We ate breakfast in the car and made the short trek to the border of Namibia and South Africa and had to go through customs and get our passport stamped and blah blah blah, but it was all gravy and then we headed on. This day we just kind of wanted to drive as far as possible. So, we then made it to Fish River Canyon which is the second largest canyon to the Grand Canyon. In Namibia too, all of the roads that lead to the interesting things are dirt roads, so you have to be very careful. And we are driving on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car…haha. Once we got to the canyon we all had to change because it was so warm and lovely. It’s a desert so we were all sufficiently hot which feels so good after freezing in Cape Town. We stopped at a lookout point and were the only people in the nearest vicinity but that was just how we wanted it. We at some pb&j’s and enjoyed the view and then decided to head as far as possible to Sossusvlei and the dunes!
Once we got off the dirt road again I was supposed to drive (first time on the wrong side and wrong side of car and in Namibia – AWESOME), and it was great. Haven’t driven for 5 months and it was different but very fun.
So we drove all afternoon, stopped for dinner on the side of the road at a picnic bench and then kept driving until we reached Maltahohe. It was about 930 at night, and the town was completely shut down. There was one main road and absolutely no one in sight. There was a campground but the gates were shut so we were at a total loss for what to do. We finally found a sign for the Maltahohe hotel, and went there to inquire. Btw, Maltahohe is pronounced Malta-huuuuuhhheee. Namibia was a German territory and the pronunciations for words were just really funny, we had fun saying it.
So at the Maltahohe hotel, we asked if there were any campgrounds and the guy told us we could camp in his backyard, so we were like okay. He showed us where to park and where to camp and it was like a concrete square with rocks all over it and stuff and we all looked at it and went…absolutely not. I asked about the hotel prices and he said R170 per person for night, which was not in our budget, so I then asked about the cheapest room possible, and he said he could put us up in beds for R70 with no bedding and no hot water, and that was more our speed. So we jumped in the car, followed another man across the street and even though this was a “if my mother could see me now” kind of moment, it was actually the most legit place we stayed. There were 5 beds in a room, it was like a hostel with a big bathroom and the water actually got really hot, so it was great. And the best night of sleep any of us had.
The next day we woke up all refreshed and headed out to Sossusvlei. Maltahohe was the last paved road we would see for a while. All the way to Sossusvlei was unpaved and gravelly which is hard to drive on. A couple of hours and unimaginable views later we reached the Sesriem campground and the dunes at Sossusvlei! Right as we pulled up to the campground we ran into all of the boys in our house who had gone to Namibia as well. It was funny to see them there, but they were on their way out, but they gave us some good advice. One piece of advice being that you should change your watches because Namibia is an hour earlier than SA. Hahaha, none of us had any idea, they had been told by someone visiting the dunes as well. They also told us not to go now now, because we got there at about 10am and it would be too hot. So they left, and then we relaxed. We got into our bathing suits, and layed out on towels and read our books, it was actually lovely. This campground was also so much nicer than the first one, it was absolutely wonderful. We had some trouble setting up our tent and these two men just came over and set everything up for us right then and there. We ate lunch there and then around 3 decided to head to the dunes.
There is a long (paved) road from the campground to the dunes which was great. And I don’t even know how to describe this part. As you are driving along this road the landscape is just so rapidly changing from desert and flat and rocky to red and sandy and perfectly peaked dunes start appearing in the distance. It takes about 30 minutes to get to dune 45 which is one of the two dunes you are allowed to climb. Our mouths were just open in awe the entire time. Once we got to dune 45 we ditched our shoes, and were the only people there and just had to go stick our feet in the red perfect sand. We ran part way up the dune, and then got really tired….they are hard to climb. And decided to walk. Because we were the first people there that day the peak of the dune was still perfect and much harder to walk up than if there had been footprints already there. But we made it to the top and just sat and enjoyed the view of all the dunes. Actually we did not make it all the way to the top, but we were tired, so we chilled. Then we had the grand idea to run down the dune, which was so amazing.
One of the funniest things was that Jess H (the one who got hit by a train) was actually really scared of falling off of the dune, which was fairly impossible but who am I to judge. So half of the time she crawled or just went really slowly, haha and wanted nothing to do with running down the dune. So after we all did it we tried to convince her to do it, and told her it was fine and when it was her turn she ran so slowly down the dune, and we all just sat at the bottom and laughed at her until she eventually made it down to us. After that we walked up the dune again to watch the sunset, which wasn’t the most epic sunset in the world, but it was still amazing to be sitting atop a sand dune in Namibia and be watching the sunset. We eventually made our way back to the campsite, and took our food that we made inside to the nice tables they had in there, and who do we run into but our roommate Shawn and his friend Jugal and Samir? Haha, oh and I forgot to mention that we also ran into our roommate Zoe and her friends on the dune as well. So many Americans in Namibia that week, haha. So we ate with them, and then hit the hay for another freezing night on cold ground…but it was okay because we were getting up at 5 in the morning to see the sunrise, so we didn’t sleep too much.
We woke up at 5, and left at 520 to make it out to the dune around 545, and climbed to the VERY top of the dune this time, which was so completely worth it and watched the sun rise over the distant dunes. This time all of Zoe and her friends were there and Sean and his friends and us, so we were surrounded by a bunch of friends and just played around on the dunes for a couple of hours. I tackled Taryn and we did somersaults in the sand that looked like cayenne pepper when it was on your skin. I hope I described it adequately because the dunes were insane. That day we were leaving and trying to get back to the Orange River on the Namibia and SA border to spend some time in the warm weather, and so we packed up and headed out.
I instantly fell asleep, and about 2 hours later of travel on this horrible dirt road, our tire just shreds. I wake up and we are all like, oh no. We get out of the car and see our completely shredded tire and not 45 seconds later the first car we have seen all morning on this terrible dirt road drives by, we flag them down and they stop. It is this beefy Afrikaans guy with a grey handle bar mustache, a short military grey haircut, a cigarette and his little Namibian sidekick get out of the car. They look at us and say, “flat tire?” and we are like…uhhh yes….and they just start unloading our trunk, pull out the spare, put the new tire on, dispose of the old one for us, and 5 minutes later after profuse thank you’s we are wobbling down this terrible dirt road again on a donut tire. It was really out of a movie, and it was hilarious, but we were extremely lucky. Unluckily we were about an hour outside of Maltahohe which turned into 4 hours on that road with that tire. By the time we finally reached Maltahohe we were so thankful to be on a paved road, and we went to the gas station and they pointed us to a bottle store (liquor store) that sold tires. We go there and they have tires…just not the one we need. They point us to another convenience store, but they only sell tires for small vehicles like buckeys. So she points us to another place down the road. Mind you, this entire time we are being completely stared at by the whole town of Maltahohe which seems to be congregating on the street, and this third place is not open when we get there. We are sitting in the car like “what the hell are we supposed to do now?” when the guy from the original bottle store rides his bike down the street to find us and tell us that he found a tire. We apparently have good luck. So we make it back up there, wait a few minutes longer and then are all set to leave Maltahohe probably forever.
After that huge setback we decided that we just wanted to make it back to Cape Town. So we made a plan to just drive drive drive til we made it. And that is what we did. We all took shifts and drove through the night in order to make it back to Cape Town around 5 in the morning. We also thought that all of our roommates who were doing the same trip were suppose to be back on the 9th like we were, but we all had the calling to come back to Cape Town so everyone was home when we got there. Overall, it was a great fabulous trip, and I am so glad that I got to get out of SA at least once, and best of all to see some amazing dunes. Namibia is an absolutely incredible place.
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