After the stunning experience of the dunes the day before, we were hungry for some more time outdoors. We’d each found a hike in our guidebooks that was “nearby” Sesriem, so that made an easy decision. For day 6, let’s go hiking!

Day 6

“Nearby” is something I hadn’t fully calibrated to Namibia yet. Sure, the trail-head was only 90 kilometers away, but it still hadn’t sunk in yet just how long that takes on Namibian dirt roads. Over 2 hours of driving later, it was painfully clear today would not be the light driving day I’d imagined.

The park area is something of a preserve for mountain zebra. “Get me a zebra,” Erika insisted, and I tried to provide, but we didn’t see any zebra on our way in.

Finally, we arrived at the trail-head and set off on our hike. The parking lot was small, but this place was remote, and there was only one other car there when we parked.

The Olive Trail

We were hiking the Olive Trail, in the Namib Naukluft Park. The hike is a 10km circuit, and begins by climbing the slope immediately, leaving you exposed but providing increasingly fantastic vistas as you climb higher. This part of the trail winds through wild olive trees, which is where the hike’s name comes from.

The trail continues climbing upward toward a ridge. Reaching that gives even better views, and a beautiful spot to stop and have lunch, which is exactly what we do.

We walk along the ridge briefly, before the trail starts to descend again into the valley below. The descent is fairly quick, over large rocks. At the bottom of the valley, we find ourselves in an old, dry riverbed. The hiking from this point continues downhill, gradually, but over increasingly large and imposing rock formations.

Clambering Through a Riverbed

The hike in the valley is absolutely beautiful. It’s a deep, narrow slit carved out of the mountain, where the walls on both sides sometimes tower a hundred feet above. Despite the gradual decline, it’s slow going due to all the rock you have to clamber over, but also because the rock is stunning. Composed of beautiful, colorful layers, sometimes rough material, sometimes smooth, you can’t help but slow down and gawk at it. Brennan, especially, couldn’t help but slow down and gawk at it.

The towering cliffs are sometimes dotted with our old friend the quiver tree, which gives some crazy visuals, as you see the quiver trees poking out of the cliffs in random directions.

As a familiar refrain now: it’s getting late in the day, and I’m very conscious of how much sunlight is left. Our pace is slowing a lot on account of the increasingly large rocks in the riverbed that we have to navigate. A few times, we come to a stop for minutes at a time as we have to help everyone descend particularly sheer, tricky portions. The heightened difficulty, and the ticking clock of the sun, have me getting nervous.

The Obstacle

While descending one of these difficult areas, we start to hear voices ahead of us. Mind you, we haven’t seen other people all day long. We passed no cars on the drive to the hike, only saw the one other vehicle at the car park, and hadn’t yet seen any people on the trail. Once all four of us are down the rock challenge, we head up the path, turn the corner, and find the source of the voices.

We also run headlong into what will keep us stuck in that spot for the next 30 minutes.

It was a new obstacle, considerably higher level than the previous ones we’ve been dealing with. It was the boss at the end of the dungeon. It was also why we caught up to the voices now: they’d been sitting there over half an hour trying to figure out what to do.

In the guide books and descriptions online, this portion was called out, and was described alternately as a “chain bridge,” or a “chain ladder,” or sometimes just “the chains.” And that was really as good as the description got, but it should have been better! It should have been more explicit!

The obstacle was: about an 8-foot plunge into pools of water, with a thin ledge down one side, the other with an even thinner ledge on a very sheer rock, and the ledge would frequently disappear. Along both these sides, chains were strung, and pinned into the rock face.

You know, a chain bridge! What the hell, guide books?

I couldn’t really tell how deep the pool was, but certainly falling the 8-feet into it would suck. Also, the water was so disgusting that I think you’d be lucky to emerge from it with only flesh eating bacteria. I’d almost rather it were just rock to plummet to.

