Namibia is a big country, it turns out. And, we saw an awful lot of it thru the windows of our cars. No more so than on day 3 of the trip, a day we spent almost the entirety of in the car. Most of it on low-quality dirt roads.

Day 3

After fueling up in Keetmanshoop, we got back on the B1 heading south, before switching to the B4 west, another of the few paved roads in Namibia.

Day 3, as I may have given the impression, involved a lot of driving. The general plan for the day was:

• Drive down to Fish River Canyon and see the canyon
• Drive to Lüderitz, where we’d be spending the night

Simple little two step plan! “See” is doing a lot of work in that first bullet point, though. I think more accurately it would be:

• DRIVE TO FISH RIVER CANYON

• See the canyon

• DRIVE TO LÜDERITZ

It wasn’t long on the B4 until we had to take a left onto the C12, and spend many hours on a not too great dirt road, taking turns who was leading, and who was eating the other’s dust. We went a long while only subsisting on each other’s dust before we needed something more filling. We were trying to decide on when to take a break and make lunch, when signs started to show up on the side of the road.

One thing I don’t think I’ve made clear up till now is how desolate Namibia is. Those pictures from our last post? They weren’t just us being in some kind of park, or nature area, that’s Namibia. That’s how everything looks. There aren’t houses in sight. There aren’t gas stations conveniently spaced–gas stops must be planned ahead of time. There aren’t billboards or signs or anything. All there is, is beautiful, vast, majestic scenery, with one lonely road cutting through it. And every now and then: you intersect another lonely road.

So when we started to see signs for… something… anything, it was a big deal. It was an even bigger deal when Erika exclaimed, “Apfel strudel?! Coffee?!? Tea?!?!”

Sarah’s voice came over the radio. “Uh, you guys know we are stopping here, right?”

Of course we knew that.

We did stop there, dear reader. And my god, was the apfel strudel and french press so very good.

The owner of the place was delightful, with some hilariously strong opinions about various areas of the country.

“Oh, Lüderitz is just an awful place,” she spat. Swakopmund, though, she had much better things to say about. She also highly suggested the driving route out of Fish River Canyon that took you along the South Africa border. That would have added a good amount to our day of driving, though, so that wasn’t going to happen.

“But Lüderitz, ugh, what a stupid place to build a city,” she declared. Well, we can’t wait to be there!

We treasured the last of our strudel and coffee, and got ready to climb back into our vehicles. But, not before taking advantage of the adorable grounds of the place for some pictures!

To Fish River Canyon

We still had a good bit of driving to do to get to the canyon, so we put an end to our break and got back to it. The dirt road stretched on, and then turned into a ‘D’ road, which is generally considered even lower quality than ‘C’ roads.

Eventually, finally, we got to Hobas, and the entrance of the park. After paying the inexpensive entrance fee, we got back in the cars… because we still had 10 kilometers more to drive to the canyon overlook. Ugh, it’s just unreachable isn’t it?

It is reachable, but only just. We got out there, finally, and have the pictures to prove it!

Still having a long distance to drive, and a decreasing amount of daylight to do it in, we were only able to spend a few minutes there taking in the views. Sadly, we piled back into the trucks.

On our way out of the canyon, the animals of Namibia finally started to make an appearance. We saw a small herd of impala running across the road, a few oryx, and (drum-roll please)… zebras!

Writing this so much later like I am, after all that Erika and I did and saw in Africa, I’m finding it hard to believe that we got all that excited about impala and zebras. Nevertheless, they were our first animals in Africa, cut us some slack.

With greater confidence on the dirt roads now, we were able to make much better time on our way out of the canyon back to the paved B4. We turned west on the B4, and settled in for the long drive to the coast.

The Mad Dash for Lüderitz

Finally, in late afternoon we arrived in the tiny dot on the map that is Aus. We were rapidly running out of sunlight, but definitely needed to refuel our cars, so we stopped to do so. I tried to refuel on cash from the ATM, and succeeded in running the machine out of money.

After way too slow a stop at the gas station, we got back on the B4 for the frantic race against the setting sun. We still had 125 kilometers to go, and nowhere near 125 kilometers worth of sun remaining. So we pushed our trucks to higher and higher speeds, to get as much done in the dying light as we could.

We were driving almost due west, with the sun coming down on the horizon right in front of us. As we descended the foothills of Namibia heading for the coast, we were gifted vast, sweeping vistas of ridiculous Namibian landscapes, and one of the greatest sunsets we’ve ever seen.

It was awesome and awe inspiring, and briefly distracted from the impending terror of driving in the dark.

When the dark came, it was dark. Indescribably dark. There are no street lights, no lights from nearby houses (there aren’t nearby houses), no distant glow of cities (there are no cities), not even other cars–it was just us out there. We raced through the early darkness and finally made it to Lüderitz.

We went straight for dinner at a place Sarah and Brennan looked up in their guide books. There, WWE was on the TV as we ate fish and chips and drank very light, but very alright, lagers. I thought the WWE was a strange choice.

We got to our hotel room for the evening, which was a lovely two-bedroom place, with two cats who lived at the hotel. We fought with the WiFi to get our first sweet, sweet tastes of internet we’d had in days, and got to bed early to do it all again tomorrow.

Next Time, on Namibia Travels…

The gang goes to a touristy ghost town, and gets a good lesson in the whitewashing of history by moneyed interests. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you soon!