Namibia (2)

We had an overnight at Swakopmund (-on-sea) as it should be called because it had all the feel of an English seaside town. We had a wonderful seafood dinner at ‘The Tug’, a restaurant created out of a retired tug boat overlooking the sea.

We also felt it was about time we had another check up for Jools, so booked in at a local health clinic.

	I have to admit that I was disappointed with the Skeleton Coast. High expectations maybe, but it wasn’t what I expected. I was hoping for a desolate drive through nothingness, and even though there was nothing to see, there seemed to be just enough ‘something’ in the nothingness to spoil it. Dakkie had advised us to give it a miss for an alternative route south taking in the 'White Lady’ rock engravings, but after meeting a Dutch fellow who espoused about the super-smooth salt pan road along the coast we decided to give it a whirl.

			I think we were a little spoilt by our fabulous experiences in the Moroccan and Mauritanian deserts where there was a real feeling of isolation. On the Skeleton Coast road, if you broke down someone would be passing soon enough to sort you out. Of the shipwrecks there is very little left to see as the wild Atlantic onslaught has wrest most of them away, as well as trophy hunters!

	At ‘Mile 108’ we found a campsite, but they were charging R150 per day with an extra cost for showers ontop, so we just carried on another mile and then drove down to the beach to wild camp (on a hill). That night there was no moon and the stars were so fantastic so I lay on the roof of the truck with the binoculars and could see the moons of Jupiter, globular clusters and nebulae in such brilliance.

The Cape Cross Seal Reserve was a real highlight. Although their numbers have been decimated by disease, it was still possible to get some exciting close encounters and to watch the scruffy black-back jackals enjoying the spoils.

On the way down to Henties Bay we broke another suspension bolt and the truck started to lose power, and with a poorly starter motor it really did look like we would be stranded on the skeleton coast, but thankfully we pulled into Dakkie’s parents B&B; the Namib Shore Guest House.

As we entered the house I was overwhelmed by the same feeling and aromas as my grandma’s home in Ireland which both made me feel incredibly comfortable but also drew out a longing for home.

The next morning I spent several hours swearing at an arc welder and blinding myself trying to remove the broken bolt in the suspension before an elderly white hair gentleman saved me from my torment. With the truck running so badly we really should have headed straight to Swakopmund, but after 5 months off from rock-climbing and with the Spitzkoppe so close by, I was feeling a desperate urge to ‘feed the rat’ (a phrase used by climbers to describe the addiction to climbing). We took a gamble on the truck making the round trip and I prayed that there would be a free rope to tie onto at the rock face.

			The road from Henties Bay heads east across a huge flat desert and from 100km away the peak of Spitzkoppe starts to grow out of the horizon. The closer we got the more my palms began to sweat and the anticipation rose with the granite monster before us.

	There is something incredibly magical about the Spitzkoppe and I guess this is why it has attracted people for millennia as evidenced by the numerous examples of rock art. For a climber there is a different way of seeing such beauty, the eye picks out the lines and weaknesses in the rock that would allow a man to leave a more silent signature.


		Arriving at the gate to the park the warden directed us to a site where three Spanish climbers were camping. As the sun set, we lit a fire and awaited their return. Richie, Samuel and Lorea had been camping and climbing in the park for three weeks and had even bolted a new line that they were working on.





			After a preliminary sounding on a difficult traverse climb, Samuel and I decided we would tackle something a little bigger. The southeast wall of the Spitzkoppe.

			In the guide there was marked as a five star route with eleven pitches, and named Royal Flush. It was such an obvious line and through the binoculars it looked intimidating but followed a natural crack and chimney system which would offer good protection. Starting early we scrambled and fought our way through the boulder fields and fig trees to arrive at the start of the climb proper. I was really out of condition having sat on my arse for the last six months, and leading off the first pitch I felt it hard to commit to the difficult first moves. After the first fifteen meters I started to get a slight inkling of what was to come as the crack widened into a niche with a sloping floor covered in dried guano, which was impossible to get any friction, and threatened to spit me out at any time.

	There was no protection available and the only option was to bridge the niche and go further up. What the book described as a chimney (a crack wide enough to fit inside) turned out to be an off-width (too wide to climb with hands and feet, but not wide enough to climb inside), so all manor of strange techniques were used, mainly involving jamming a thigh and shoulder inside the crack ‘chicken winging’ and waving the other leg and arm in space ‘flailing’. In between the horror there were sections of nice climbing but at pitch 7 things became a little desperate. Ten meters of enjoyable climbing lead to a grassy crack in the back of a v-groove.


			The crack was the only means of protection but was full of dusty soil and huge tufts of dry grass. The sides of the grove offered minimal footings or friction. I had to dig out placements in the soil to place friends and at times the only thing to hold was a rapidly disintegrating sod of grass. My mouth was dry with fear and the dust and grass seeds filled my eyes and choked in my throat. I gardened my way up inch by inch for twenty more meters until I finally reached the belay and collapsed in a coughing fit, black to the elbows and spitting grass seeds. It was one of those classic climbing moments of ‘what the fuck am I doing here’.


	In the time it took Samuel to second I had recovered some composure and thankfully the difficulty was now behind, the last four pitches though I was tired, were straight forward enough. It was definitely not a five star route but could be forgiven, for it certainly had a five star view. We stayed a while at the summit and ate chimney sandwiches (chimney sandwiches can have any filling but must be well pulverised between your backside and the rock for several hours before eating). As with most climbing the start is the real finish and we had a long descent with no easy path down.

