Kaokoland Trip – 2nd April 2010 to 27th April 2010

Vehicle No 4 Duckie

Richard and daughter Emily von Berg were very at home in their Defender 110 four cylinder diesel that clocked 400,000 km on the trip. Richard, the surveyor had taken leave and Emily had resigned from her physical training appointment to join the trip. They had allowed a third seat for the passenger (me) that was more often occupied by others due to the rotational basis even though all my kit etc traveled in this vehicle. They both slept in the rooftop tent and I slept in a separate pup tent or if weather and mozzies permitted under the stars. I together with the occupants of Cruiser, formed the tented community that had to pitch tent every evening and strike tent every morning.

The Defender had traveling with it a green Duck (one of Emilie’s many) fixed to the left fender and together with the toy ducks traveling along hoping to get a home in one of the Geo-caches, this resulted in the vehicle being referred to as Duckie.
I had just completed my challenging stint as project manager at the new King Shaka International Airport and would not have missed this trip for anything. It was the perfect getaway from the life consuming environment of the airport construction.

Team colours

Team cohesiveness was promoted by the adoption of an expedition badge cleverly developed by Marilyn and entitled Kaokoland 2010. Decals of this adorned the externals of the vehicles as well as our beige Kaokoland T shirts. These shirts had to be worn at important occasions and failure to do this would result in fines being issued.

3. 
   The Expedition
   

2^nd April 2010 - Friday before Easter - KZN, OFS, Bots.
Clock in time at Cato Ridge BP one stop was 4h00. Team leader was the last to arrive some 15 min late and was the first member to receive a fine. A passport check was done, a few Wild Bean coffees were ordered and our first team photo was taken. Peter introduced us to Big Dug and Little Dug (shovel and spade respectively bolted to the rooftop frame) and soon our convoy was on its way, me filling in the passenger seat of Peters Landy as he would otherwise have been the lone ranger.
Travelling up the N3 our first stop waiting for catch up was at Mooi River Plaza. I found a play gadget next to the road that Peter kept for his daughter. Next stop was Harrismith truck stop for cheaper fuel. The first Mettwurst from the Easter Festival made its appearance and the new biltong knife from Mr Price Sports worked beautifully. All moved on to Bethlehem where a breakfast stop at a roadside restaurant was just the answer. Rasta and Shumba joined in.
Onwards relentlessly we rattled of the Freestate towns of Lindley, Steynsrus, Kroonstad, Viljoenskroon, Orkney, Klerksdorp, Hartbeesfontein, Coligney, Lichtenburg and Mafikeng to the Botswana Border Post of Ramatlabama. The post being under construction we passed through without a hitch and on to Kanye (the earlier proposed stop at Jwaneng being past Team Leaders four fingers between sun and horizon limit) where we booked into our first “formal campsite” at Motsi Lodge. We had covered over 1,000 km on this first stint.
All set up comfortably but we got the first taste of ants and “wag n bietjie”. The meal was courtesy Fearless leader – a hearty portion of home-cooked chicken and prawn (a 50:50 mix of one chicken one prawn) followed by Peters famous bush-cocoa. The showers at the lodge were hot and a pleasure. Late into the night background music from the lodge – otherwise a good night.

