Van Zyl's Pass & Kaokoland - Namibia

The night passed without incident and although nothing had been disturbed the torchlight on our camp in the night had been unsettling, especially with Jim the Canadian weirdo around.

As soon as we got up Moses came around to tell us he is leaving this morning to go to the nearest town and he still hasn't had his money from Jim, we feel very sorry for him but there is little we can do other than have a word with Jim when we next see him. 

Today we were preparing for the journey over Van Zyl's pass, I needed to top up the diff & transfer box oil and grease the prop shaft and U joints. While under the vehicle I noticed a slight oil leak in the Vacuum pump, we don't have a spare so there is nothing we can do about it until we reach Windhoek, not good when we are about to go over the toughest track in Southern Africa!

While we are busy we have another unexpected visit in the shape of the German couple who were caught up in the armed robbery in Tsumeb and had their camp table and chairs stolen at the Zambezi Lodge in Katima.

They told us after Tsumeb they had taken the long inland route to Epupa and had just arrived to hear the 'mad English couple' as they called us had managed to make it over the river route. They had attempted the river route but had ended up turning back after getting more than halfway because they felt it was too rough and getting worse, this would mean they had driven around 100 kms only to abort and they called us 'mad'!  

So now when we told them we were driving over Van Zyl's on our own they just shook their heads in disbelief, they would go the long way round - again.

Finally we finish our jobs and are just about to sit down to have a late lunch when we are disturbed yet again, this time by Jim. He's clearly not bothered we are eating and oblivious to the fact we don't seem pleased to see him. He's come to have a look at our map which he reckons is a good one and compared to his very basic one, it is. 

Now's the time to tell him we don't want him to travel with us tomorrow but before we can broach the subject he asks to borrow the map and quickly heads back to his own camp - bugger!

For the last two nights we have noticed a smouldering Palm tree trunk stuck between the rocks at the top of the falls, on the day we arrived we had passed an area of Palm trees on the riverbank which had been set alight, this one must have fallen in and been swept downstream but the fact it was still alight with the spray from the falls was amazing, during the day it didn't look much but once it got dark it glowed brightly so we decide to walk over to the falls to take a closer look.

The scenery from the falls is stunning with Baobab trees literally growing on the sides of the gorge, the view to our campsite is obscured by loads of Palm trees but we can just make out Rupert. By now it is after 5pm and still very hot so we make our way back to camp to finish what we need to do before tomorrow's departure.

The Palm trees give our camp plenty of shade and with the spray from the falls it is very refreshing after the heat, sitting with a beer & Savannah maybe now at least we can enjoy our sundowners in peace but no its not to be, Moses re-appears, seems he couldn't get a lift into town this morning and he's back to have another go at Jim for his money!

But he's soon back, Jim is still refusing to pay him, we can't believe it 50N$ isn't much, about £4, but it means a lot to Moses, he heads off not at all happy and we don't blame him. At least we could now have some quiet time to ourselves but no Jim is soon over but at least this time he has some good news for us.

He's concerned that the tyres on his vehicle won't be able to withstand the rough road over Van Zyl's so he's decided to join up with the German couple and take the long way round, we were only too happy to agree it would be foolish to attempt it with poor tyres and couldn't help but smile that he and the Germans will now be travel buddies! 

He heads back to his camp and we fill up Rupert's water tank with the water from our jerry's then fill them with water from the tap on the site. Basically this is water from the Kunene so we will use that for washing not drinking as water from now on will be scarce or non existent and the heat searing.

The sun was setting and Rosy faced Lovebirds were flying overhead on the way to their roosting spots, we have Cape Malay chicken curry and rice for dinner washed down with G&Ts and it's lovely to finally enjoy some peace, the night is quiet as most people go to bed early, well before us and yes the palm tree was still glowing red at the top of the falls.

Up at 6am and Sue says the sweaty palms have already started for her, during the night some little critter had checked out our rubbish bag, probably a genet, we start to pack up the camp. As we leave Epupa it is a beautiful sunny fresh morning, Jim the Canadian is still in camp, his vehicle an old beat up Suzuki jeep with tyres that are almost bald, we were right he wouldn't have made Van Zyl's.

