Fish River Canyon

28/04/10
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Trunk of a quver tree at the canyon.

Another quiet bus day. Early start at 4.30. Put the tents down in the dark, breakfast at 5.00, on the road by 5.30. Namibians only put their clocks back once they get a few hundred km into the country, so near the border we’d not had to bother, but now we’ve lost an hour. Or gained an hour, should be able to work it out, but can’t.

Stayed in Herbos last night. Definite downgrade from the night before, no soft grass to put the tent on, just hard packed dirt with baboon prints in it. We were told to watch out for aggressive baboons. Didn’t see any but one of the girls did have a flip flop go missing. She managed to locate its chewed remains, Gareth and John our guide and driver reckoned it was jackals, they were heard screeching in the night. Would have like to have seen them. Did get to see a genet though, a large blue eyed lemur marked cat. The reason we went so far into the middle of nowhere was so we could visit Fish River Canyon for sunset. This is Africa’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon. It was incredible. I’ve never been anywhere like it. The best word I could come out with when I saw it was “Wow”. Been watching to many bad American films I think. Fish River Canyon was first caused by a tectonic rift. It was deepened further by flood then years of river and wind wear. There are plateaus and valleys with the colossal channel of the river winding U-bends through it all. What made this so special was that we had the place more of less to our selves. That is apart from a group of teenagers who appeared from nowhere to play football on the dirt road as the sun went down. There was one small shack there and the construction site of a future tourist stop, surely they didn’t all come out of the shack.

Fish River Canyon

A truck parked on the edge of the canyon.

Now we are back to miles and miles of nothing on the bus. Have 500 km to travel today, at 60 km per hour at best. Read in a book my mum gave me that Namibia is bigger than most of Europe, but has less than 2 million people. There are 10 million people living in Bangkok, and about the same living in the relatively tiny area that makes up London. 2 million people would have to work really hard to create a visible impact upon such a vast landscape. Saying that, we stopped in one tiny blip on the map town, and their bottle shop had a more varied wine selection than many Bangkok supermarkets.

Quiver tree.

Sunset over the canyon.