Archive for the ‘Camping , 4×4’ Category
150 / 66!
July 27th, 2011 | 
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Posted in Rob and I don’t need any excuse to pack up our trusty Toyota Hilux and head off on a camping trip, even if it’s only for one night. The beautiful weather in Namibia is perfect for spending time outdoors and in the five years that we’ve lived here we’ve seldom passed up an opportunity to take advantage of it. This last weekend we celebrated having spent one hundred and fifty nights in our rooftop tent at sixty-six different campsites in southern Africa. Quite an achievement when you consider that this figure is mostly made up of weekend camping trips of one or two nights at a time. Of course we’ve had our annual holidays too, that rack up an average of about fourteen to twenty nights at a stretch in the great outdoors.
Milestones like this give us a chance to reflect on the places we’ve been to and the things we’ve been privileged to have seen on our various trips. A few places have been revisited, but Rob’s meticulous records show that we have been to sixty-six different campsites over the last five years. Some have been chosen for the birds that are endemic to the area, whilst others have been picked for their hiking opportunities, remoteness, beauty and convenience as stop-overs en route to exciting destinations. The campsites in Namibia and Botswana never disappopint us and we come away from every camp-out with wonderful memories and great experiences. Most campsites have resident birds and animals with their own peculiar quirks and they just make each place extra special!
If anyone had to ask us which has been our favourite campsite, we would be hard-pressed to come up with an outright winner, although I’ve made it clear over the years that Ameib Ranch in the Erongo Mountains has a very special place in my heart. Camping in the Central Kalahari and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in Botswana is an unparalleled experience, with entertainment put on every day by the wild animals and birds. Where else can you watch a lion kill in solitude, or have lions walking past you as you sit around a campfire talking about the day’s events?
We’ve seen African sunsets, the Milky Way in magnificent starry splendour and heard the haunting cry of the Fish Eagle when we’ve camped on river banks and lakes. And how about seeing the early morning sun hitting a hunting cheetah! Magic stuff!
We stay in lodges sometimes – some luxurious and others very basic – and our consensus is always that they cannot compete with the outdoor experience. Camping is still our absolute favourite form of accommodation! Here’s looking forward to the next one hundred and fifty nights and all the wonderful nature experiences that await us!
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Brukkaros – the look-alike volcano that isn’t!
From the national road (the B1) Brukkaros looks like any other ordinary mountain in Namibia. Anyone flying over the massif of Brukkaros, however, could be forgiven for thinking that they were looking down at the crater of an extinct volcano. They would be wrong though, as Brukkaros is not a volcano at all, in spite of having characteristic volcanic slopes and a caldera.
According to geologist Nicole Grunert in her book “Namibia – Fascination of Geology”, Brukkaros was formed as a consequence of magma rising from the deep earth’s mantle about 80 million years ago and getting stuck in the earth’s crust. Enormous pressure (welling up) pushed the overlying rock upwards, forming the mountain. During this process, the rising magma reached ground water, which in turn caused water vapour to form, and the pressure of this combination resulted in a gigantic explosion on the surface. The crater then opened up, and with subsequent erosion, Brukkaros as we know it came into being.
A few things are needed to visit Brukkaros today – a 4×4 vehicle (if you want to camp at any of the upper campsites), a sturdy pair of legs and a head for heights. These will ensure that you get the most from your visit to this beautiful and geologically fascinating spot. We were the first to arrive there on Good Friday, so were able to claim the best campsite with views over the flat and endless plains looking towards the little village of Berseba, with the upper rim of Brukkaros forming a dramatic backdrop behind us.
It is recommended that you hike the mountain with guides from the local community, but there were none around when we arrived, so we had to do the five and a half hour walk on our own. There are various hiking options – a strenuous walk around the rim up to the remains of a long-gone research station – or an equally strenuous walk down onto the floor of the caldera. We opted for the rim walk and shortly after setting out we stopped for a while to watch a pair of Verreaux’s eagles catching the thermals in the valley. They were later joined by some Black-chested snake eagles that spent quite a bit of time skimming the cliff face in search of food.
