Namibia Road Trip – Day #5: Twyfelfontein to Swakopmund
The landscape around Twyfelfontein was punctuated by mesas, small peaks, and curious piles of red or chocolate boulders, each stone as big as our truck. Some mounds were only 30 feet high, others towered far higher; it was as if a child god wanting to build sandcastles had packed a giant sand pail full with the boulders and slammed it down into the earth leaving a perfectly formed outpost of red stone on a dusty plain of yellow.
We went from the rich red mountains and dust of Twyfelfontein straight yellow rolling hills garnished with scrub brush. The yellow sands became golden, dotted with trees, shrubs, and the occasional ostrich. The hills became jagged brown rock and winding passes once again. In 115 F degree heat, we passed Herero women in full traditional dress (a kind of African take on the Victorian formal dress) selling crafts by the road side.
The road traced a path between what became mountains. The gravel strip that passed for a road became wider, and traced a wide path around the massive peak of Brandberg. a massive red peak that topped out at over 2,500 meters. We drove towards it for nearly an hour before I realized it would be another hour before we would get close to it. I felt like a explorer on Mars, approaching Olympus Mons on foot. It was humbling.
We left Brandberg behind as we passed the by town of Uis, where we were then spat out onto white sand flats. The gravel road was perfectly straight for over 60 miles. White sand flats were in every direction, and we passed no one. If you broke down out here, you were in a world of shit, for sure.
The white flats gave way to classic sand box-type sand, and eventually undulating dunes made of sand so fine it was like dust. It reminded me of a beach. Good thing, as in a sense, it was a beach. The huge blue mirage rippling in the heat ahead of us wasn’t a mirage at all, but the Atlantic Ocean. The gravel road we’d been travelling on turned into asphalt for a few feet before we came to a T intersection with the C34. We took a left and headed south towards Swakopmund.
The C34 is a strip of undulating, unmarked black asphalt lain across the dunes. It divides the Atlantic Ocean (and its spacious beach front) from a hundred miles of harsh desert. The asphalt stuck out against the brilliant yellow, but occasionally disappeared under skeins of sand carried by the unrelenting wind. As the asphalt road carried over an impossibly high dune, we could see for what seemed to be hundreds of miles in every direction, the space around us divided cleanly and concisely by the ocean, the road, and the horizon. The sand had an almost artificial tint to it. It was almost too yellow.
That high up, I felt like a tiny particle on a political map of Namibia, the entire country inked in this canary yellow. No doubt, South Africa was hued in Pink and neighboring Zaire in light green. In my imagination, we crawled slowly across the map, and I could make out the N, A, and M painted in black ink to the left of us; the I, B, I, A were just over the horizon.
There was no civilization for miles apart from the occasional bakkie carrying surf fishermen to their favorite spot.
The Travelling Misanthrope 