Nah-mib-ee-ah, or ‘South West’ as it was sometimes affectionately referred to, is an ancient and mysterious land. They say, once you have stood on Namibian soil, Nah-mib-ee-ah will remain forever in your soul.
It crept into my soul as a young man in the years my parents toured its length and breadth in their camping car as my father tuned and repaired pianos, and my mother wrote historical novels and short stories for radio, discovering some of the many mysteries of a barren, yet living, region. And for almost a year thereafter, I served there as a young policeman.
It took some time for me to convince Ann to go to Nah-mib-ee-ah because she was understandably sceptical of what we would find. But in 2008 we set forth on a journey that started out from Johannesburg, covering just under six thousand kilometres in a 4x4 and off-road caravan.
By the time we had reached Okaukuejo on the western fringe of the salt pans of Etosha, in the north, Ann had fallen in love with Nah-mib-ee-ah. The vast plains stretch to the horizon where they follow the curve of the earth, which is clearly seen with the naked eye. It is home to all of Southern Africa’s wildlife, which have adapted to the terrain and climate over thousands of years.
The people of Nah-mib-ee-ah are among the warmest and most welcoming on the continent. The colonial descendants display a distinct characteristic, unique to them, that is evidently influenced by the early years of German occupation, and the country that is full of reminders of their German history.
Their accent is endearing, and they possess a great sense of humour, honed by spending their lives conquering the unique challenges their homeland presents.
The mountains echo the spirits of the San from the beginning of time and the land is home to tribes with equally distant beginnings such as the Herero, Nama, Ovahimba, Ovazemba, Ovatjimba, Ovatwa, and the Oh-vum-bo, who live predominantly in the north of the country and are the largest ethnic group in the country.
In this ancient land that takes one’s breath away at so many turns in the road, it is the Skeleton Coast that captures one’s imagination the most. Cape Cross is a desolate place. It is here that we encountered a huge fur seal colony, where the strong odour from thousands of seals permeated everything within a mile on a good day.
And it is here that a replica of the original cross from the European discoverers stands proud and alone on the desert rocks overlooking the cold and wild Atlantic. On the rock upon which it stands, an inscription is translated from Portuguese into English.
‘In the year 685, after the creation of the world, and 1485 after the birth of Christ, the brilliant, far-sighted King John II of Portugal ordered Diogo Cão, knight of his court, to discover this land and to erect this padrão here.’
It is a tribute to brave explorers who ventured far into the unknown on wooden ships under sail to discover the world at a time when most believed the earth was flat.
From Cape Cross we travelled the salt road south to Swa-kop-mund, where we spent a week clearing out the sand and dust and cleaning the camp, as well as enjoying the atmosphere and delights of the little German village enclave that has been tucked away on the desert coast since 1892, when it was established by German colonists.
Swa-kop-mund is immediately north of Vahl-fiss (Whale) Bay and it houses Nah-mib-ee-ah’s only commercial harbour. The coastline between the two towns has been steadily developed into modern housing estates looking westwards over the ocean.
Both settlements and their surrounds fall within the Dorob National Park which, together with the Namid-Naukluft Park, covers nearly fifty thousand square kilometres of the oldest desert in the world. In this reserve lies the Mountains of the Moon, a desolate geological phenomenon similar in appearance to that of the moon. But like the desert within which it lies, it gives life to a myriad of insects and animals.
On one visit to Swa-kop we decided to go quad riding on the desert dunes. We joined up with a group of about twelve tourists, and we were each of allocated a quad bike. At the start of the trip our guide gave everyone a quick lesson on how to switch the bikes on, accelerate, and brake, and we were soon heading off into the desert in single file with our guide in the lead.
After a short while, the guide raised his hand and signaled us to stop before explaining a few interesting details about the shifting sands, the wildlife on the sand, and the way nature has adapted to extract the smallest but life-giving amounts of water from the harsh habitat. He told us about the almost vertical dune down which he intended to lead the group before speeding off and indicating to us to follow.
