Fish River Canyon

Namibia 

“Tell him I will arrest him” said the angry lady in the green uniform.

We were visiting one of the main tourist attractions in Namibia, the Fish River Canyon. According to the information which came with the £5 ticket entry it is the second biggest hole in the ground in the world, the biggest being the other one near Las Vegas. At 160km long, 27Km wide and 0.5Km deep it is a very impressive piece of natural engineering that only took 1.5bn years to complete. We agreed that it was worth the entry fee despite the incongruity of an organisation owning such an astonishing natural phenomenon.

Could be any hole in the ground.....

James had arrived well ahead of Andrew and me, keeping up a higher average speed over 120km of dirt road. Andrew was building his confidence by keeping his speeds below 50Kph, getting used to the Red Peril and doing well. As James entered the park he was distracted by a group of 3 riders leaving. Consequently he missed the lady in uniform waving him into the section where the entry fee had to be paid. When Andrew and me arrived we soothed things, paid for the 3 of us and by the time we left she was having a laugh about it.

We needed fuel for the return journey which meant stopping at Canyon River Lodge only a few Km after passing the now no longer angry lady in the green uniform. We met the 3 riders who had exited the park as James arrived. They were on a variety of machines and Johan told of a scary moment in the same sand that had caught Andrew out a couple of days back. Hearing that he was not alone in his difficulties may have helped Andrew attack the 120Km of dirt road back to tarmac at a much higher speed. We were further motivated by the price of the rooms at the Lodge. Our thinking has recalibrated to expect a “high” rate of £25 per night including breakfast – the lodge, no doubt thinking it had a captive audience, wanted £55 per night. It may be the price of a provincial Premier Inn at home but here we thought it “outrageous” and resolved to find somewhere cheaper.

The three of us took on the challenge of getting off the dirt road before it got dark. The guy in the BMW dealership in Stellenbosch had been adamant that we must not ride the dirt roads in the dark. “Stop and camp at the side of the road if you have to but absolutely do not ride”

 This left us just over 90 minutes to get to tarmac. With the sun sinking just ahead of our left shoulders we shot north at between 80Kph and 100Kph. Glancing to the right, our shadows gradually lengthened as the sun sunk lower, casting the mountains in the East in a glorious yellow hue, picking out the different coloured sedimentation strata, while the full moon (sitting in a bright blue sky) got higher and more pronounced.

We arrived at the tarmac just in time then followed our lights back to Keetmanshoop to the Birds Nest Hotel where we had stayed the previous evening.

A comfortable hotel with a very nice atmosphere and good (enough) food, on our first night we met Alex Jackson who runs motorcycle tours around SA and Namibia and who kindly shared a lot of his very extensive experience as well as telling us some very entertaining stories…almost none of which can be repeated here! He was en-route South to Capetown after conducting a tour for a client. The roads which only the day before had given us so much pleasure to ride on were viewed by Alex as nothing more than a boring commute albeit he would have been covering the distance at a much faster rate on his big V twin KTM.

Keetmanshoop is a lively medium sized town predominately made up of single story buildings, it has quite a bit of a frontier feel about it. Everything an overland traveller needs is available including functional ATMs, a fully stocked supermarket (Pick and Pay), two hardware stores (8mm spanner and gun gum) as well as the tremendous Wimpy. No, not the fast food outlet (although they do have them in SA) rather the owner of Wimpy’s Garage who specialise in exhausts and general metal work repairs. The size of a small house, Wimpy surveyed the hole in my exhaust before resolving to fix it. 45 minutes and 3 different approaches later a metal patch had been delicately welded into place. A nice piece of work carried out as soon as we arrived and with polite, friendly efficiency. The price? An unbelievable £5. Can you even begin to imagine trying to get something like that done at home at that price?

On the other hand, the couriers failed to arrive with the spare parts needed to fix the CCM (this is Africa!) so we are now heading for Windhoek where the redirected parcel is due to be delivered. We intend to take in some of the tourist spots along the way. Watch this space…!