3^rd April 2010 - Botswana
An early start and good getaway saw us at the bowser in Kanye for a look at the local newspaper and pie and cold drink bought in Pula. Northwards was the trek to Jwaneng, Sekoma, Mabutsane and Kang for a pit stop. Onwards our first Cache under a tree next to the road, successfully retrieved, a travelbug removed and a ducky installed. The onlookers like us were referred to as “muggels”.
The number of donkeys seen here and also later in the trip was amazing. These were regarded as a major road hazard as were the cattle that frequented the road verges. Roads generally were very good and less pot-holed than in the good old RSA.
Travelling north, the Trans-Kalahari Highway was flanked by endless fields of yellow flowers (must have had good rains), and bushveld trees. The landscape was flat with the occasional pan and any minor depressions were announced by warning traffic signs. We were traveling over the supposed largest sand mass in the world, remnants of an early sea with the occasional calcrete ridges. Before Ganzi is was decided to have a look at the Trailblazers campsite that was to offer an ethnic bushman experience and furthermore indicated the bonus of a cache. The site was abandoned, the cache had been muggled but some semi-bushmen appeared. They respectfully called Ian “Sir” after their president Sir Ian Seretsi-Kama. All were flying high but a good site with hot water ablutions was negotiated and camp was set up. A good birding site, Peter logged the camp for T4A and a campfire was lit.
Stargazing was good and Peter lectured us on the various constellations. Gale was frightened out of her wits when walking in the dark by a loud flatulence blast. Initially Gale was suspected but the source of the loud report was located by means of headlamps. Richard was found lying behind her on his back with legs up in the dark looking at stars. Gales pride was thus restored.
The evening meal was again a prepared meal of highest order – a lovely home-cooked stew.
4^th April 2010 - Easter Sunday
Easter was not forgotten and in conformance with the pagan ritual, the Easter bunny visited early. Marshmallow eggs were found outside each tent on rising. Peter had been playing bunny – this was much appreciated. A quick pro-nutro, a pack and we were on our way to another cache on the way to Ganzi. A large Kameeldoring next to the road was the stop from which the track into the bush was commenced and after a lot of searching the cache was located in a disused building. The clue was “leatherman” and the cache fixed to the wall had to be opened with a screw-driver. Another ducky from Emily entered the system. A stick insect (ala praying mantis) about 250 mm long frequented the same disused building – never seen such a big one before. The walkers among us walked back to the road through the bush and settled under the Kameeldoring at the road awaiting the bushwhacking vehicles. Somewhere in the apparent wilderness church bells were ringing and thoughts went back to my Family, Ramona being on a flight to Peter, Sarah and Jessica for Easter. I SMS’d the Raeburn-Wards and got a quick response.
With a successful cache visit behind us we aimed at a SPAR in Ganzi – a mining town. We stocked up on essentials and found Jagdwurst that after a tasting session with my Biltong knife started a long lasting passion for Jagdwurst on the expedition – but onwards to the destination of Lake Ngami at the town of Sehitwa north of the Central Kalahari National Park. The lake after good rains held potential for a beautiful camp stop.
Lake Ngami was the first rest place for the Dorstland Trekkers after a long and dangerous trek across the Kalahari planes. The first wave successfully reaching this “land of many vleis” as the Trekkers called it in 1875 was led by Gert Alberts and consisted of 10 families, sixteen wagons and fourteen hundred cattle. The second and much larger wave led by Jan Greyling (500 volk, 128 wagons, 7,000 cattle, 500 horses, 1,000 sheep and goats, 200 dogs and many fowls and ducks) was disastrous as there was inadequate water along the way and the wealthy boers lost most of their livestock and lots of wagons and provisions. There was amazingly no loss of human life to this stage but huge losses to malaria were to follow. Two major waves followed later.
Lake Ngami was also the settling place of refugee Hereros fleeing from the Germans intent on wiping the troublesome Hereros off the face of the planet. The survivors that reached Lake Ngami selected the best areas in 1905 and formed the dominant population group.
Back to our expedition, Lake Ngami unfortunately provided only a brief glimpse of the water with its wide range and large numbers of water birds. The bush that had developed over many years on the pan due to the absence of water in the lake was now showing substantial signs of dying due to drowning in the lake. Soggy conditions and mossie rich forests resulted in the team high-tailing it out of here. A few pics of the local beauty parlour and the logging of many birds by yours truly and we were heading north (no longer in the direction of Maun) to the first red line control point.
We crossed a number of vet control points set up to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease. The questions “have you any meat” was followed by an inspection of the fridges, decontamination of the wheels with knapsack sprayers, and passengers needing to step into a pan of antiseptic fluid before all could cross. Needless to say no meat products were ever found in the fridges.
Not far from the vet fence the expedition turned off from the tar road (all roads up to now had been tarred) and onto gravel road heading west towards the Namibia border. Peter had on T4A found a convergence line point that we duly tried to find but without success as bush Elephants had trashed to track and we had to turn back now to find a camp site as four fingers were getting close. Trying to find our way out of the enveloping bush resulted in Richard reversing into Fearless resulting in a bent bulbar on Fearless and a dinged back door to Duckie. The bulbar was straightened in camp with the assistance of the Cruiser winch but Duckie had to live with the bent door. Two possible campsites were not chosen due to ant infestation as well as signs of an elephant track. Cruiser had actually seen a young bull elephant en route and the country was wild with no fences. I had found an empty cartridge on the road confirming that this was hunter territory.
With luck we found an area that had been cleared of ants by antbears (isambanes) and we duly set up our first bush camp named “Ardvark Camp”. Ant holes were filled (all except one at the entrance to my tent – with a bit of luck I would spot an antbear that night), oranges hung in a tree at some distance from the camp (elephants break into anything containing oranges) and a fire made in preparation for the grilling of Nuernberger sausages from the Easter festival together with sauerkraut, german mustard and foil potatoes. These went down exceptionally well.

