Sun. May 26th‘24
What a delight to have a leisurely start this morning with a relaxed breakfast overlooking the dunes. Check out is not until 10am so we make the most of the Internet and get another blog post ready to publish. Today we are heading further north to Damaraland and expect patchy telephone and Internet reception. Tonight we are camping on a campsite with no water or electricity (and long drop toilets) so forget about keeping in touch with the world. At least we will be missing the pre-election campaigning.
It is a surprise to find the road to Henties Bay is tarmac all the way. This is new since we last went this way 11 years ago. We make good time and eat up the kilometres. The road follows the sea up what is known as Skeleton Coast. The mists often hang along the coast making it notoriously difficult for ships to navigate. Over the last 100 years or so there have been many shipwrecks claiming many lives. The latest is Zeila which came ashore in 2008. We visited it on our last trip and little has changed. Locals hang around to try and sell tourists rocks or small handmade items. It is so sad to see these hungry desperate people but there is little we can do to help the situation.
With the good road we reach Henties Bay by coffee time and meet some lovely waiters who are all too keen to tell us about their homeland of Damaraland and where we should visit. We have time before lunch to explore the town and I am keen to find the golf course. Well the tee boxes and greens are grass but in between is sand, too many bunkers! Sadly we don’t have our clubs so cannot try out the course. No one else seems to be playing either. We have been told we must try the fish and chips at Fishy Corner so that is our next stop. Good call very tasty.
We have also been advised to arrive at our campsite in good time if we want to have campsite 10 or 11, which are both good for watching sunset. Heading east the road is very rough and hard going so we are glad when we reach Spitzkoppe. The track to the campsite is lined with small stalls again selling rocks and small handicrafts. This time it is kids as young as five trying to entice us to stop and buy something to give them money for food. It is quite heartbreaking to see.
Luckily site 11A is still free so we soon set up camp and at least half a dozen vehicles cruise past slowly trying to find a site for the night. Feeling smug we settle down to tea and cake before putting the tent up. We do go for a short walk by ourselves but do not join in the guided tour around the rock paintings and weird shaped rocks. Spitzkoppe is German for pointed dome and the rock formation here is known as the Matterhorn of Namibia. Hmm, it is OK but it doesn’t really float our boat.
Time to retire back to our campsite and think about cooking our dinner, the tasty kebabs we bought in Swakopmund along with healthy new potatoes and carrots. It all tasted quite delicious sat outside and being cooked by us on a proper wood barbecue. This campsite was definitely back to basics with no home comforts or intrusion of the outside electronic world. Sunset is as spectacular as expected. It is also surprising that moon rise is not until about 9pm so we were able to see an extraordinary number of stars lighting up the night sky.