of gullies in the road, very small water crossings that required us to slow down and a little bit of mud, but the road itself was in good condition. We are very much in Himba country now.

We are staying at the community run Epupa Falls campsite for 2 nights which is situated literally on the river right at the falls. Our campsite is on the river’s edge and we are sitting about 10m from it and about 200m from Angola. The river is about 20cm below ground level, so it is pretty full. The sound of the water rushing over the edge is quite loud, but it means you can’t hear any of the other campers even if they are close, so it is quite good. Our site is very shady and pleasant. There are showers and toilets however they don’t heat the water until May, so we had our first cold shower, but it wasn’t so bad as it is quite hot here.

The falls themselves are pretty impressive. There is an awful lot of water coming from somewhere to spill at such a rate over them. There are a number of falls flowing at speed where we are. In the picture, our camp is just at the top of the falls.

This morning we visited a Himba village with just ourselves and a guide. The guide organises food supplies to take with you as a gift such as maize, oil and salt. It was very interesting. They really live the way you see them on documentaries on TV. They live in small mud huts, get milk from their goats and cows and dress in animal skins. The women coat themselves with a mixture of ochre and cow fat every day once they turn 16. They adorn themselves with jewellery around their necks, wrists and ankles and wear decorated belts. They still live an extremely simple life relying mainly on the land around them for survival. There was very little sign of the western world in their village, just a couple of plastic buckets and a metal spoon was about all I saw. The rest was either skins or containers made from trees or plants.