It was the first bush camp where portable showers and toilets were successfully brought into operation. The men however still preferred to walk into the bush with shovel and paper.

Easter Sunday had been quite eventful however no antbear was sighted that night even with me sleeping with my head outside the tent and the oranges were still in the tree in the morning.

5^th April Easter Monday
Unlike the traditional Easter services and family orientated acrtivities, there was a remarkable absence of anything related to the death and resurrection of Christ over the Easter period and the significance of this event in our lives. Music never mind Bachs Easter Passion and the church services were absent and were missed by me.
Travelling east the next destination was Drotsky Caves, so called when Bushmen showed Drostky the extended multi-level labyrinth of caves in a mountain protruding ever so slightly from the otherwise flat horizon that sometimes feels like the flat horizon of the sea. The bushman name (we were now in “Bushman land stretching into Namibia) is Gcwihaba Caverns and was formed 3, 2 million years ago in the Dolomite marble. The site was a registered national heritage site and the Verreaux’s Eagle Owl guarding the entrance for food departed with the arrival of our band of overlanders.
A virtual cache was located in a tree in front of the caves that were guarded by a camp of the Botswana Defense Force. The bat cave floor was a soft mass of dry powdery batshit that provided food for the Beatles living in the cave. Although walking through this may have raised some dust, at least the expected squidgy poo did not materialize and our special footwear did not suffer. Stalactites and stalagmites were impressive and we duly recorded our visit in the visitor’s book in the entrance of the cave. Absent from the caves was the commercialization associated with the Cango caves i.e there was no entrance cubicle, no entrance fees and aside from the BDF nearby at their camp and ourselves, there were no people around.
An orange for refreshment and we were on our way to Xaixai (Caecae), a small village with bushmen (ladies) sighted. A short chat with the local friendly police officer and Fearless leader took us on a new route he had established using Google Earth and which was now being established by him on T4A using his two data loggers mounted on the modified dash.
Having reached the Namibian border (21 degree east) we headed south to 20 degrees south where Fearless duly located and logged the convergence. Of interest was that the co-ordinates used were the now standardized WGS system and differed from the border fence erected on a meridian or Mercator system by some one hundred meters. Registering the point was done by photographing the GPS readout together with photos taken north south east and west. John had in the interim attempted to log 19 degrees 50 minutes south or some similar arbitrary point – not sure whether this was successful.
The boundary fence consisted of a central main fence on the actual boundary and two further fences, one on each side some twenty meters away. The Botswana fence included a heavy galvanized cable to prevent damage by the bigger wild animals.
Travelling north along the fence (border patrollie), having found a rhino stone now proudly located in our entrance hall in Kloof, Gemma having had the honour of towing out Cruiser from an soggy patch, having stopped to photograph the first engraved Baobab on the fence and having skirted around the Aha mountains (small hills really), four fingers made us stop for our next bush camp (Borderline Camp) and a somewhat wet evening around the fire.
Sightings for the day had been three Gemsbuck, an olive snake and many Namaqua sand grouse and Namaqua Doves, all pretty skittish again indicating that this is probably still hunting terrain. Best wild sound was that of wild dogs in the bush, unseen. Cat (leopard), Hyena and Giraffe spoor were seen but generally this was more spoor sighting than animal sighting territory.