The left side had, what seemed to me, the thinner ledge, and also seemed to be a much longer traverse, though the chain extended fully from where you’d start to where you’d finish. There were parts where there really was no ledge, and you’d basically just be rappelling, letting the chain hold your weight. The right side seemed much shorter and with a better ledge to stand on. However, for some reason the chain didn’t start where you started—you’d have to make a few daring chain-less moves to reach the chain—plus, the rock wall was much more vertical, meaning you’d have to glue yourself to the wall with no real room to maneuver.

Choices, choices.

Tackling the Chain Bridge

I stepped out onto the right side ledge, and shimmied my way down to where the chain started, to get a better look around to corner and decide which side I wanted to try. The left side still seemed like a much longer run, but the right side did, I found, have one rather ugly, somewhat blind step around a corner. Though, you’d be aided with the chain when making the step.

Brennan stepped out onto the left side and decided to give that a go. His height helped, but most of the traverse really was just putting his body weight into the chain, and walking rappel-style across the wall. It was a long way to go, but he made it with no problem.

I decided to try the right side that I was already on. Giving one glance to the pool of disease below me, I tried to think of all I’d learned from rock climbing, and stepped around the corner. It was an awkward step, but once your foot found a hold, and you could swing your other foot out onto that ledge as well, the rest of the run was very easy. I joined Brennan in the endzone.

Sarah went next, opting for the side I took. Naturally, the first few moves without the chains were uneasy, and the step around the corner challenging, but soon Sarah joined Brennan and I, and we awaited Erika.

She wasn’t sure which way to take. Understandably, she didn’t like those first unaided steps on the side I took, but the other side seemed so much longer. She eventually decided on the same side Sarah and I took. Her rock climbing must have helped too, because just like when we climb, she looked fearless on there, and quickly she joined the three of us.

And then there were two. The voices.

The voices were an older couple, maybe in their 50s or 60s, who also didn’t know what they were getting into with this “chain bridge.” They even went to the park ranger office, and the rangers didn’t even say anything like “say, you guys know about the chain bridge”!

Turning around and backtracking, instead of tackling The Obstacle, was an option, but it would be lengthy, and it was getting late. We couldn’t just run off and leave them to their fate, so we waited until, emboldened by our victory over The Obstacle, they decided to give it a try. Brennan immediately jumped into action to help them.

Abject Terror

For some reason, they both decided to try Brennan’s side. She went first, nervously taking the chain in her hands and stepping out onto the tiny ledges.

“Oh shit, oh god, oh shit,” she squeaked repeatedly, in her nervously shaky British accent.

She had a death grip on the chain as she made her way along the “easy part,” the beginning where there are plenty of (admittedly, thin) places to use as foot holds. Then she got to the “hard part” and got stuck for a long time.

At the hard part, the foot holds mostly drop out, and you really have two choices. You extend your arms fully, giving you more length so that you can step lower down to reach some foot holds further below. Or, you extend your arms and let the chain take your full weight, and then walk rappel-style across the rest of the wall, which is what Brennan had done.

She had her arms curled tightly in front of her, T-rex style, while squeezing the life out of the chain, and wasn’t really willing to let go of that feeling of security to extend her arms. So she was stuck.

She kept taking tentative steps, then retreating when she realized, again, that there were no holds. Brennan was most of the way out on the wall at this point, but there was still nothing he could really do to help her other than offer advice and encouragement. Finally, she tried her tentative step again, but was resolved to go through with it. There were still, however, no foot holds, and so she fell from the wall, slowly and awkwardly, screaming out as she did. Fortunately, she didn’t let go of the chain, and the chain held her, pressed against the wall.

My heart was in my throat.

Now that her weight was on the chain, she was able to start walking across the wall like she should have, until she reached Brennan and he helped her the rest of the way. She gave Brennan a big hug and kiss on the cheek once she was safely on the ground, and it was hilarious and adorable.

Jesus, one bullet dodged, please let us dodge this last one!

