4x4 DESTINATION

Take a leisurely drive through Namibia’s lower half to see Africa’s largest canyon, wild horses and an abandoned town – and enjoy freshly baked apple tart in an arid desert.

This almost 2 000 km route winds through four of Namibia’s 14 official districts. Your journey begins at the Nakob border post, 130 km west of Upington. Follow the B3 main route to Karasburg – here’s where you can buy supplies before leaving the tar road shortly afterward. A dirt road starts at Grünau, a tiny settlement in the Karas district with only a handful of houses, a petrol station and a hotel with a swimming pool and four camping spots. Continue west out of Grünau and follow the C12 dirt road for 36 km to Klein-Karas – a hamlet that is even smaller than Grünau. The residents of Klein-Karas rely on goat farming. They’ve recently gained international renown for their Kangal and Anatolian shepherd dogs that defend the community’s goats against leopards and other predators. These dogs not only help the farmers, but also protect the big cats against extinction. A train track runs parallel to the dirt road between Grünau and Klein-Karas to the Holoogberg on the edge of the Ai-Ais-Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, and then the railway line turns north to Keetmanshoop.

A train track runs parallel to the dirt road between Grünau and Klein-Karas to the Holoogberg on the edge of the Ai-AisRichtersveld Transfrontier Park

Here’s where you turn left onto the C37 dirt road to the Canyon Roadhouse (S27.52481 E17.81521), where a shop full of souvenirs and trinkets await visitors. There’s a swimming pool, guest rooms as well as 10 stands for campers. It’s the restaurant, however, that gets the biggest hurray – the next place where you could get such a good meal will be Lüderitz, 500 km from here. Your next stop is Hobas – do make a stop at the Fish River Canyon’s lookout point. Follow a dreadful dirt road – corrugated by thousands of visitors – for 11 km across the plain of the Hunsvlakte to the edge of the canyon. This crack in the earth is 160 km long and the largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon in the US. There’s a visitor’s centre at a lookout point with a deck from which you can view the canyon from above. If you’re really brave (or foolish) enough, drive south on a twintrack to where you can look down the precipice without safety barriers. Don’t fall – the canyon is 500 m deep here. Hobas has 14 stands, but the typical camper here gets up at the break of dawn to go hike the canyon. Rather, get back onto the C37 and continue south to Ai-Ais. If you left Upington early morning, you should arrive at Ai-Ais by late afternoon (the distance between the two is 460 km), just in time to pitch a tent and soothe your aching muscles in the hot springs before lighting a fire for tonight’s braai. Ai-Ais’ spa has pools that are naturally heated by mineralrich spring water. You can also see the fountain from which the water bubbles up from deep within the earth. The fountain is caged to stop you from diving into the water – which is just as well since the mercury reaches 60 ºC. Ai-Ais’ campsite is spacious with palm trees and patches of grass ready for your tent pegs. The ablution facilities are old but still serviceable. When the weather cools down between May and September, hikers emerge from the canyon with radiant faces as they spot the resort after an exhausting five days on the 85 km hiking trail. Pat them on the shoulder and offer them a drink –they deserve it. REFUEL AT AI-AIS and follow the C10 back the way you came yesterday. After