6^th April Tuesday Bots – Nam – Kavango
Grens patrollie carried on north to Dobe border post consisting of one army tent and a small room where the book was signed. As the post was geared for locals only no road permit required by Namibia law was available for the vehicles. According to the officials Namibia time was the same as Bots time – this was at odds with Fearless’s advice that daylight saving was in place in Namibia and the time should be one hour different. All went well on the Bots side, the border was crossed and Nam side officials were becoming a bit awkward about meat so we high-tailed it out of there. We were in Bushmanland and as we did not stop for Groot boom and Holboom these will have to be visited on a later trip. We stopped at Tsumkwe to fill up on Windhoek draught, cold drinks and bread. Bushmen were selling their ostrich bead wares outside and the opportunity was missed to buy for Yolande and Ramona at favourable rates.
Turn right and northward bound on gravel towards Kaudom. Ian had proposed a lunchtime stop for a bite to eat as breakfasts were generally of lightning speed Pro Nutro and coffee. The Dorstland Trek Boom was the perfect venue and boy what a tree. The Baobab had at some stage fallen over but carried on growing on its side creating a host of massive horizontal sausage-like baobabs that we climbed and walked on. It was near this tree that the Dorstland Trekkers had their first rest place in Namibia. Some of their carved names should have still been visible.
The Kaudom in the Kavango Province is a non-commercial reserve, no gate entrances and limited staff at the southern campsite Sikereti. The park was as a whole deserted and no other tourists were seen during our visit. The campsite had limited facilities and Richard brought out his hot water shower set that worked quite well although with the air and water temperatures a cold shower was my preferred option.
7^th April Wednesday Kaudom
A leisurely trip though the park, past some water holes brought us to a stop at Leeupan. No “leeus” or any sign of animals during the whole day but a few interesting birds were sighted. The park is known for its unspoilt bush mainly on white sands. At the dry Xaudum river bed there were plenty spoor of Giraffe and buck and the break was used to get some front and rear (in Glens case a brownie was offered) photos of the group. This was a break from the endless bush scenery.
The elevated Kaudom campsite chosen had been a chalet site but the elephants had done some major damage as they had wrecked most of the chalets in the search of water that they had learnt to find inside. The view over the Kaudom River bed was superb.
A solo sunset walk behind the camp brought me to a timber watchtower that was manned by a guard. I was invited up and spent some time chatting to the guard (an Ovambo – the reception man was a Damara) overlooking the valley and bush into the distance. He spotted with a naked eye a herd of some animals on the valley edge a good few kilometers away that I could not even spot with my binoculars. The elephants had moved far away he said and we were not at risk at present. The elephants roam through the park from Angola and Botswana and the numbers in the park vary with time. Further advice was that the “white road” in the north east of Rundu was not in good condition.
Gale had whistled up some lovely dinner and boy was she good with preparing all sorts of dishes with all sorts of ingredients. Ian and Emily took a night drive after dinner and reported next morning that they had seen a brown owl.
8^th April - Thursday Kaudom to Grootfontein
The track north out of the park and to the Rundu – Katimo Malilo highway was pure white sand with the added wider tracks for the Mercedes Benz four wheel drive park vehicles one of which overtook us with a squad of labourers on the back being thrown around nonchalantly by the weaving truck. Mopane bush with high trees dominated this stretch of 54 kilometers that was completed by Fearless in half an hour shorter than the next vehicle, this being Duckie. This gave time for roadside exploration e.g observing pastoralist activity with beautiful African cattle (could not say that they were Nguni but similar to ours with big horns) being hearded by the local heardboys who would shout directions to their bovine friends in this land free of fencing. The wayfinding signage i.e. Rundu was covered in grafitti writing such as “Never give up – all the way from California”. The local tribal village structures seemed reasonably substantial when compared to structures seen later in Kaokoland and a wayside tree appeared to be ancient judging by its gnarled main stem – a good sign that it had not been chopped down long ago to make charcoal or carvings as elsewhere on the impoverished African continent.
