I've been through the desert on a bike with noname

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  Swakopmund, Namibia
Saturday, April 28, 2007

Greetings from Swakopmund - one of the most German towns you can find
outside of the fatherland! Just imagine the palm trees are pine trees,
and it's just like Bavaria, ja?

We're getting to more of the stereotypical Namibia now, the German is
so strong here the menus are bilingual, and Afrikaans has almost
disappeared.  Germany seized Namibia in the late 1800's as the
great colonization of "newly discovered" territories wound down. 
I have this great mental image of the conquering hero returning to
Germany to inform his king of his fantastic colonial acquisition in
Africa, and the king saying (with much sarcasm), "Ja, great vork there
Franz. This is exactly what der fatherland needed in a colony; not one,
but TWO full deserts, and 1000km of coastline with one, count em, ONE
decent port, in the middle of one of the deserts.  Why don't you
continue this winning streak you're on and go carve us out a piece of
Antartica, eh?"



So anyway, Namibia is pretty much arid, and compared to everywhere else
we've  been, it's very sparsely inhabited, farming areas. Namibia
is bigger than Zambia, but has less than 1/20 (!!) the
population.  But this is still Africa, and 1 in 5 people are HIV
positive.  In this land of scrub and desert, people have just one
thing on their minds, and that is water. How much do we have? when can
we get more? We're used to be self sufficient on food, for days if
necessary, but now we're also leaving every morning fully tanked up on
8 minimum, usually 10L of water, sometimes more, but that's still too
little to bike a full day, camp, and ride again to the next water
source, so we're critically dependant on finding civilization at least
once a day, and this can actually be very difficult, especially as the
roads turn to gravel and the distance we cover drops accordingly.



Leaving Tsumeb we had an easy trip to Otavi, with the bonus novelty of
having topography again in the form of a nice ridge of rolling hills to
cross. Otavi seems to be a dying, decaying town; 2 of 3 petrol stations
closed, along with the usual Karavan park,  leaving an expensive
B&B, and, after 3 circuits around the town, with lots of 'help'
from onlookers, we found the Otavi Garden Hotel which allowed us to
camp in their yard for cheap.  Just another evening on the road
except that the stove made a much more determined attempt to kill
us.   The fuel bottle to fuel line connection has been
finicky, and I've been lazy on fixing it (just an O-ring, but a bit of
a production to get to the O-ring).  So I lit the stove, not
noticing that it was dripping gas at the fuel bottle, the whole thing
went up in a big fireball, which I hurled about 20ft away, then grabbed
a 5L container of water, fortunately full, and managed to just douse
it.  Close call.  The fireball and water splashing actually
got the attention of the night watchmen for a change. It's a nice thing
about African hotels that they don't mind at all that we set up a cook
stove, which always lights off with a fireball, and cheerfully cook
dinner next to their restaurant. They never even blink, even with the
light-off.  Try that in the Marriot parking lot and see if they
are as accommodating. (let me know how this works out)



The leg from Otavi to Outjo was our first experience on the gravel
roads - this one was actually very good! Smoother than some of the
tarmac we biked in the other countries, hardly a speed hit at all. This
is a good thing, because we though we were only going 105k for the day,
and when it was all over, the sun was setting, and the odometer was
just past 135k! We stayed at the farm which sits on the Gamkorab cave,
the only natural access to some of the underground water reservoirs in
Namibia. There is almost NO water anywhere above ground, south of
Etosha; this was the only water access for settlers in the surrounding
80,000 (!!) hectacres. That's a lot of land with no water.



We were pretty beat, but the next day was short, and dropped us at a
lovely German bakery in Outjo, so we hung out eating apple strudel,
drinking very good coffee, and watching the school kids go by. Racism
is very apparent now, and Namibia seems to be somewhere around the
'separate but "equal" stage' that the US was in prior to the civil
rights movement, although that's strictly my opinion from very limited
observation. We've had some interesting conversations with local black
people who ask us why the whites have everything, and they have
nothing, and are actually somewhat astonished to learn that in, say,
Zambia there are very few whites, and the black people do run the
country.  Anyway, back to the café in Outjo; the black kids have
one school uniform, and walk by. The white kids have another uniform,
and are driven to school. The white uniform is also an almost scary
50's flashback; lots of khaki, and plaid, the boys wear boots and have
buzz cuts; the girls have pleated skirts and bob cuts.  We watch
this morning scene with our new Dutch friends over a very good
breakfast before heading to Khoraxis, a fast, paved, slightly
descending run leaving us hardly winded, except for swatting at flies
(which are really bad in small areas, but at least they don't bite),
and ending in a spiffy camping area with a pool where relaxed and
watched the ostrich wander by. Ostriches are apparently native here. I
keep asking if they were imported from Australia, but everyone insists
that they are native to Southern Africa, and there are in fact a LOT of
them around.