The first view of the caldera was amazing – a perfect basin, three kilometers in diameter, with a grassy plain dotted with rocks and quiver trees. Traces of river beds were marked by dark green trees, looking remarkably like veins on the landscape as they made their way down to the gap in the valley where water escaped the caldera over a waterfall, to tumble down into two pools below the mountain.
Brukkaros should be nicknamed “the crystal mountain” because all along the way you see crystals glittering in the rocks or lying on the ground. Along the path the rocks themselves are an amazing sight – some of them the colour of dark red ox blood (these are called carbonatite) and others dark brown. The floor of the caldera is covered in very hard rock called breccia, scattered with quartz crystals.
After a couple of hours of steady climbing and battling the long grass along a barely visible path, we arrived at the ruins, which Rob measured to be at an altitude of 1515m. We were fascinated by a building constructed partly by blasting deep into the rocky mountainside – with rusty bars in the window area it looked just like a prison. We have subsequently found out that it housed a solar observatory set up in 1926 by the National Geographic Society in co-operation with the Smithsonian Insitute.
The views from the rim of the crater at this point (about 564 meters above the Berseba plains) are magnificent – confirming a small painted sign propped up on a rock that read: “View of the World!”
Before leaving Brukkaros early the next morning, we took a short walk back along the path, armed with cameras and binoculars and waited for the Verreaux’s eagles and Black-chested snake eagles to make their appearance. Right on cue they left their nests and took to the thermals, giving us a wonderful display and a fitting send-off from their beautiful mountain.
Weekend at Teufelsbach Riverside Campsite
One of the beauties of living in Windhoek is that from any suburb in the city it takes less than ten minutes to be out in the countryside. No need to drive for kilometers to reach the bushveld and nature – one can still be in some of the outer suburbs and come across baboons, guinea fowl and mongooses crossing the streets. In fact we have a whole troop of noisy baboons living on the hill behind our house!
But this blog is not about baboons, it’s about a very nice campsite that is situated about forty minutes outside of Windhoek on the road north to Okahandja. The farm, Teufelsbach, offers a beautiful riverside campsite and visitors have the freedom of most of the farm for the duration of their stay. How wonderful to be able to walk and drive all over, knowing that you won’t be meeting anyone else apart from the farm owner. There is also a 4×4 trail for enthusiasts of that ilk!
We set up camp on Friday evening and soon had a roaring fire going for our braai. The campsite is nicely laid out with place for several tents and it has a big covered boma with a large concrete table and chairs. It would be suitable for a big party of campers. The ablution block is clean and supported by a ‘donkey’ – a system whereby the water is heated by a wood-burning stove.
We’re always keen to meet the local ‘residents’ of each campsite that we visit, and at Teufelsbach it was a family of red-billed francolins that woke us each morning, accompanied by a pair of screeching Ruppell’s parrots that frequented the gnarled old camelthorn tree overhanging the campsite.
There are a number of dams on the farm that are home to a variety of birdlife. It was nice to see that the dams actually had water in them, which isn’t always the case when the rains aren’t as abundant as they have been this summer. In fact, the rains had made the countryside really lush and green. The veld was covered in waving grasses and wildflowers in hues of yellow, purple and white.
Walking on the farm was not without peril, as the paths and roadways were liberally punctuated by spider webs. They were strung from virtually every shrub and even stretched across the roads that were three or more meters wide. We had to be careful to duck under them or risk being covered in sticky webs and scary-looking spiders!
The birdlife didn’t disappoint and we spent a number of hours chasing an elusive Great spotted cuckoo down a riverbed; the cuckoo remaining tantalizingly out of our reach. Aahh the joy when it eventually settled for just long enough to get a photograph!
Our weekends away are always full and interesting. It was great to have found a campsite so close to Windhoek, as it isn’t always easy to take enough time off to travel great distances to go camping. Teufelsbach is definitely conveniently close enough for many more visits. As a nice farewell present, when we were leaving the farm, we came across this beautiful Abdim’s stork just outside the farm gate!
Chobe National Park – Botswana
In previous blogs we have talked about our wonderful holidays in Botswana, in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and the Central Kalahari, as well as up in the Savuti area. In all these places the wildlife has been abundant and we’ve had the privilege of viewing it in relatively remote and isolated conditions with few other people around us at the time.