Having pumped up the tire pressures with the on-board pump, and the overlanders finally all being accounted for, we covered the one hundred and eleven kilometer tar road to Rundu in pretty quick time. At Rundu service station the pomp joggies confirmed the Botswana officer’s advice that Nam time was still the same as Bots and RSA. Funny this as cell phone world time and Grootfontein was in fact one hour later – maybe Okavango has decided to go it alone with their times. A mobile meat market with entrails swinging off meat hooks on the back of an open Colt bakkie stopped at the service station.
An unfortunate omission was that we did not enter Rundu proper and savour the sights of the Kavango River, being so close and having driven close to but out of sight of the River and the border with Angolo for the last stretch of Tar Road. Another item to visit on the next trip up this way.
The debate of traveling “The White Road” in the north for Glen to reminisce about war days or to restock in proper shops, celebrate Peters birthday in a proper restaurant and see the meteor, all at Grootfontein was won by the latter. Off we headed on good, dead straight and tarred road to Grootfontein, witnessing along the way the typical rain squalls that in this open country with low trees can be seen in any direction form zero to three-sixty.
Grootfontein camp was a formal camp checked out before the facilities of the town were visited eg Spar, butcher, garage repairs to overhead tent structures etc before heading off to the Hoba Meteorite and champagne in silver goblets to celebrate the sixty fourth birthday of Peter. A phenomenal show was put up by the setting sun against the cloudy sky on the way “home” where camp was set up, hot showers were gratefully used for freshening up before heading out to the Meteor Hide for Eisbein, Kudu steaks and other delicacies not seen yet on the trip. Tafel beers, Windhoeks and Jaegermeisters worked well together and thanks to Peter for providing a very good reason to celebrate. Peter, John and I were senior in terms of years and in that order, spaced at yearly intervals.
9^th April - All the way to Kunene River Lodge
A comfortable start and we were on our way north, past the mining town of Tsumeb to our first stop at Lake Otjikoto with its museum dealing with ancient geological times, the bottomless lake, bushmen poison plants, the old steam pump, sunken german war equipment etc. Always an impressive stop, but relentlessly onward we drove north past the north eastern corner of Etosha where no animals were sighted through the park fence. We were now in Ovamboland with its O town names such as Oshivelo, Onyati and Ondangwa where we stopped to pick up Bill and his daughter Lisa who due to time constraints had flown in from Johannesburg and Windhoek at the airport, once the transfer and training air base of the South African war effort. There was lots of radio banter between Glen and Richard who had both served in the war however at different times. The base no longer resembled a fortified military establishment but with a runway of 2,5 km (the new King Shaka runway length is 3,7 km) had a daily Air Namibia flight service.
Bill and Lisa introduced a new dynamic but with welcoming hugs they immediately were part of the crew. We stopped for lunch under a tree located by Fearless on his Garmin. Richard and Glen immediately fell into conversation with locals who had also served in the war. They had noted that the cessation of the war had reduced the economic activity in the area and created some hardships. Beautiful cattle grazed in the area and of interest was the cluster of what must have been well points – these were sighted in many areas of standing water and may have been the main source of potable water.

Oshakati, Oshikuku, Ongongo and Ombalantu were all towns of similar character, many pubs and parlours in-between franchise outlets generally known in SA. The area was flat with lots of inundated areas fed by rivers emanating in Angola and finally ending in Oponono Lake further south. Donkeys were grazing waste deep in these waters and fishermen were displaying their catch in bunches hanging off branches next to the highway. Flowering water lilies and trees, villages of grass huts in millet fields surrounded by stake fences, grass fields with tall palm trees gave this area its special flavor. A concrete lined canal on the left with regular bridges over appeared to be the water supply to this relatively densely populated (the most densely populated in Namibia) region. SWAPO flags had been hoisted onto poles in roadside trees, on houses and fences. It was clear that this area of Namibia was SWAPO territory and probably well supported by the government.