After about five minutes, I noticed that Ann was no longer bringing up the rear and I turned around to retrace our tracks, although not before asking one of the other riders to let the guide know. Ann had been left stranded after she was unable to restart her bike. She had watched us ride off over the first and then second dune, far away and out of sight and sound. Suddenly, she had found herself completely alone, surrounded by red desert sand and a cloudless sky, enveloped in total silence. High in the Khomas Hochland, which separates the desert from the hinterland, the silence is so deafening that the echoes of an occasional baboon bark accentuates the stillness.
So intimidating was the experience, that Ann trembled with fear that she may not be found. But found she was, and it wasn’t long before we all reached a very high dune that dropped off almost vertically and down two hundred metres on one side.
Just leave your bike in neutral and whatever you do, don’t touch the brakes, cautioned our guide before dropping off the edge and out of sight. So over the edge we went, with great trepidation. All of us, surprisingly, made it to the bottom intact.
Vahl-fiss Bay is situated just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Its deep-water harbour opens up into a massive bay that is protected from the rough Atlantic waves and currents by Pelican Point sand spit. The bay is rich in plankton and marine life, and it attracts large numbers of Southern right whales, as well as seals, dolphins, and millions of birds including flamingos, pelicans, penguins, and cormorants. The sheer size of the bay and its population is quite something to behold. The bay is also home to a significant oyster farming industry whose harvests are exported as far afield as Japan.
It was at Vahl-fiss Bay that we ventured out for a day on a catamaran ski boat with a small group of tourists. We had just left the port when we could not help but notice a huge flock of cormorants circling high in the sky. Our skipper whistled loudly. Let me introduce you to Fred, he chuckled. With that, a single cormorant left the circling flock and landed on the deck rail right close to me. Fred made himself at home for as long as the skipper kept giving him fresh sardines, and we got to enjoy a real close look at a cormorant, a unique encounter of a special kind.
Ahead of us lay a number of deep-sea fishing trawlers at anchor. They were unusual because they were all very rusty and deserted save for hundreds of sea birds that had built nests in every nook and cranny that was suitable. Our guide explained that the trawlers once made up a Russian fishing fleet, but they had become stranded in the bay after their owners went bankrupt and couldn’t afford to have them recovered. Today they provide an ideal breeding ground, particularly for cormorants.
The tail-end of the catamaran sloped into the sea, and as we took in the sights and sounds around us a couple of cape fur seals appeared, swimming alongside the boat. And then the strangest thing happened: one of the seals suddenly decided to board the boat via the tail ramp! It slid right onto the deck between all of us.
This is Aristotle, announced the skipper, handing the seal a sardine. His philosophy is based on the premise that the friendlier he can be, the more he will get to eat!
Across the bay we came across a large wooden platform built on wooden stilts just off the shoreline, upon which hundreds of sea birds could be seen milling around. The guano platform was built over Bird Rock about seven kilometres north of Vahl-fiss Bay and four hundred metres offshore. It was built by a local Swa-kop carpenter in the 1930s in order to collect guano from the thousands of birds that initially were seen to settle on the rock but then subsequently found a more comfortable resting place on top of the platform itself. Guano is collected periodically off the platform and sold to the perfume manufacturers of Europe where it is used as a base for most of the exotic perfumes of the world.
There are about three hundred species of birds in and around the bay. It is difficult to describe the enormous scale of wildlife we witnessed. Great white pelicans and cormorants are plentiful. There are reputably over 150,000 migratory birds that spend the summer months in the bay. African migrants include flamingos, plovers, black-necked grebes, pied avocets, and Cape teals. Curlew sandpipers, plovers, little stints, and knots, as well as sanderlings, and ruddy turnstones, travel as much as fourteen thousand kilometres from Europe and Northern Siberia, while from the Arctic come Black and Arctic terns. In the water you will find bottlenose dolphins, Cape fur seals, jackass penguins, and the occasional whale.
In between all this excitement, the skipper dropped anchor just off Pelican Point lighthouse at midday and produced platters of fresh oysters with cold champagne. As we enjoyed our special lunch we watched as black backed jackals hunted for baby seals among the colony on the beach ahead of us.
That evening we sat down to a pint of Vint-hook lager, fresh crispy German bread, Wiener schnitzel, sauerkraut, and bratkartoffeln. Mahlzeit!
Amazing country, amazing people, amazing cuisine, amazing adventures!