Kaokoland is a remote, rugged wilderness known for its stark desert landscapes, vast open plains and untouched terrain. It is also the home of the nomadic Himba people although there is less than one person for every three square kilometers
We have always wanted to go but you do not go alone. It’s not dangerous, it’s just so remote that if anything unexpected happened you would need backup. We had finally found a couple who wanted to go with us and spent a few days preparing ourselves and our trucks for a wilderness adventure.
We expected to find water out there – after all, the Himba and their animals live on something – but not fuel. So our fuel tanks were full plus we had an extra 25-litre container of diesel loaded into the back of our truck – nearly a thousand miles worth in total.
Despite this, we would still need to keep a careful eye on how far we travelled to make sure we could make it back on the fuel we had with us.
With great excitement we left our friendly campsite in Kamanjab and headed off. James, me and Henry in front, Kristen, Kevin and Moby the dog following in their slower 75 series Land Cruiser
Two hours later we arrived at Palmwag, a veterinary control point within a community concession area. Apart from the control point, Palmwag’s only claim to fame is that it has a small fuel station. We didn’t expect there to be any actual fuel as there rarely is but we were in luck. You don’t look a gift fuel stop in the mouth around here so we topped up our tanks, waved our thanks and carried on north
We pulled off the road for a quick lunch stop, admiring the views all around us
And after another two hours of driving we finally left the main road and found ourselves in Sesfontein, a tiny town that has the last fuel station before Kaokoland. This time it was closed with hand-written sign saying ‘No Fuel’. We were not surprised, our plans had assumed as much.
As we checked it out the local kids were fascinated by us
We were still a long way from Kaokoland but it had been a tiring day of rough driving so we were ready to find somewhere to camp for the night. We had two choices – carry on along the dirt road north or divert west into the Hoanib river bed where there is an abundance of animals including elephant and the occasional lion. It would delay us but we all agreed that it could well be a highlight of the trip. The decision was unanimous – we would spend a couple of days meandering along the river to see what we could find.
There was a wild camp marked on IOverlander just inside the river bed so we headed in that direction
Just as we were closing in on the camping spot we were filled with excitement
Our first elephant already. He was feasting on leaves on the side of the road, blocking our progress and when he saw us he was very interested
I have often said that elephants are the most dangerous of all wild animals. Despite their friendly reputation they are fast, intelligent and rather big. The females are fiercely protective of their young and the males have periods of ‘musth’ where their hormones go sky high and they are ready to mate – and at these times they are very volatile and aggressive.
If you get too close to either a female with young or a male in musth, the elephant may think nothing of overturning your truck. If you have particularly annoyed it, you could even find yourself being stomped into the ground.
We generally give elephants a great deal of respect and a lot of space.
Before you watch this next video, let me tell you the clearest signs that a male elephant is in musth – a constant dribble of urine and dark fluid secreting down the side of their head just behind the eyes…
The advice given when coming across an elephant in musth is as follows : ‘Give musth bulls a wide berth and plenty of space, as they can be extremely dangerous even if they seem calm’.
Fair enough, but what happens when the elephant walks straight towards you then stands and watches you intently whilst munching on some leaves
This one was a young male, probably recently pushed out of his maternal herd, and such adolescents can feel they have a lot to prove.
The last thing you want to do when an elephant is approaching is to make any sudden movement or sound — and that includes your truck. Every instinct in your body will be screaming at you to put your foot down and get out of there, but that would be a very bad mistake. In this environment, an elephant can run faster than you can drive.
So we switched off our engines, stayed completely still and hoped the elephant had somewhere else to be. Beyond that, there wasn’t much we could do except keep our fingers very tightly crossed
It was a heart-stopping few minutes but we were all in awe of this magnificent creature, including Moby who had to have his eyes covered to stop him whimpering.
Fortunately for us our elephant decided we were harmless and eventually wandered off to find more leaves to munch on.
Elephants never do anything quickly though and by the time he had gone far enough away for us to be able to carry on it was starting to get dark. We quickly found our camping spot and settled in.
