Day 4: (…of sand and castles)
Saturday 2 September 2006
Our camp the next morning
The clothes drying bush
(Bubba liked to fry his chicken on his exhaust pipe until Bobby-Sue introduced him to more cultured meals such as KFC)
O ne of the little kamikaze birds on the Luderitz-Aus road got wedged in my header pipe. I clean forgot to take it out and once we got to the next overnight place, it was well and truly roasted!
(Not one but four Iron horses were left outside the walls by the vengeful Greeks, the Trojans were well and truly fucked)
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So we packed up and rode a short kilometre to the castle above the campsite. The story behind it goes something like this:
Baron von Wolf built it for his wife and after its completion, went to fetch her in Germany. Unfortunately the Baron died on the journey and the widow refused to travel to Africa to claim her new home.
The castle was still in good nick despite much of the content having been dragged away piece by piece over the last hundred years by impoverished locals.
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Betta: Three pumps in the shade, a shop and a farmhouse. The grounds were kept painfully neat but I would not want to camp here.
The farmer and owner of Betta arrived to greet us a little later and shared with us the story of the Israeli woman who attempted to walk through Namibia a few we eks before our own arrival.
A bus filled with German tourists discovered her near unconscious body along the road and nursed her back to health with small quantities of jaegermeister and eisbein.
(There is nothing funny about sand â€" except when the other guy falls his ass off before you do)
We decided to explore another D road (D830) just for the hell of it but the road quickly became a real nightmare. The sandy ruts threw us helter-skelter and the only thing for it was to open up the throttle even wider.
After a few short kilometres it became truly unpleasant and I stopped to get the opinions of the other riders. There was no one behind me! I turned the bike around thinking they had abandoned me to this crap road, now laughing amongst themselves.
Before I had completed my turn I heard the rumble of Kobus’ bike and I promptly fell over. We were in a sandy patch and I struggled to get enough momentum to rise above the crazy zig-zag ruts.
So I did the unthinkable and made my wife walk while I rode the rest of the way back to Pieter and Christof. They were also not in the mood to fight the sand in this blistering heat.
It never dawned on me to unpack the heavy luggage on solid ground and return to fetch my wife with a much lighter bike. So like a fool I walked back to fetch her. At least I didn’t abandon her entirely to her own devices.
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We encountered a dog in this parched landscape and sandy road. There appeared to be not a single dwelling within sight but this animal followed us desperately, trying to keep up with the bikes.
We joked afterwards that perhaps the dog came to warn us of the bad road or perhaps even to eat the corpses of fallen riders…
We gave it all the water it could drink and left it to fend for itself.
Then we rode the worst road (except fo that sandy road) to date. No one fell but Christof reported a near crash afterwards at the camp fire. He was rattled for at least two days thereafter.
The road was covered in marble sized gravel that sagged and flowed unpredictably under our tires. One or two tankslappers later and we pulled into Sesriem campsite.
We were given a plot right by the main gate. What a dump! None of us were impressed with the facilities but there was nowhere else to stay unless we opted for the very expensive safari lodges in the area.
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Zanie used her charms to upgrade us to a much better spot but unfortunately this meant a nasty bit of sand had to be ridden before we could get to our camp. This spot of sand was cause for much hilarity. We frequently sent someone off on some errand and waited to see if the rider could round the corners between camps without breaking his neck or barging through someone’s tent!
Later that afternoon we made our way to Sossusvlei but we missed the sunset my almost a whole hour. The rest of the group turned back to start the fire while Zanie and I pushed on to the vlei.
When we got there it was dark and all we could see of the majestic dunes were enormous hulking shapes looming over us. W e turned back and spent the 60km between Sossusvlei and Sesriem dodging panicky antelope and wild eyed hares.
Nasa WorldWind image of Sossusvlei. Notice the river dissappearing into the sea of dunes.
Sesriem was perhaps a lowlight of the trip since Duwisib was such a hard act to follow and we were all pretty tired from riding dodgy roads. The camping fees were also quite steep and bordered on theft in my humble opinion.
At least we had beer.
Route of the Day - Click on the GoogleEarth image for an enlarged view