The Chobe River area is also well worth a visit as it probably has the greatest variety of wildlife in Botswana – the only downside being that it is easily accessible so one has to share this piece of paradise with lots of other tourists.  Nevertheless, it remains one of our favourite spots and we’ll venture back there at every opportunity.
There are some great camping spots along the Chobe and our choice of a site at the Chobe Safari Lodge in Kasane was ideal. Nestled privately amongst the trees, with the water lapping a couple of meters away (and the protection of a fence to keep intruding crocs and hippos at bay), our campsite was well positioned to give us excellent views of the animals coming down to the river to drink.
The highlight of any visit though has to be a sundown boat cruise on the Chobe as the birdlife on the banks and islands is superb.
If you’re not into bird spotting, you will be just as enthralled at the vast numbers of animals that congregate on the riverfront towards the end of the day – elephants, buffalo, kudu – the list is endless. Top all this off with an ice cold beer and an amazing sunset and you’ll wonder why you don’t spend every holiday here.
We also enjoyed our stay at the Kubu Lodge campsite which gave us the chance to do a self-drive into the Chobe National Park. The Lodge offers game drives into the Park, but we preferred going on our own as it enabled us to stop and photograph at our leisure. Kubu (Kubu means hippo) Lodge has enormous grounds to walk around in and we had little buck peeping at us through the trees. We were warned to be on the lookout for a stray buffalo that had come ashore from the river – fortunately we didn’t encounter it while we were out birding.
If you’re planning a visit, don’t limit your time in the Chobe area as there is so much to see and do. If birds and animals don’t interest you, then try your hand at tiger fishing – it’s guaranteed to give you a thrill when you land one of these amazing fish. All in all a very special part of Botswana and a photographer’s delight.
Bushveld Soap Opera
There’s a Dettol advertisement on TV in South Africa at the moment in which they are marketing a soap dispenser with a sensor that makes the soap squirt out without you having to touch it at all. This is to prevent you from catching germs from the dispenser itself. I ask you with tears in my eyes – just how many people have died from dangerous soap dispensers in their homes? Aren’t we becoming a little too paranoid about germs these days?
Our travels through Southern Africa have taken us to many different places and we’ve come across ablution set ups that have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, especially at campsites. These are great fun though and we never fail to be amused at the creativity of the ablution designers, which tells you a lot about them and their sense of humour. I don’t mind how whacky and adventurous a loo or shower is as long as it’s clean. In all the years of camping, there haven’t been many places that weren’t acceptable, although I doubt whether the Dettol manufacturers would agree with me.
Bear with me as I take you on a little tour of some of the ablution facilities we’ve been privileged to use over the last few years…..
Let’s start with this elegant design that we found at the Omandumba campsite in Namibia. Definitely worth wiping with Dettol before sitting on that! Not your average loo, but at least it has a good plastic seat and the toilet roll holder is conveniently close enough for you to unroll paper from the nail in the ground.
Talking of toilet roll holders, the owner of a campsite near Clarens, in the Free State, surpassed herself when she designed matching arum lily doorhandles and toilet roll holders in the ladies’ ablution block. How classy is that!
For the adventurous camper there is always the open-air, out-door bathroom. Sometimes it’s built into the rocks, like this one at Namibgrens. This one doesn’t have a door, but that’s not the only part that makes you slightly uneasy – it’s the fact that there is a big hill overlooking the loo, so you have to be on the look-out for peeping mountaineers as well.
Or what about this lovely loo overlooking a dry river bed at the Tsauchab River Camp? Admittedly it’s a private spot with no other campers within miles, but there’s always the chance of a stray hiker following the course of a long-gone river.
The shower cubicle is a bit drafty too, so it’s probably advisable to do your ablutions under cover of darkness. I can see a Dettol sensor dispenser looking quite neat on this wash basin.
If you get tired of the outdoor stuff and want something a bit more upmarket, then look no further than the VIP suite at Namushasha. The wash basin comes complete with animal horn to give it an authentic African bushveld look!
Fantastic. Must tell them about the Dettol dispenser though – that’s if I live to tell the tale because I only use a disgustingly dangerous bar of soap when I wash my hands.
