A walk in the park

After another overnight train ride back to Windhoek, we managed to meet up with our good friend Scott, and our soon-to-be friend Kaitlin, which was no small feat as only Kaitlin had a phone. Both of them have been living and doing volunteer work in Namibia for some time. By that evening we'd managed to stock up on food and get a lift back down to the Naukluft mountains (~300km) with the park ranger.

The team: Jodi, Scott, Kaitlin, Marty

For the next 8 days, we walked a 120km circuit in this beautiful national park full of surprises. We climbed mountains, traversed the sometimes undulating, other times dead flat plateau on top, descended and climbed up impressive kloofs (canyons) and walked in the foothills and (mostly dry) river beds. Some of the trail was challenging, at times requiring rock scrambling, hauling ourselves up chains anchored to the rock (not always in a reassuring way), walking on difficult terrain and spotting elusive white footprints (train markers). We rose before dawn and got walking at first light to avoid the worst of the heat. Most afternoons we had time to relax in the comfy rock shelters where we slept, do some yoga, read a book or enjoy the scenery. Composing haikus became a bit of an obsession for all of us, and on days 5 and 7 we made vague attempt to speak only in phrases of the required number of syllables. Scott carried a camp shower so we even managed to stay relatively smell free :).

We were rewarded by stunning vistas of all kinds: geographical, geological, biological and celestial. Though our hunt for rhinos and leopards only yielded footprints and dung (luckily perhaps), we were surrounded by mountain zebra, kudu, springbok, oryx, baboons trying to scare us off their mountains with loud barking and rock throwing, social weaver birds in their giant communal nests, and larger birds (eagles? vultures?) circling overhead. We had a couple of close-but-not-too-close encounters with shy spitting cobras, and several more painful clashes with some oversized wasps.

Inside one of the kloofs (this is a smaller one)

Signs of the "circle of life" were abundant, and often reminded us of what life is really about, at least for those species that haven't yet evolved enough to join Facebook. The most impressive was a dead kudu (large deer-like creature), its insides mostly eaten already, a seething mass of maggots finishing off the rest. On a rock nearby, the bloody print of a leopard's paw. We also came across various bones and other remains, including a nearly complete zebra skin hanging eerily from a horizontal tree branch above the river bed.

Bit of a rest after climbing up a waterfall

The flora is worth a moention too. Our favourites were the quiver trees which often adorned the hillsides and the skyline. Their crazy branching shapes were always hard to pass by without a second glance (or a photo). There were amazing fig trees with their roots growing straight through a vertical rock face, plenty of cacti, and our first sight of smallish baobab trees. Along the sections where our attention needed to be at our feet, there were numerous colourful flowers to distract us.

Quiver trees