10 km, turn right onto the D316 in the direction of the Noordoewer border post and, 23 km later, turn right again onto the D207, immediately after you cross the Gamka River. Start looking out for a twin-track after about 24 km, it turns off the D207 and enters a dry riverbed: this is the Gamka River route. The turn-off is sometimes indicated by a “4x4” sign, but the sign disappears every now and then, only to be replaced with a new one months later. The route takes you through a ravine surrounded by towering cliffs. If it’s been a while since the river flowed, you could master it in a two-wheel drive vehicle, provided you have good ground clearance, but sometimes the course of the river is so badly churned up that you have to engage four-wheel drive and low-range gears. If you enjoy wild camping, spend the night under the towering cliffs – just remember to leave nothing behind but footprints and tyre tracks. As soon as you reach the Orange River, turn right and follow the C13 along the river, past Stormberg and across the Fish River mouth, to the turn-off to the Sendelingsdrif border post. Stay on the C13 and drive through a beautiful valley to Rosh Pinah. This working mining town has some shops, a filling station and restaurants, but isn’t geared for tourism. Rather keep going and follow the C13 north – you’re now on a wide tarred road – to the Rekvlakte, a vast valley surrounded by granite hills. The C13 eventually ends at the B4 main road that connects Keetmanshoop and Lüderitz. Turn left here and head to the town of Aus for an ice-cold refreshment on the Bahnhof Hotel’s veranda – refuel here if needed. Do consider spending a night or two at Klein Aus Vista if you want to explore the area. They’ve got chalets and a lovely campsite with 10 stands – called the desert horse camp. It’s got hot showers and flush loos, but no electricity. Use Aus as a base to visit the Aus

Neus (a rock that resembles a nose), the Schutztruppe hiking trail and First World War memorials in the area. The most popular attraction near Aus is undoubtedly Garub’s wild horses. According to DNA research by Namibia’s wild horse trust, these animals are the descendants of one Emil Kreplin’s Kubub horse stud that was bought by the Union of South Africa in 1915 to invade German South West Africa. The Union troops’ temporary base on Garub was bombed by the Germans and as a result the horses fled into the desert where they could not be recaptured. Today, their descendants still roam here. Continue on the B4 main road until you reach Lüderitz Airport. Barely 1 km past the airport turn-off, you’ll find the ghost town of Kolmanskop on your left. The town sprung to life thanks to railway worker Zacharias Lewala who picked up a diamond at the Graskop railway stop in April 1908. The area was immediately declared a restricted area and the residents of the brand-new Kolmanskop quickly became wealthy. But the diamond field was exhausted relatively quickly, and barely 40 years later the town had fallen into poverty. The last resident left here in 1956… penniless. Some buildings, such as the theatre, ballroom and the mine manager’s residence, are preserved for posterity, but of most houses and mining buildings have been left to the desert that engulfs a little more of the town every day. You need at least an hour to see Kolmanskop – three hours would be better – and then it’s time to head toward the ocean and the historic coastal town of Lüderitz. The bay in which Lüderitz’s harbour was built had been mapped by the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias back in 1487, but the town itself wasn’t established until 1883 by the German tobacco magnate Adolf Lüderitz. The town is known for its beautiful German colonial houses and a bakery that bakes bread rolls, or brötchen, in the traditional German way. You need at least two days to get to know Lüderitz. Highlights include the agate beach where you’re allowed to pocket the most beautiful pebbles, Dias’s padrão (Portuguese for “stone cross”) and the lighthouse at Dias Point, as well as historical attractions such as the Felsenkirche – a Lutheran church built in 1912 – and the Goerke House. There are a number of guesthouses and inns in Lüderitz, but if you’re keen to camp, drive down Kreplin Street to Shark Island. This peninsula can either be heavenly with a light breeze that cools

This crack in the earth is 160 km long and the largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon in the US

you down after a sweltering hot day, or utterly awful when an icy wind tears over the rocks and it seems as if you and your tent will end up in the sea. Hopefully the weather plays along and you can relax peacefully next to a campfire while reflecting on Garub’s wild horses that have managed to survived in the inhospitable desert for more than a century, while the people of Kolmanskop with all their money and technology failed to do so.

DRIVE BACK TO AUS

on the B4 and turn off 4 km outside the town onto the F605 regional road in the direction of Helmeringhausen. This dirt road takes you over the plains of the Neisvlakte – on the northern edge of it you will find a road sign for the D707 regional road: turn left here. The D707 is a beautiful sightseeing road with the Namib-Naukluft National Park on your left and the Tiras Mountains on your right. The road surface is sandy, which won’t please adventure motorcyclists, but it’s not so bad that a car will get stuck. You’ve got an excellent chance of seeing game, especially small antelope such as duikers and springboks that sprint ahead of your car, hoping to find a gap in the fence so they can escape into the veld. Two hours and 120 km later, the D707 ends at the Spes Bona farming community in the Hardap district. Watch out for cattle and donkeys straying into the road – a good reason to not drive on Namibia’s dirt roads after dark – and follow the C27 to Betta. About 20 km northeast of Betta on the D826 gravel road is the Duwisib Castle, a mansion built by a wealthy German artillery officer captain Hans Heinrich von Wolf in 1909. Hans and his American bride, Jayta (née Humphreys), spent five happy years in the mansion before World War I broke out. Hans died in the