	At the bottom we were met by an overland truck full of German tourists with the greatest of climbers rewards, a cold beer and adulation ‘you climbed that, wow!’

It was so great to get back on the rock again but how I ached and the skin on my fingers just tore away. The granite was particularly unforgiving of soft hands and once the sun rose, any sun blest rock just lost all its friction.

After a good mornings climbing, I headed out of the park with our three amigos to purchase something a little special for the cooking pot, whilst the guys purchased some pot that was a little special.

We were standing in a small bar in seemingly the middle of nowhere and after a nod and a wink this Namibian fellow pulls out his mobile and clinches the deal as if outside a pub in Camden. OK, so you wouldn’t get half a goat thrown in on the deal in Camden, but there were definite parallels.

Back at the camp I decided that before we started the goat stew I would have a bash at bread making.

With an old packet of roasted seeds we had bought nine months ago in the UK, mixed in with just a drop of blood from climbers fingers and sweat in the afternoon sun, I needed the dough on the wooden block we used to support the car jack and left it to rise in a bowl on the ground as I started the fire. After it had risen I swapped to the dusty poikie and pilled the hot coals over the lid. After some unmeasured amount of time that just seemed to coincide with my overwhelming curiosity, the loaf was done and I felt immense pride as I tapped the underside of the loaf the way I had seen my mother do to various baking efforts in the past.

	I was astounded at the results. It was in this moment that it occurred to me how ridiculous it was that we should be so pleased with ourselves for accomplishing the simple act of baking bread. For as long as civilisation has existed man has made bread in such a simple fashion, the staple of most diets around the globe. Has our generation lost that skill without the use of ready-mix and bread machines? With the bread on the cooling rack we hacked up the goat with knife and axe, and under the stars, and over the fire, slow-cooked it with sweat potato and veggies for hours. When it was finally ready the meat was falling off the bone. We all gathered around the pot, and the Spaniards passed round a leather bag of red wine to wash it all down. If Jools didn’t have a ‘bun in the oven’ that was almost fully baked I know we would have stayed much longer at Spitzkoppe but we bump-started the truck the next morning and sadly left our new friends behind.

	The doctor was somewhat shocked at our journey but more shocked at our complete lack of pre-natal preparation. He decided to do a series of blood checks and a thorough examination, after all of which he described Julie as ‘disgustingly healthy’.

InWalvis Bay we managed to catch up with Dakkie’s sister and one of the guys in the garage had a fiddle with the carburettor. At a different garage I had another bash at fixing the brakes whilst Jools chatted to Fifi.

Fifi was an amazing character, apart from being a fully paid up member of the conspiracy club, he was also a remarkable engineer. Having little marine background, he decided to build a steel hull sailing yacht. As the brakes of our truck took all day to sort, we accepted Fifi’s offer of dinner and a stop over. Dinner was a fantastic soya mince bolognaise and we had a chance to see the plans and photos of the yacht that were really impressive.

In the morning breakfast was also a Fifi invention, ‘stretched eggs’. A combination of eggs, water and corn flour cooked in a half omelette, half scrambled way. In fact surprisingly good and an excellent way of ‘stretching’ two eggs to easily feed four people.

Ten kilometres outside of Walvis Bay it was soon evident that the truck was still struggling so we made the now customary daily routine of remove the seats, engine cover, fiddle with carbs and points before replacing all and continuing onwards.

Our love-hate relationship with the truck was now swinging hourly, but landed us in some amazing places which we hadn’t planned to stay, such as Agama River Camp (S24˚08.649’ E015˚57.723’ email Jon Leach: naf@iway.na) on the road to Sossusvlet. I opted to sleep outside under the stars but at 4am managed to shiver myself awake.

I rose to climb back into the truck but as I did I was overwhelmed by the amazing night sky. The moon was absent, there was no light pollution anywhere, and the clarity was unbelievable. The Orion Nebula was more spectacular here to the naked eye than back at home with a telescope.

	I forgot the cold and spent an hour scanning the sky with the binoculars before the dawn arrived. Agama is a newly built camp, beautifully set out and so peaceful that we stayed a second night as we had the place to ourselves and enjoyed an open air hot bath under the stars.

	We really wanted to see Soussusvlet (famous for its huge desert dunes) in the early light and so we rose at 5.00am to drive the 30km to the park gate to beat the rush, but the truck wouldn’t start. I was livid and stomped around shouting. If I had found a small bush I would have thrashed the truck like Basil Fawlty. We then needed to get Jon (the camp owner) out of bed to help tow the truck to start it. Arriving at the gate to Soussusvelt we took one look at the huge queues of tourists and decided to pass it up for another time.

			More truck trouble left us over-nighting on the roadside to Fish River Canyon. Jools now with a belly bigger than a basketball was not going to be able to hike the canyon so we contented our selves with a peak from the top. As we were gawking at the amazing views a group of twelve South African hikers were preparing to set off on the ninety-kilometre trek carrying full packs including bivi gear and food for five days. What was remarkable and quite inspiring was that this group seemed to age between 50 and 60 years old.

	We watched them off, descending the steep sided path down to the heart of the gorge chatting like excited teenagers. At the exit to the canyon down stream we overnighted at the Ai-Ais hot springs with a wonderful retired German couple Traudel and Udo Kitzke that had driven down from Europe in their overland truck. After an afternoon of soaking in the hot springs pool I chopped up the tree we had been carrying around on the roof of the truck and lit up a braai (This is an Afrikaans equivalent to a bar-b-que, just without the rain).