It was beautiful
This is one of the very few parts of Namibia where you can wild camp and that is exactly what we wanted to do – just us, the desert and the stars
As we were sitting around the fire that evening we heard the elephant’s low rumbling close by. Some of our group were convinced it was a lion whilst the rest were more concerned about the danger posed by an elephant than a cat. Either way, we all decided a tactical retreat to bed was in order.
The next day we slowly drove along the riverbed, taking in the spectacular scenery
We found a large herd of elephants and watched them as they meandered along
Springbok are extremely common across Southern Africa and very often overlooked but I think they are absolutely beautiful so when one came into view we pulled over to watch for a while
Not long afterwards, six giraffe heads appeared just over a ridge. We parked up and walked over to get a better look
The family were nervous of their new visitors at first
But they settled down once they had put a bit of distance between us
More springbok arrived who were happy to pose for the camera
And a pair of tiny dik diks who absolutely were not!
That evening we parked up on the banks of the river and Kristen and Kevin made a very impressive fire break for our braai
We played ballerina 4×4 trying to find somewhere flat to park up then settled in for another beautiful evening
The sun slowly sank below the horizon and we had another blissfully peaceful evening by the fire
To my dismay, the wind had been too strong up here for our toilet tent so James had found a spot behind the rocks and dug me a hole ready for my morning ablutions
But with this being lion country, when I woke up before dawn with heavy mists surrounding us I thought better of wandering too far away from the truck. Instead I put our porta potty out without the tent and hoped no-one else would be foolish enough to be up this early… the joys of wild camping!
We were now heading north towards Purros, a remote village that marks the start of Kaokoland proper. We spent the first part of the day still in the river bed where we saw plenty of baboons
Including this little cutie who was practising falling off a cliff
But sadly no lions.
Eventually we left the river behind and found ourselves on a long, straight dirt road
Our friends’ Landcruiser has leaf springs rather than Henry’s more luxurious coil springs so it was hard going for them on the bumpy corrugations. At first we drove at their speed but that made our suspension vibrate horribly. So in the end we agreed to drive at our own speed and stop to wait for them every so often
We drove for an hour until we reached Purros and then had another hour to wait before they caught up. It was scorchingly hot and there is not a lot of shade in Purros
A very friendly man came to check we were ok and told us there were two lions in the area. A couple of kids waved and watched until I gave them some mango
And we never did find the Desert Beer House with the cold drinks!
Once the Landcruiser had arrived we found the perfect spot half an hour out of town to camp up for the night under an old tree
When we scouted around our new home we found a lot of large paw prints that looked very fresh. James was convinced they were lion, I was leaning more towards leopard. Either way I was hoping it was going to be a good night and of course I wandered around the camp with raw chicken calling for the kitty cats. Sadly, to my huge disappointment, none appeared.
We made our fire and sat chatting whilst the sun went down
Once it was below the horizon the absolute darkness enfolded us and we were treated to one of the universe’s greatest spectacles – the Milky Way, shimmering across the sky in a river of silver
I decided to stay up for a while after everyone else had gone to bed in order to savour the quiet and hoped to see the owner of the paw prints return. But I have to admit that after about an hour of sitting there, with the sounds of the wild stirring all around, me even I got a little unnerved at the prospect of coming face to face with a lion in the middle of the night with no backup!
Being winter, it was cool in the mornings and evenings but the days were hot. The next morning was no different and as the sun warmed the earth we heard lions way off in the distance, it was magical.
They were too far away for us to have much chance of finding them but we gave it a good shot, driving down into the river bed and searching for paw prints.
No lions, but we found more elephants
And no-one was complaining about the views
Endless plains rolling to the horizon
Mountains soaring into the distance
And only the occasional local resident
The most famous landscapes of Kaokoland are the Hartmann and Marienfluss valleys. Because we had chosen to spend the last few days following the Hoabib River we knew we would not make it as far north as Marienfluss. Reaching the Hartmann Valley, though, would be enough.
The Hartmann Valley is stark and desolate but incredibly beautiful. Dark, rugged mountains rise above plains of yellow grass, with sand dunes stretching west towards the Skeleton Coast. It is a vast, empty landscape, where you feel far away from anywhere.