And then the three days of hell to Swakopmund began.  We knew we
were pushing things really hard to do 128k of gravel in a day, but we
were buoyed but our recent fast days, and a trust in how good the
Namibian gravel roads could be; an unfortunate misconception which was
about to be destroyed by the hot, bumpy, loose, wash-boarded street of
reality. With hills. Short, steep, nasty hills with a whole lot of
loose, wash-boarded gravel at the bottom so one can't get a running
start. Extra fun carrying 11L of water.    Sitting at
first break and wondering how we could ever make 128k on this (and we
have to make 128k because there is no water before then), a small car
screeches to a halt and a very animated Mexican guy pops out and
jabbers excitedly at us about how HE is biking Cairo to Cape Town, or
was, but his buddy had an accident in Nairobi, and had to fly to
Windhoek to get his teeth fixed, and it all got rather confusing, but
it seems like he was right behind us for a while through Zambia, but we
never met up, and now he's more or less quit the biking ("Namibia and
South Africa aren't really Africa, don't care if I ride them" he
says).  He talked a lot, listened little, then roared off again,
so I guess that counts as contact with another insane bike tourer??



And on we plunged, through the gravel, watching our water, and watching
the sun sink, and we were doing ok, but then the wind kicked in.
Headwind. The prevailing wind over Africa is from the east; all weather
comes off the Indian ocean, which is why the west coast is a total
desert. This has provided a light, occasionally moderate tailwind for
us all the way from Lake Malawi, but now, suddenly, it's payback
time!  A very strong southwest wind kicks up right in the face.
Our speed drops, and drops; we're now doing a miserable 10 kph on the
flats, slightly under half what we do under no-wind.  We're still
28k out and almost out of daylight when we flag down the first car
heading south in the last hour. Fortunately it's a very friendly couple
of local folks who completely re-arrange the back of their pickup to
squeeze us and our ton of gear in, tie the bikes to the back, and drop
us in Uis, where the restaurant is ok, but the chocolate cake is damn
fine. They warn us that the wind is a fact of life here, which doesn't
bode well for the next day, 120k to Hentiesbaai on the coast.  So
we head off the next day, refreshed, but not early enough since we'd
had to wait for the market to open.  The road surface went to hell
again, loose, washboard, and while we were really hoping to do the
whole distance on our own power, it was around the time that we were
going 10kph, downhill through nasty gravel, before the wind hit that I
realized we were smoking too much optimism. This time we flagged down a
truck early in the day, in case there were none later. Rudi, with the
Rhino trust picked us up, and took us 35k down the road, making it a
tractable problem, even after the wind came up and howled for most of
the afternoon, full in the face, dropping our speed, again, to 10
kph.   We're in full desert now, gravel planes of nothing in
all directions, and on the far off horizon, the fog bank over the
coast.  We just sqeak into Henties Bay at sunset, the last 10k
under the shroud of fog, making for a truly surreal ride, and arrived
exhausted, but knowing we just had one day left, of only 75k. 
Only 75k, how simple that sounds, and on a salt road, not gravel. 
I have NO idea how a salt road comes to pass, but the practical upshot
is that it looks like old, not very smooth asphalt.  Only 75 k,
but the wind came up faster and stronger than either of the previous
days, and kept our objective, Swakopmund, with their bakeries, coffee,
and places of rest just out of reach. At 15k out, we were straining
into the wind at 13 kph. At 10k out, we were down to 10 kph - still an
hour to go. And at 6k left, we were fighting 30-40 kph of crosswind
trying to blow us off the road, down to 6 kph, and still a @$%@ hour
left!!!  Fighting wind like this produces an almost visceral rage;
to work so hard, and be held back by this giant hand shoving one in the
face, back back BACK....



But we're HERE! We're at the ATLANTIC OCEAN!!  5000km across
Africa completed!  We're only down to the tropic of Capricorn, so
a ways south to go to Cape Town, but we've finished a major
milestone.  It's time to reflect. Over good German bier. I'll
spare you the reflections though.



So we're a little burned out on biking, especially with wind, but
Swakopmund has all the required ingredients to fix that sort of thing;
lovely B&B, Laundromat,  no biking, and fully western grocery
stores. This is why we travel; to realize that real butter, on good,
whole grain bread is a luxury, something not to be taken for granted,
something to be appreciated, and enjoyed, slowly, in a lovely, clean
B&B.  There's lots to do here, beach walks, touristy
stuff,  and today we went sea kayaking with the seals! Something I
never thought of doing in the desert.  We were a little worried
about whether we'd actually see any seals, after all our other park
trips being kinda dubious on the animal spotting, but no worries, there
were a LOT of seals, basking on the beaches by the thousands, and eager
to come out and PLAY with the kayaks! Great fun, they hit the boat a
few times, and splashed us just for (their) entertainment. Got some
good pictures of them, and a few, much shyer dolphins jumping. And pink
flamingos! And pelicans!   And we're going to stay off the
bikes now for a couple days, renting another motorized tin box to go
see the dunes of Sousousvlei (these are the really big dunes that show
up in National Geographic, on calendars etc.).   I expect to
be able to get good photos since dunes, unlike elephants, don't move.



Ciao,

M<

P.S. There is actually a bike helmet law in Namibia!  Most people
ignore it, a few are wearing hard-hats (any helmet is ok, the baseball
cap is really pushing it though), and most of the time, it's just
strapped to the bike somewhere.

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18 Seals playing with our kayaks	19 And Dolphins!	21 Seals jumping	22 We're close to the seals

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