You’ve got an excellent chance of seeing game, especially small antelope such as duikers

Battle of the Somme (1916) and Jayta eventually returned to her parents’ home in New Jersey in the US. The “castle” was acquired by the government in 1979 and is managed by Namibia Wildlife Resorts today. There’s a lovely campsite next to the mansion, but we suggest you push on to your next destination (provided there’s enough daylight left). Sesriem is 140 km north of Betta. If you arrive here by midday, the rangers will allow you to visit the world-famous Sossusvlei, but if it is shortly before dusk, you’ll have to sleep over and try again the following morning. Sossusvlei is only 65 km from Sesriem, but the speed limit on the tarred road to the vlei is 60 km/h and so the guards at the gate won’t allow you through if it’s less than three hours to go before sunset (the inner gate closes as soon as darkness falls). The best time to visit Sossusvlei is at dawn, in any case, when it’s cool and you have beautiful, soft light for stunning photos. If you’re overnighting at Sesriem, you’re allowed to enter the inner gate an hour before sunrise, that’s when day visitors are admitted through the outer gate, to watch the first rays of the sun fall on the dunes. About 5 km before Sossusvlei, the tar road turns into a sand road and you’ll need a proper four-wheel drive vehicle here. If yours isn’t up for the sand, N$ 150 will get you a lift on a game-viewing vehicle to Sossusvlei. The remaining 500 m from Sossusvlei to Dooievlei – the real reason why people come here – requires a hard slog on foot through the dunes. Dooievlei will sometimes appear as a pure white pan nestled among scarlet dunes (an illusion created by the dawn light; the colours aren’t nearly as vivid in the afternoons) with dead trees that flatly refuse to rot away. This is a photogenic spot and you will struggle to not take striking photos when you arrive early in the morning.

Then it’s back to Sesriem, and from there another 12 km north to where the C19 regional road ends as it meets the C14. Turn left here and follow the well-graded dirt road to the hamlet of Solitaire. Solitaire is a lonely place in the middle of nowhere where the hermit Percy Cross McGregor was the only permanent resident for many years. To curb his boredom, Percy – or Moose, as he was known – started baking apple tarts to sell to passing motorists. This delicacy got so popular that people would come from far and wide to taste Moose’s tarts. Moose died of a heart attack in 2014 at the relatively young age of 56. Retired mountaineer, explorer, geologist and pilot Pasquale “PV” Scaturro bought the homes and bakery on Solitaire. PV still sells Moose’s apple tart, but the COVID19 pandemic has hit Solitaire hard. PV says the bakery sold roughly 70 000 slices of apple tart to people from all over the world in 2019, but during the 2020 lockdown, sales fell to as low as just one slice a day – and that to a road worker who would drive past every now and again. Things are looking up these days, although Solitaire’s bakery hadn’t started operating at full capacity at the time of going to print. Another 62 km north of Solitaire you will find a road sign (S23.43779 E15.80933) that tells you you’ve reached the Tropic of Capricorn. This sign was moved 10 km up the road a few years ago because the tropic moves 15 m north per year due to climate change. The sign’s current position is already out of date and should actually be at S23.43658 E15.81052, 192 m up the road.

(Cyril’s pedantry sometimes drives us up the walls. – Ed)

In a short while, you leave the Hardap district and drive into Erongo. To date, we’ve only stayed on the outer edge of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, and you enter the park proper for the first time with the Kuiseb Pass at the at the Kuiseb Canyon. As soon as you reach the other side of the canyon, the expansive Tumas Plain stretches ahead. A wide dirt road runs straight across the spectacular plain, up and down low dunes, to the Vogelfederberg (S23.05517 E14.98878) with its striking views over the plains – pull over for a picnic here.

