The last supper

Monday the first of August we carefully step on our bicycles again, more conscience then ever of the treacherous slippery stones on the Namibian gravel roads. On our way to Khorixas Peter relives the accident of two weeks ago quite clearly; the bad memories make us both slow in the descents. Despite a relapse on my part halfway the day, we reach our final destination at over one hundred kilometres and count four kudu and 22 springbok on the way.

Former president Nujoma’s weekend visit robbed Khorixas of all its bread, so the next day we live on biscuits and fruit. Between hundreds of Welwitschia Mirabilis, the oldest growing plant in the world, we visit the Petrified Forest after 45 kilometres. Millions of years ago the pine tree forest was felled in one blow by a huge flood and afterwards covered with soil, where the trees slowly petrified. Erosion has exposed small and large pieces of trunk: bark, knots and year-rings are clearly visible in the petrified pine trees.

Via an unearthly landscape of pink, grey, black and green rocky mountains we reach the campsite at Twyfelfontein some time later, situated at the dry riverbed of the river with the same name: Aba Huab. To fall asleep, after having cycled against the wind for ninety kilometres on a corrugated road, is no problem at all. At eight p.m., time for the news on the Dutch TV, we’re long gone.

The red sandstone rocks of Twyfelfontein contain some two thousand rock engravings and paintings of the Bushmen, which are about six thousand years old. A Damara guide shows us a few dozen images of elephants, giraffes, a lion, sea-lions, penguins, paw-prints and a map with water points. We ask the guide how it is possible that only the Bushmen made this kind of drawings and all the other tribes didn’t. She doesn’t know. Five kilometres further we admire the remains of an old volcano, in the shape of petrified organ-pipes a few dozens of metres wide. Two kilometres further still lies a mountain that gives the area a sinister tint: it’s almost entirely black, like the waist hills of a coalmine. We can’t believe our eyes when we see miniscule little plants growing on it: the Namibian Edelweiss. Tiny white flower leafs around a yellow or red heart, like life after death.

Namibia’s vast north west is roamed by some two- to three thousand desert elephants. It is not a different species, but the regular African elephant that adapted to the dry circumstances in the desert. Unfortunately for the villages and farmers in the region part of the adaptation consists of molesting plastic water tanks and the metal windmills that pump up the water. At an old deserted farmhouse we observe one of these elephants that doesn’t care about us at all and merrily carries on eating the meagre bushes and drinking from a concrete dam. At the village of “Hou Moed” (Keep Courage) we turn to the right onto the D2319, fill our water supply at a converted wind-hand-pump and listen an hour later next to the campfire under a million starts to howling jackals and barking gecko. This was another beautiful day...

Over the deplorable bad surface of the D2319, where we don’t even cycle ten kilometres per hour, we reach the sand of the wide Ugab riverbed. The view of the Brandberg is gone for a while, but is visible again to our right after an hour of climbing out of the valley. Over forty kilometres after we started this morning we arrive in the village of Uis, visible from afar by the white dunes formed by the refuse of the closed tin mine. Jaap de Jager manages to persuade us to spend the night here and pitch our tent at the Brandberg Rest Camp. The owner, Basil Calitz, takes us in his 4x4 to the highest point of the former mine, to admire the red sun setting over the Brandberg Mountain, whilst drinking sundowners and seeing the surrounding mountains and the village seemingly be on fire. We doubt whether or not to accept his invitation for a tour with his Landrover the next day. What more can you see by car than by bicycle? Jaap, his wife Elsa and Basil are really disappointed when we decline the offer the next day; we really want to reach Windhoek, our first major city in three months time.

The road to Omaruru isn’t of a particularly good quality. The strong headwind and the steadily climbing road make the cycling very hard. After fourteen kilometres and one and a half hour of cycling we regret our decision. Our minds seems to get more flexible every day: for the first time in three years we return to the starting point of the day, where we arrive half an hour later at full speed. Just in time to join the Landrover-party. A little while later we rush through the dry riverbed of the Omaruru-river with Basil and three other couples in three cars. To get in the riverbed we had to pass impossible steep rock paths. Basil knows an awful lot about the geological rock formations that we see, which formed 120 million years ago when Gondwanaland – the huge primeval continent - tore and drifted apart to form the continents as we know them now. In and next to the riverbed grow dozens of kinds of trees and shrubs we never or only occasionally saw before: the snow-white Sterculia Quinqueloba, the Marungu or Fairy tale tree, the Elephant-foot and the Cannot-die. The latter is called this way, because the little tree even survives long periods of draught and only grows when it rains.

Anxious we keep away from the Euphorbia Damaraensis and the Euphorbia Virosa: the Milkwood and the Rhinowood. These very poisonous succulents, which contain a white milky juice, were traditionally used by the Bushmen for hunting: the points of the spears were smeared with the ultra-poisonous juice, which causes paralysis and death. Some animals are known to eat the plants, until they know and feel that the amount of poison in their body has reached a critical point; then they never eat them again. The only exception to this rule is the rhinoceros, which stays immune for the paralyzing poison all his life.

Via an immense sand- and stone plain we drive towards the setting sun and Uis, where the day ends with a barbeque of oryx, kudu, puff-adder made of eland and several salads. Today we righted a wrong decision: with the Landrover we visited places we couldn’t have reached by bicycle if we had shoved and pushed them for a month.

The next morning, after a warm goodbye, we visit the 26 graves on the Uis-road. A few years ago a bus with Ovambos, the main Namibian tribe out of the north of the country, broke down here. Waiting for parts and help, the people decided to cook a meal. They used, not sensing any danger, a dried Euphorbia-bush for firewood, sat around the fire and breathed the smoke of the innocent looking wood. The next morning all 26 Ovambos were dead, not one of them survived.

Horrified we think back at all those cozy campfires we made the last years…

Brandberg Rest Camp
Uis
Website: www.brandbergrestcamp.com
e-mail: brandberg@africaonline.com.na