Her husband started out onto the wall, and I immediately noticed a confidence in him that was not justified. He was taking confident steps, but they were awkward and his technique was sloppy. As I told Erika later on, I realized then that he was a bigger fall danger than his wife—at least she realized she didn’t know what she was doing.

He quickly made his way to the “hard part,” and tried a couple times fruitlessly to find a foot hold, just as his wife had. However, he didn’t wait nearly as long before trying a move that couldn’t succeed, and just as his wife had, he also fell from the wall, quickly as his feet slid out from under him. He thankfully also didn’t let go of the chain, and as it pulled taut and caught his weight, he jerked violently and I feared that second impulse would shake him off.

But it didn’t, and as I bit all my nails off, he slowly made his way, bleeding from his scraped up elbows and arms, to Brennan who helped him the rest of the way.

Now it was Sarah’s turn to jump into action. They’d brought a first aid kit, and Sarah immediately put her field medical work to use in getting the man cleaned and patched up.

As Brennan and Sarah were superheros and saved this couple’s day, Erika and I just sat, watching, eating oranges. We appropriately felt like the worst, but there was nothing we could do to help that wouldn’t just get in the way.

Racing the Sunset… Again

The sun was getting low, and we needed to pick up the pace now. Fortunately, that was the last significant obstacle, so we were able speed up. Soon, the riverbed started to widen, and we came out of the more canyon-esque portion of it, and started to climb up and out.

As we were ascending back out of the valley, Erika stopped because she thought she saw something up and to our left. We climbed up a bit, stopped and… yep.

“I got you that zebra you wanted, honey,” I said.

It was the bleached white bones of a zebra carcass. In the dry desert air, it decays slowly, so there was still a good portion of the pelt left. You could see the faint black and white stripes on it.

Okay. So maybe there are leopards in this area. We should get going!

We saw another zebra carcass on the way out, and more bones scattered about as well. Carnage on the olive trail!

Finally, we were back at the parking lot! The couple we’d nearly watched die came back into the parking lot shortly after us, while we were still getting situated back in our trucks. The woman came up to Brennan, and very sweetly gave him a bottle of wine for his help back at The Obstacle.

They had been driving a caravan through Africa, that they’d brought down from Europe. It still had the German plates on it, as he was from Germany.

One More Surprise

We bade them farewell, and got to the task of getting back to Sesriem to camp. As was our custom, we were racing the coming darkness, and going as fast as we felt comfortable on the terribly shitty dirt roads.

Just after dark, we finally got to the gates of the national park in Sesriem. Our campsite for the night was on the national park grounds, just on the other side of the gate. Brennan was in front and spoke to the guard at the gate, and their conversation was taking forever.

“What, are they like inspecting the car?” I asked Erika as the guard stepped back and was looking at Brennan’s car. She of course had no way to answer my question.

Finally, he let us pass, and when we parked to check into the camp, we found out what the deal was: Brennan had a flat tire, and the guard had noticed and pointed it out.

Understandably, Brennan was pretty grumpy about this. We drove to our pitch, and set up our camp while Brennan changed the flat tire on his car. Naturally, I walked around our car and looked at our tires. One of them looked a bit low, but otherwise nothing seemed noticeable.

We made dinner, and helped Sarah and Brennan get their campsite set up while Brennan finished with his tire. We had the bottle of wine that Brennan had been gifted, so that was nice at least. And we tried to remember and recount what an awesome hike we’d had. This was our last night of camping in Namibia—we were staying in an AirBnb after that—so it was too bad it was ending on something of a sour note.

After dinner, we started taking supplies back to our truck to put them away, and I noticed that I wasn’t wrong: our tire was low, and now it was flat.

Jesus Christ.

I’d never changed a tire before, so Brennan walked me through it and I got it done. No big deal as it turns out, really, but still… two flat tires on one drive?!

What a day.

Next Time, On Namibia Travels…

We head north to the very German looking village of Swakopmund, where we’ll spend the last few nights of the Namibia safari. Plus: dune surfing!