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Blisters a Fair Exchange for Namibia’s Breathtaking Beauty

@ GlobetrotLove

I was 85km weary, had accumulated a five-days-layer of dirt and more than my fair share of bloody blisters after hiking five days through Africa’s largest canyon. And I was smiling. I had been warned that the hike would be arduous and the conditions sub-rustic, but I had not been advised of the stark beauty, ever-changing pastel colours, intense stillness and myriad of stars we were privileged to view in Namibia.

Fish River Canyon

The Fish River Canyon hike entails walking from Hobas down to the river valley and 83 kilometres along the canyon to the oasis of Ai-Ais by using the river and a decidedly inaccurate map as a guide, sleeping under the stars and drinking river water. There are no rest camps or any other facilities along the route and we carried all our food and belongings in straining backpacks. When I was first offered a place on the trip I was most likely decidedly tipsy to take up the challenge, but every moment of discomfort was worth it, even just to prove that city-loving, self-proclaimed princesses can rough it up and enjoy it!

Travelling with my uncle, a cousin and an athletic friend from England, we set out from Cape Town with the nine hour drive to the Namibian border stretching along the unwavering highway before us. The scenery we drove through up the west coast of South Africa was mainly desert – flat sand lands occasionally punctuated by dry thorn trees and dusty succulents. After the draining drive everybody perked up at the shabby yet overly officious border control and before too long we were stamped through to a different country! The sky seemed somehow distilled – bluer and bigger, the desert drier and the horizon stretched even further. It was a relief, a few hours later, to pull up to the entrance of Ai-Ais hot springs hotel and campsite. The recently renovated facilities are clean and comfortable, apparently a marked improvement, and our self-catering cottage was exactly what we needed, especially before heading out to sleep on sand!

View from the top of the Fish River Canyon

Ai-Ais (pronounced “I-ice”) are the local Nama words for “burning hot”. The natural thermal springs serve as an oasis in the arid Karas region and due to the extreme heat of the region both the resort and the hike close during the summer season. Prospective hikers are all required to obtain a recent medical certificate, proving them healthy and fit enough to take on the canyon.  We also tentatively signed our lives away on scarily comprehensive indemnity forms.

The night we arrived in Ai-Ais we braaied outside our cottage and discussed our daunting mission. We ate well and slept even better, fully aware that for the next few days we would be eating non-perishables out of our backpacks and sleeping on the ground; an inch-deep foam “mattress” separating our sleeping bags from the sand.

Day one entailed a bustling morning of preparation; painstakingly packing, unpacking and repacking our backpacks, incessantly measuring weight against essentials . Needless to say, changes of clothes did not feature high – we judged food as being essential. My aunt had spent hours before our trip designing meals, buying and allocating food and supplies; life-savers such as mosquito spray, head torches, matches and the countless necessities that I would never, ever have thought to have taken. On a more delicate note, we also had to take along plenty of toilet paper and a shovel… no need for details on that one! We thus divided the loot between ourselves and strapped the bottles of water to the outside of our packs – these we would constantly refill along the way. Dressed not for style but for comfort and with a backpack that I struggled to put on by myself, we set off – to a minivan. From Ai-Ais one needs to drive the forty kilometres to the start of the hike: the intimidating, steep descent into the bottom of the canyon.  It officially begins a 10km drive away from Hobas, the rustic campsite and small office officiating the entry of all wannabe hikers. Registering with them is somewhat important – they are next to the only people who know where you are and by what day you should reach your destination!

The descent takes about two hours and is found by some to be the hardest part of the journey, due to the sheer drop that hikers are required to negotiate. After taking photographs of the truly awe-inspiring view, a few deep breaths and some silent prayers, we slowly began our way down the mountain, picking our way through unstable boulders and trying not to look too far down when it became especially steep. Although scary, the descent does not take very long, and the lower we limped the bigger the windy, green river became; tempting us to launch off the rock face and dive in to cool off. We managed to restrain ourselves until we were truly at the water’s edge, however, and found that despite the day’s heat, the water was freezing – genuinely refreshing! Many guides and websites recommend that hikers should set up camp at the sandbank you’ll find as you reach the bottom of the descent, but as we had a few hours of daylight left we rested, swam and ate before deciding to keep on walking. It all had to be done in five days – why not get a head start now?