If you intend going to Kaokoland then the normal tourist maps of Namibia are of little use, the map most people use by the Roads Authority just shows a blank space with two names Marienfluss and Hartmansberge but no other detail before you reach the very aptly named Skeleton Coast.

The best map is the Info Map of Kaokoland published in RSA (see www.infomap.co.za) this is essential as it contains GPS co-ordinates for key points, in Kaokoland you are travelling in an area with virtually no landmarks and just dirt tracks, whose key junctions are marked with rusty coloured oil drums, red, blue and orange, that's how desolate it is.

At 9am we passed our first wildlife, a very small antelope called a Dik Dik, later on we pass a few others, how they survive in this inhospitable land is amazing as not much can survive here. Although Kaokoland lay to the West there were no tracks going that way so we first had to head 50 miles South to the village of Okongwati where to our surprise we were met by a police roadblock!

Although in the middle of nowhere we quickly put on our seat belts as the police love to fine you if they can, they wanted to see my driving licence and surprisingly the Carnet, most cops don't even know it exists and this was the first time we had been asked to show it and in such a place, as we drove off they wished us a Merry Xmas!

Xmas, with all that had been going on we had clean forgotten how close that was, in this heat it didn't feel quite right. As we left the village tracks went all over the place so we had to ask for directions. The road so far had been been on good gravel but now signs said for the next 103km the road were bendy and undulating. From here you can take one of two routes, the slightly more direct one takes a southerly direction before turning west but the map stated this was 'hardly used and rough in places' so we opted for the more Northerly route to Etengwa then onto Otjitanda.

Just after 11am we stopped to make some coffee, we had been on the road for nearly three hours but had managed just 65 miles. The track was much rockier now, the last 5km before Otjitanda being the worse, where we were basically bumping from boulder to boulder. Finally at 1.40pm we reached the Otjitanda mopane woodland, we had been on the road for five hours and done just 84 miles!

Otjitanda consists of just a few Himba huts and there are no signs to show the way to Otjihende the last settlement before Van Zyl's pass. Leaving the 'village' we took what we thought  from the Garmin was the right track but it petered out at a Himba cattle post, all tracks obliterated by the cattle's hoofs.

The only people around were a couple of young boys watering the cattle, they couldn't speak English but they seemed to understand what we were after and pointed for us to go straight on, no track just head out across what looked like barren desert! Eventually to our relief we found a small track, we had expected for sure that somewhere along the way Van Zyl's pass would be signposted but there was nothing, we were on a small rocky undulating track seemingly going nowhere.

Even the Garmin seemed confused, the map stated "that strange unexplained anomalies had been reported by pilots and explorers using GPS in Kaokoland, therefore it is essential that travellers should not be complacent that the GPS will take care of navigation" Well this was re-assuring! 

Suddenly the track left the plain and rose steeply but there was still no signs to show if this was Van Zyl's pass or not! The track was rocky and very narrow with no room to turn round if it wasn't right so I walked up it first to see what lay beyond. What met my gaze was amazing, the track just went on and on disappearing off into the mountains, no sign of any habitation and no signs to say where it was going, however we had come too far to turn back so there was nothing for it but to trust the Garmin and carry on.

Nine miles later we suddenly realised we had left all substantial trees behind us, just scrub lay ahead, should we have collected some firewood while we had the chance? It was now clear there was no way we would get over the pass before dark and it would be cold this high up but it was too late to do anything now.

The next couple of hours was a constant series of climbs then drops with little to see until you reached the top of the next rise. We hadn't seen a single vehicle since leaving Epupa some 6 or 7 hours ago and the only humans we had met were the police at the roadblock and the two boys at the cattle post so we knew if we lost it here we were in a heap of trouble!

Then suddenly around 5pm we reached a stunning viewpoint, by now we were high in the midst of the mountains and below us lay a spectacular desert valley, our immediate thought was this must be the Marienfluss, the Kaokoland map had a GPS co-ordinate for the summit of the pass but our Garmin was showing a very different reading so where were we?

As I said the map had warned the GPS readings were very confused to the extent that I still wasn't sure we were on Van Zyl's at all! However, the view was so expansive and spectacular that I felt it must be the Marienfluss we were looking at. You are only meant to cross Van Zyl's from West to East (the track is felt to be too steep to do it the other way round) so it was a racing certainty we were completely on our own up here.

