Things had gone too smoothly. Plans had been achieved a little too easily the previous two days. Our last day of our desert adventure and of course something had to go wrong. We found ourselves in the Hoarusib river where we camped last night searching for the track that was purported to be there. It wasn’t. We drove back and forth and (literally) around in circles. No tracks.

“Do we just go for it ourselves?” we both thought. (I’m sure Cheryl thought this too…)

Our thoughts flashed back to the day before when we drove through the same river much lower down. There we had at least some tracks to follow. We also saw the signs of people who didn’t follow the tracks and had really bad days. (read: deep ruts in the mud with shovel marks all around.) We remembered driving yesterday when we had to turn around lower down in this river and drive around a mountain just to get back into it because we couldn’t find tracks and got stuck.

“I think we’ve got to use Plan B.” we both agreed.

Disappointed we decided to back-track out of the river bed and take a northerly route passed fields with massive herds of oryx, springbok and zebra mixed in with the occasional herd of cattle, to the Khumib river. From there we would be able to join the numbered gravel road to get us back on track.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunrise in the Hoarusib River valley

We take ‘Leave No Trace” seriously.  Covering our tracks after filling in our fire pit from the night before.  Yes, I’m sweeping the desert…

This time things worked according to plan and although the day was a bit long we ended up all the way in the north of Namibia at Epupa Falls drinking a beer and G&T on the banks of the Cunene river.

My only gripe on the day is this: The proper numbered road was extremely deceptive. We started out feeling great. Cruising along at 50-60km / hour when we noticed a small warning sign. It seemed benign enough. The sign made it look like there was a small bump that would cause a mild inconvenience on our otherwise unobstructed pathway back to (momentary) civilization. It did not state that we were about to enter a technical 4×4 track and that I should slow way the heck down. Suddenly, our open gravel highway turned into a steep incline with loose rocks, axle twisters and big dips. It’s like the road builders got together and said to themselves “what’s the most understated sign possible but where we are still warning people?”

You can see how good the road was that we were on when we saw a sign just like this one.  Who would have guessed what lay ahead?

Don’t go off the path to the right.  You may fall in a ravine.  But of course I knew that from the sign that was 6km back.  At least the track here was relatively good or this could have been really interesting.

Next time we saw any sign, like the one that showed a mild bend in the road approaching, we decided to take it very seriously. (This one said next 5km under it which we were amazed at. How do you have a 5km bend in the road? World’s slowest turn?) The bend it turned out wasn’t mild at all but a series of zig-zags and along a sheer drop that eventually led down into a shallow ravine. “These are some of the most subtle and understated sign posts of all time” we thought.

So you can imagine how slowly we proceeded after seeing this sign, half tucked behind a bush.

The funny thing was, after taking a photo and getting psyched up for what lay ahead, it turned out that there was no real obstacle up ahead after this one. Not even that many turns.  And we had gotten our hopes up!

At least they put signs up though. That’s more than we can say for some other roads we’ve been on.