This little travel blog is just a fond memory of the continent I call home. This part is essentially all about Namibia. It's the most fantastic county I've ever seen, absolutely, truly, mind blowing.

Part 2: Ai-Ais, Namibia --> Windhoek, Namibia

So back to where I left off, Ai-Ais. After waking up feeling refreshed, after an evening of eating well (car was still full of food then) and wallowing in the warm waters of the hot springs we set off early to try get to the top of the fish river canyon for breakfast, and get there we did. There's something ever so strange about southern Namibia's landscape, its just... Mars on Earth. Red soil, shard of broken rock, scorching heat and not a hell of a lot of water! So we pulled up on the side of the road, smashed what became our staple of spicy beans, eggs, toast and occasionally bacon, but usually spam, and off we went in search of thrills.

Speaking of thrills, pretty much every road in Namibia is an endless stretch of perfectly graded loose gravel and dirt, so after deflating your tyres a bit there is a whole hell of a lot of 60kph+ fun to be had! We were blown away by the complete seclusion, often going entire days on the road without seeing one other car.

First stop for the day, Aus. Why Aus you say, well, Aus has quite an amazing little story. It is home to 90-150 wild horses. No one knows quite how they got there, but there is something enchanting about seeing these powerful, athletic beasts as they meander across the endless flats of the Namib Desert. The conventional wisdom is that they are the lineage of horses that were brought to Namibia by cavalry units of The German Empire from 1890-1917, when the Germans lost, they set their horses out, expecting them to die, instead they've proven rather hardier than anyone expected!


It was also a really special moment for us, at one point we were cruising down this perfectly straight tar road running next to a railway track in the distance was the most incredible sight, one solitary tree on the top of a huge rise. We hadn't really worked the car out and were excited to see what it could do, so we threw the car over the tracks, stuck in four wheel drive and went cruising up to the very top we we had lunch and messed around over the uneven, loose and frankly dangerous terrain. The pic really does the incline no justice...I swear!! Brieg was pretty pleased with himself though, as the pic shows:

From there we headed to Luderitz, it's a German town on the coast famous for some of the best windsurfing conditions in the world, spectacular oysters, and the ghost town of Kolmanskop, once a very prosperous mining community but now just well preserved ruins in the desert.

It was also quite possibly the most boring place I've ever been to in my life. We arrived on a Sunday at about 3pm, couldn't get hold of the guy running the backpackers (turns out he was windsurfing, typical), no restaurant, bar or shop was open save for a fuel station that had basically fuck all in it, and one gargantuan hotel that is so clearly only for the summer season as we were literally the only two people in the entire bar, pool and restaurant areas as we sipped our spectacularly cold Hansa Pilsner which is served in frozen stein mugs, after a 44 degree C drive through the desert, it's awesome! Anyway, finally got hold of the backpacker owner, stayed the night and left first thing in the morning headed for one of the highlights of my whole trip, Sossusvlei. Basically translating to Dead-End Marsh or No Return Marsh, this, and surrounding areas such as the huge dunes like 45 (pictured in the sunset) and Deadvlei are some of the most visited areas in Namibia,

and for good reason...

They're absolutely spellbinding.

None more so than the 900 year old skeletal ghosts of a past long forgotten; the haunted observers of Deadvlei:

After an evening spent under a perfect sky, filled with stars no camera could ever truly capture, with full bellies, full hearts, and the most agonisingly achy calves after walking up all 170m of Dune 45's spine... we awoke, at set our course for Swakopmund and its white, endless dunes. The prettier, happier, funner sister of Walvis Bay, a gigantic port town on the Skeleton Coast . Nothing like it I've ever seen, to one side is ice cold, dark, foreboding water. Water named for its history of destroying ships and lives and leaving naught by skeletons. Yet on the other side is sunshine, dunes, desert, heat. They say that's what makes it the best place in the world to skydive, I'll leave that to the sky divers to debate, it was way out of our price range! :)

We did however spend the day quad biking and dune boarding which was huge fun, and an incredible way to experience the dunes for their raw power, danger and beauty.

We spent two days there, on chilling, one extreme sportsing. By now we were officially over each other, and decided to hit Windhoek - the capital - for a few days of heavier than average drinking, real restaurants and hopefully a lady or two. Think we'll leave it for now :)

Please note, I've used a couple of pics here that aren't mine as I couldn't get up into a helicopter to take a pic of the dunes and ocean, etc! So forgive me on that, just making sure you have a full idea of the places we went to.