We could see the track continued on across the hills until it disappeared from sight in the mountains but it was too late to go on so we decided to camp here for the night and enjoy a fantastic sunset over the Marienfluss. After putting up the rooftent we took a walk to the far end of a viewpoint to give us a better view of what faced us tomorrow, it didn't look too bad perhaps we were over the worse? Little did we know!

At 8pm it was still light as we strolled back to camp, amazingly we found some fire wood around the area so we were able to have a pretty good fire, which was just as well as it started to get very chilly. No cooking tonight just some cheese and crackers washed down with G&Ts under a clear clear starry sky.

It was incredibly quiet up here, not a sound, no insects, nothing, we are used to camping in remote places and really enjoy solitude but this was something else, very atmospheric, very isolated, an amazing feeling.

Snug and warm in the roof tent we were up at 7am to pack up camp, if all went well we should be off the pass and down in the Marienfluss by the end of the day.  Breakfast was a cup of tea and a bounty bar, a breakie first for us, we felt that after yesterdays drive we had pretty much done the worst bit and today should be easier, little did we know!

Last night we had walked a short way down the start of today's track and it hadn't seemed too bad but this morning in Rupert it suddenly felt a lot steeper and before too long we reached our  first real test when the track ended abruptly and beyond it lay only the steep rocky side of the mountain, no track, nothing, surely we weren't expected to drive down here?!

We got out to take a look around, maybe we had missed something, a turnoff, but no, this was the only way, we couldn't see anything beyond the bottom of the slope so before taking the plunge we walked down to check what awaited us.

What we saw first was totally unexpected, in between the rocks was soft sand and in one spot to our amazement was the  unmistakeable outline of a large paw print, a Leopard, how it could survive out here was unbelievable but they are incredible at adapting to their environment and will for sure be the last surviving big cat in the wild.

In the sand we could also make out the faint traces of tyre tracks, in a way this was reassuring, at least we knew for sure it was the right way and others had made it before us. There was a steep drop on our left so we would have to keep Rupert over to our right as much as possible, not so easy given the size of the boulders! We decided Sue would walk ahead and guide me while watching I didn't slip off the edge on the nearside!

Going slowly we managed to get over this first test and reached the bottom, looking back we were amazed at how steep it was, there was definitely no going back now. The next bit was also very  steep but with the added twist of a series of bends so you couldn't see too far ahead it was certainly sweaty palms time and we still had miles of this ahead.

Eventually we reached a point were we had a good clear view of the track ahead and what we saw worried me greatly. After dropping down from the mountains we now could see we faced a steep climb up a smaller hill. From a distance it looked impossibly steep and I was seriously worried that Rupert being so heavy we would not be able to climb it and bearing in mind the state of the track meant we could not build up a head of steam we could even flip over backwards!

We reached the base of the steep slope and to our relief it didn't look quite as bad as we first thought but it was still very steep, so once again we decided to walk it first to check it out. It was steep but not impossibly so, so leaving Sue at the top with the Sat phone just in case anything went wrong I went back to drive Rupert up alone.

However, Rupert, with diff locks on, once again excelled himself by literally romping up the slope, we still had a way to go but from here at last we could see the way down, still some tricky gullies ahead but the bottom was getting closer and the trees were looking bigger, a welcome sight!

And then at around 10.20 we suddenly reached the valley floor, in two hours we had travelled just one mile but we didn't care, it was just a relief to get down in one piece, many do Van Zyl's but most are in convoys of at least two vehicles, very few on their own like ourselves, we felt quite a sense of achievement!

At the foot of the mountains we found a group of rocks under a tree which previous travellers over the pass had written their details on, we did the same having to use nail polish when our felt tip pen ran out, looking back up the mountain and how steep it was, it was hard to believe we had just driven down it in a three ton truck!

All that was left now was to head off into the wide open space of the Marienfluss and try to reach the Kunene River where we had read there were a couple of camp sites, we hadn't seen another vehicle since leaving Epupa so we were hoping we were in for a nice relaxing time once we got there.