Teufelskrallen

I wanted to stay at the Bagatelle Lodge but it was 40km on a sand road off the main B1 tar road and I had already driven 600km and was too tired to ply the sand road.  Sand roads take more concentration.  So next I opted for the Kalahari Red Dunes Lodge, which was just off the tar road near Kalkrand, but it was just too expensive.  They wanted N $1800 a night, which is about US $200.  Luckily, they recommended a sister property called Teufelskrallen, which was just 10km up the road.

Teufelskrallen turned out to be perfect.  It was a very small guest lodge with 6 tented challets in the Kalahari desert and a private water with a herd of springbok.  Each challet was made with tented fabric nailed to wooden beams.  The bathroom was outdoors, with solar heated water, and a great bush feeling.

The setting was peaceful.  It had huge vistas and wonderful sunrises, sunsets, starlight, a nice pool, and good cheap food.  And the rate was only N$ 760/night, or about US $ 80, including breakfast.  I stayed two nights and spent one day just relaxing at the pool.  The main building had a lovely restaurant that served very good food. 

The full day I spent at the pool was Namibian Independence Day so there were only two people on staff.  I was the only guest in the lodge and had the whole space to myself.  I sunned, swam, and lazed in the hammock.  It was a great down day after the long drive the day before and a perfect way to round out a perfect trip in Africa for a month.

I also walked around and did some macro photography.

I particularly hunted the red dragonflies that swarmed around the pool drinking sips of water between insect hunts.

At the end of the day, some clouds rolled in and we had some fantastic sunsets.

Sunrise on the last day, March 22nd, was also fantastic.

I took one last shot out my chalet window of the springbok at the water hold and one of me as a self portrait after 22 days in the hot Namibian Sun. 

I would say I feel completely satisfied with this trip.  I did more than I expected, learned a lot, and don't have any regrets.  It was enough time to get far away from normal life.  I travelled alone but never felt lonely.  I met wonderful people in every place I visited, made good new friends, and developed a deep love for this wonderful country Namibia. 

I will surely be back.

Wind is bad for sleep in Kooimanis

 March 19. 2013

Roger and Nadine wanted to drive South after Tsauchab River Camp.  I had no plans and thought about driving East over Maltehohe and spending a few days in the Kalahari.  But I also really enjoyed camping with Roger and Nadine.  They were fun and relaxed and we had a great time talking together.  Roger wanted to drive through the D707, a road renowned as the most scenic in Namibia.  It crosses through the Namib Rand, which is a spectacular green valley with salmon pink dunes and mountains on either side.

Checking out at Tsauchab, we asked Vicki for recommendations.  She said there was a camp on the D707 which was one of the most beautiful in Namibia, a place even more special than her own campsite.  It was about 120km on dirt and sand roads from where we were and driving that way would commit me to a Southern route back to Windhoek.  I looked at the map.  Driving East would be more gravel roads, but a trip South on the D707 would terminate in Aus and I could pick up a tar road there and blitz North to Windhoek.

Roger and Nadine wanted me to continue with them and I figured I still had three more nights with no plans on how to use them so it would be more fun to continue South.

The D707 did not disappoint.  It was a spectacular combination of tan and blue grasses, pink sand dunes, green trees, and red mountains.

I decided earlier in the day to shoot exclusively with the Pentax-M 100mm 2.8 I had brought with me and almost never used on the trip.  The lens is 40 years old, but looks new and it is normally quite a sharp lens for portraits.  100mm might seem too long for landscapes, but the distances in Namibia are so great and the air is so clean that one must use longer lenses in landscapes to fill the frame with a subject.  Using wide angle lenses what you get are vast amounts of sky, flat landscape details, and no subject.

In hindsight, I think I should have used a more modern lens.  I am disappointed with the color contrast of the Pentax.  It doesn't pop as much as the newer Olympus and Panasonic lenses I have been using on this trip with the OM-D.  Here are some examples of photos taken with those lenses for comparison.

I had the same polarizing filter on all the lenses that day, so the variation in color vibrance and pop is just the optical coatings.  The Pentax glass is great, but it suffers older coating formulas and I will probably sell it when I get back.

The Kooimanis Campsite was at the end of a 20km pink sand road, nestled in an alcove of red rock hills, with spectacular scenery.