It is thought by those that know these things that the canyon was formed approximately 50 million years ago when the earth cracked as a result of plate movement. A fault runs down the canyon, which is what we have to thank for the hot springs and deep gorge. Water formed at the base of the canyon and became the Fish River which flows down to Ai-Ais and beyond. At its widest, the canyon stretches 27 kilometres across (which must make navigating a little less simple) but most of it is far narrower. At its deepest, it plummets 550 metres from the top, and the towering dolerites provide welcome shade for hikers during early mornings and late afternoons. Even during the winter season, days can occasionally reach 40’C – thankfully not during our trip!

It was eventually time during our first afternoon to stop walking and set up camp on a flattish sandbank bordering a shallow, wide section of river. This we did enthusiastically and the boys built a wood fire on which we cooked an instant side dish, cans of vegetables and, because it was our first night, meat. Still excited we got ready for bed with the aid of headlamps and settled down underneath the stars. So far out in the wilderness, the enormity of the sky and the throng of visible stars were breathtaking. Lack of pollution in the air and a dearth of city light for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres around us meant that literally millions more stars could be seen and the milky way truly lived up to its name – a definable band of creamy-white light crossing the sky. We felt miniscule in our sleeping  bags – nature definitely has a way of putting our small size in perspective.

Days two, three and four were fairly similar. Terrain varied only between soft sand and small, smooth boulders – equally challenging to tramp through or trip over. So much so that the routine river crossings we found ourselves undertaking were almost a relief. Our days of trudging through the canyon were interspersed with strange and touching sightings – a pair of broken hiking boots next to a wooden cross, an engraved brass headstone perched atop a German lieutenant’s grave and the burnt out, graffiti-decorated shell of a Vespa-style scooter. Aside from exotic and terribly big bugs and insects, the animals that we most often saw were the famed wild horses of the Namib.

The horses were very much a surprise when we came upon them, and subsequent to our trip I have discovered that the feral horses roaming the Namib are a tourist sensation in themselves – there are apparently thousands of international visitors who come to visit them in their “natural” habitat every year.  There is no concrete evidence as to how they arrived in the desert, but on one thing the experts agree: indigenous they certainly are not. Horses were first imported into Southern Africa in the 17^th century, so today’s wild horses are the offspring of domesticated animals that have adapted to the arduous living conditions of the desert. One theory maintains that the horses dispersed after a shipwreck on Skeleton Coast in the late 1800s while another alleges that  their ancestors are escapees from a stud farm which disbanded shortly after World War I.  However, there are holes in both theories and it is asserted by many researchers that the initial group must have been fairly large for their offspring to have lasted so long and to have spread relatively widely. This now reduced herd of horses – averaging 150-200 – has attracted its fair share of both hardship and publicity. In adapting to life in the desert, they have twice come to the brink of extinction due to extreme drought. Both times they have been saved by the kindness of the public who donated into a relief fund organised by the Namibia Nature Foundation.

By day five we were exhausted and longing for a hot shower! My seeping feet were patchworks of band-aids and sleeping on the ground had become universally unpopular  – even the beautiful night sky could not stop the novelty of sleeping on sand from wearing off. Consequently the thought of reaching our destination was empowering and we marched on with renewed energy. Despite our impetus to finish it seemed as though time passed even more slowly as the hills steadily became steeper and the sand softer but we eventually saw signs of civilization and knew that Ai-Ais could not be far off. We stumbled in, hung our backpacks on the special hooks provided and ordered drinks from a shady picnic table, comparing blisters and dirty sock marks while waiting for them to arrive.

Ever used to the advent of weary, dusty bodies, the Ai-Ais campsite is well equipped for all the necessary r’s (recovery, recuperation, rest, relaxation). Just because we had a stroke of brilliantly bad luck however, it so happened that there were plumbing problems, and thus there was no hot water in the showers!   Thank goodness for the springs then, which metamorphasised us from achy, grimy monsters to clean and satisfied wanderers exchanging travel stories with each other and the other ‘post-hike’ adventurers we met. The main area of the hot springs are housed indoors, in the form of a rambling pool which has loads of warm jets,  comfy resting places and a separate hot tub. In these we spent much of our afternoon. There are also several outside swimming pools of varied temperature – we jumped into the hottest! The feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction we embraced as we completed our hike were not only due to the length we were hiked, the heat we endured and the beauty we witnessed, but also to our forced self-sufficiency during the course of our trip. There is something fulfilling about spending time in nature so unspoilt that even basic facilities are non-existent (toilets!) and where our group did not see another human being for the entire time that we took to complete the walk.

It is perhaps unexpected to find that country coined “The land God made in anger” holds so much beauty. Yet many people have fallen in love with the giant, arid wastelands making up the second least densely populated country in the world – we were neither the first, nor will we be the last