From the here, it’s 50 km to Walvis Bay, and from there only 30 km north to Swakopmund. Camp in the Mile 4 Caravan Park on the upper edge of Swakopmund and explore the welwitschia plain, moon landscape, Dune 7 and the Dorob and Omaruru nature reserves outside the town.

ON THE LAST DAY

of the route, follow the C28 from Swakopmund (not the B2 highway!) in the direction of Windhoek. Drive over the Tumas Plain again, and 170 km outside Swakopmund, the dirt road starts winding up the Bosua Pass. You now leave the Erongo district and enter the Khomas Hochland, a collection of mountains in central Namibia known for its cattle and hunting farms. Because Windhoek is located in the heart of the Khomas district, it’s also statistically the most affluent and densely populated district in Namibia. After crossing the Bosua Pass, drive 115 km over mountains and through valleys until you find a derelict mansion to the left of the road (S22.60851 E16.71827). The Liebig House with its strange European roof designed to withstand snowstorms (I mean really) was erected by the Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company in 1907 after this British food company bought 2 000 km2 of land in German South West Africa to raise cattle. Corporate bigwigs stayed here when they visited the company’s interests in Africa. By the way, the Liebig company is known as Oxo today, the manufacturer of Fray Bentos and Oxo stock cubes – products those of you under 30 may not recognise. Rumours abound that the Liebig House

is haunted, but that’s nonsense, because it was merely a corporate guest house and there’s no record of anyone having ever died here. From Liebig House, it’s 15 km to the Hammans River, after which the dirt road turns into tar again. Windhoek lies just over the next ridge and marks the end of the route. Reward yourself with eisbein, spätzle, sauerkraut and a stein overflowing with a classic Bavarian wheat ale at Joe’s Beerhouse in Nelson Mandela Street (S22.55093 E17.09029). If you don’t have relatives or friends in Windhoek with whom you can stay, camp at the Arebbusch Resort (S22.60658 E17.08501) next to the Eros International Airport, about 5 km south of Windhoek’s city centre. Tomorrow you will tackle the long road back home, perhaps via the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana or perhaps through the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Or will you head north to visit Kaokoland, the Ruacana and Epupa falls and the Etosha? Namibia has so much more to offer. How about a few more days on the road?

You now leave the Erongo district and enter the Khomas Hochland, a collection of mountains in central Namibia known for its cattle and hunting farms

LINEMAN OF THE COUNTY. The rail between Grünau and Klein-Karas (below) runs dead straight to the Holoogberg (above) where the route turns south to the Canyon Roadhouse (far right). Here you can pose for pics among car wrecks before heading to the Fish River Canyon.

PLAINS AND CRACKS. The Fish River flows below (bottom left) and joins the Orange river a few kilometres farther downstream. Game in these parts (above) are so used to tourists that they won’t flee at the sight of you.

GREEN AND GREY. Namibian landscapes change rapidly. You’ll be in a green valley one moment and in an ocean of sand dunes the next. Life finds a way to survive but humans need to take extra precautions, including lots of water in your car.

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY. The abandoned Kolmanskop (above) ages well thanks to the dry climate, but the desert is relentless. At Solitaire you can get a slice of apple tart (insert left), at Sesriem you can visit the Dead Vlei at Sossusvlei (below left) and north of Solitaire you’ll cross the Tropic of Capricorn (far right) before crossing the Kuiseb Pass (right) onto the Tumas Plains (below).

BONE DRY. The Thumas Plains is a parched landscape edged by dunes. The Vogelfederberg (left) is a great place for a picnic before entering the busy Walvis Bay.

FERTILE LANDS. The Khomas Highlands is positively wet compared to the neighbouring Thumas Plains. Here wind pumps draw water from below the earth to sustain herds of cattle and wildlife.