 This was absolutely the best looking campsite I had seen in Namibia.  But boy was it hot.  It was 105F when we arrived at 3pm.  So hot that we couldn't sit in the campsite because the sun was too high for shade.  So we went to the adjacent Fest in Fells Lodge, which had a beautiful restaurant.  It was completely unexpected that a restaurant in American adobe style would sit at the end of a 20km pink sand road in the middle of a red rock mountain range in Namibia.  Unfortunately, the restaurant did not cater specifically to camping guests and only served lodge guests for major meals.  Dinner at the lodge was out, but we managed to persuade the staff to serve us some beers and cake, and we relaxed inside, away from the hot sun, for a couple of hours.

 With lodge dinner not an option, Roger and Nadine offered to cook pasta in the campsite and we unpacked our cooking equipment.  I had never even opened the cooking box in my 4x4 since I ate at lodge restaurants even when I camped.  And as I had no experience cooking outside I was so grateful that Roger and Nadine were experts.

We had a great meal together, with a few extra beers and a rose wine cooled down in my fridge.  After dinner, we lit a camp fire and told stories about what we were reading on the trip.  An unlucky locust came to visit near the end of the evening.  Locusts are huge (6 inches long) grasshoppers and I guess he was attracted by the light of the fire because he jumped right into it and killed himself.

Guess we could have had him for desert but didn't have any chocolate nearby...

That evening it was still really hot.  Normally, the temperature drops about 20 degrees after the sun sets and a wind comes about 9-10pm and by 12am it is 40 degrees cooler than the daytime high temperature.  But this evening it didn't get very cool and the wind that came was an intermitant fierce wind.  It would blow hard and shake the tent for 10 minutes, subside for 30 minutes, and return.

Bad for sleeping.  I slept 30 minutes, was awoken by the wind, then repeated the cycle, for maybe a total of 4 hours of lousy sleep which made me super tired and grumpy the next morning.  Just in time for a marathon 650km drive over 8 hours from Kooismanis to Kalkrand.

The drive had zero nice scenery.  It was all ugly brown hills, empty canyons, and barren landscape from Aus to Keetmanshoop to Marienthal on the tar road.  I consumed N$700 in diesel, 3 cans of Red Bull, 3 energy candy bars, a box of cookies, and 3 litres of water. 

Schrike was Awesome

March 18, 2013

After the Dead Vlei, we drove back to camp and had a swim in the camp pool.  It was great to cool off.  My tent was packed since we took my car our, so I waited for Roger and Nadine to pack up and we left at about 12.  We had gotten a recommendation from The Rostock Ritz to stay at a campsite called Tsauchab River Camp.  It wasn't on any map, but I had it on my GPS so I led the 45km drive through the Naucliff Park to the new camp.

Vicki and Johan run this lovely camp and its truly a unique experience to stay there.  There are 13 campsites and each has its unique features.  We stayed at Shriek, which had an outdoor shower built into a tree trunk with a wood stove to heat the water, and a an outdoor toilet with a sunset view of the mountains.

 After we arrived, Abraham came and set out candle lanterns for the evening, provided firewood, and lit the shower oven.  The shower is in the tree behind him.

 Our campsite had a wonderful view of the mountains to the west.

 We walked to dinner over tumbleweed fields and distant canyon walls.

Dining on Kudu steaks in a lovely room all by ourselves.

Johan drove us back to the campsite, where we made a fire, drank beers, talked, and watched the stars.

This was the nicest campsite I visited in Namibia and I will return for sure.

Dead Vlei

March 17, 2013

The Dead Pan is a salt flat with dead trees a thousand years old, surrounded by red dunes.  For a photographer, this is one of the best, and most challenging, places on earth to take photos.  The challenge is to take something other, far better, photographers have not taken.  Because this is a place all great photographers have come.

With the sand stranding fresh in our minds, we took the air out of the tires and pushed through the sand road with gusto.  We passed tourists cars and tractors, and sped into the Vlei.  We rode so fast, we actually passed it and first parked in another part of the salt flat.  We were a little frustrated but used the opportunity to take some other photos.

First, I captured the people walking up a dune to get an overview of the Dead Vlei.

Then Nadine posed for this one on the salt flat.

Finally, I found a camelthorn flower with a fly on it and used the macro lens.

We made our way back to the car and finally found the Dead Vlei.  Its marked by a small sign at another parking lot in the sand.  The walk from the parking lot was 45 minutes in the hot sand.  The outside temperature was 40C and there was no shade.

I approached the Dead Vlei first from the right and scanned the perimeter.  I took several photos with the Olympus 45mm trying to get the scale of the place.

Its too wide to get great landscapes, so I switched to the Panasonic 20mm and went in close.

The magic of Dead Vlei is the simplicity of the black trees on the white salt flat against the red dunes in the right light.  Too early or late and the dunes get de-saturated.  I guess we got there at exactly the right time.