Before GPS was invented, people navigated around here using named drums – there is White Drum, Red Drum, Blue Drum, Green Drum and Orange Drum. They are literally drums placed at junctions in the dirt tracks
We turned right at ‘White Drum’ into Hartmann’s valley where the landscape became much more rocky
It was hard going over the bumpy trails but the views were magnificent
We made it to an abandoned quarry with sheer white cliff faces of marble rising up all around us
We had hoped to camp here for the night but the marble reflected the burning sun straight down onto us and it was too hot to stay. So Henry posed for his photos
Before we moved a hundred yards down to a flat plateau that was much cooler
It was strange and quite eerie being surrounded by the huge slabs of marble, simply left where they had been cut
It felt as though the people would come back any minute and carry on working but it had been deserted many years ago. Even the old Landrover had seen better days
We spent a lovely evening chatting as a picture-perfect moon rose high above our little campsite, bathing everything in a gentle white glow
The skies were so dark that we not only saw the bright crescent but the faint, ghostly shadow of the rest of the moon, softly illuminated by earthshine — something few people ever get to see
We were in no hurry to go anywhere so sat around our campsite the next morning chatting and being watched by the local kids who had come to say hello
Eventually we set off and headed towards a small Himba school we had seen some miles back where we hoped they would let us have water. They were kind enough to offer us use of their tap and we filled our containers with more than a little relief.
We had studied our maps very carefully earlier in the morning to see how far we could continue north before having to come back down again – fuel being our limiting factor. We all decided we would prefer to head west to the edge of the Skeleton Coast national park rather than go further north as we were keen to see some sand dunes.
It was only a 60km drive but it took us all day on the sandy trails
We passed one of the mysterious ‘stone men’ that have become part of the folklore of the region – no-one knows who created them and they appear in places far away from any settlements
As we approached the Skeleton Coast the tracks became deep sand until we finally reached the end of the road
It was just fabulous
The dunes stretched out in front of us and the rugged landscapes seemed as though they were from a different world
It was windy again though and the sand was whipping around us. James scouted around and found a more sheltered spot behind a small dune. We parked the trucks nose to nose to create a wind break and started cooking dinner
It was the most difficult camp dinner we had cooked for a long time. The sand was blowing everywhere, covering us, the table and getting into the food – we had extra crunchy chicken fajitas…
We had just finished clearing up and sat down when James suddenly jumped back up with a cry of surprise. What with him not being the melodramatic or nervous type we all looked up and saw that he had made a friend
We had never seen one of these before and he wasn’t sure whether it would bite him or was even poisonous, a concern which only increased as it steadily made its way up his leg.
Kristen grabbed a towel whilst I grabbed my camera and between us we ushered the creature off his trousers, although once she had it, Kristen was not sure she wanted it!
Kristen thought it was a cicada but we have since found out it was actually an armoured cricket, something that many Namibians dislike intensely for no other reason than they are large and ugly.
After returning the cricket safely to the ground far away from us we investigated the nearby bushes and found dozens of them crawling in the branches
The wind had dropped by the next morning although everything was covered in sand from the night before
We had gone as far as we could go on our adventure, it was time to turn around and start heading back into civilisation. The nearest town was Opuwo 225km away which would take us two days.
But it was two beautiful days
The scenery never failed us
Our last wild Kaokoland camp was 2km off the dirt road in amongst trees at the foot of the hills. We were concerned that we had gone too far towards human life and would be in people’s way
But in the end we didn’t see or hear a soul all night. A couple walked past just as we were packing up to leave in the morning but didn’t seem to mind us being there.
We approached a main road for the first time in many days. We had seen it marked on our maps as a D road and expected to find it easier going than the dirt tracks we had got used to over the last few days. But it turns out main roads around here are not what they are in the rest of Namibia!
It was slow going as we crawled over the rocks
But as we came around a corner the view in front of us took our breath away – it hardly seemed real
By the end of the second day we finally pulled into Opuwo and found a lovely campsite with hot running water, a smart restaurant and comfortable pitches
Our wifi hotspot burst into life with a 3G connection and our phones went crazy with 6 days of emails and WhatsApp messages coming through.
Our wilderness adventure was over and we had crashed back into the modern world. Part of us was grateful for a hot shower, flushing toilet and somewhere to wash our clothes
But a part of us will always stay in Kaokoland, the place that time forgot but we never will
