Day 16: Pūros to Okahironga
We had a really pleasant stay at the Community camp site, we like to support local when we can. An added bonus was finding leopard spoor next to the car this morning, always exciting.
For the first 100km I was beginning to think today was about the destination, not the journey. We drove along a good wide road and the desert scenery was fairly monotonous.
I should know my dear husband better. At the Witdrom (literally a white drum), we left the ‘Highway’ and went exploring along what, at a stretch, can be called a track, at times that was non-existent. We were then at the mercy of Gray’s precious Doris, the GPS, I’m sure she was stuffing us around today with some of her roads, or lack of them.
I will give them both the benefit though, travelling through the Namibian ‘outback’, we came across Himba villages, and beautiful scenery. If we had broken down or got stuck, it would have taken another wannabe ‘Camel man’ adventurer months to find us.
Also in this area we visited ‘The House on the Hill’, probably the most sign posted place in the area. It was literally 3 self-catering houses on a hill. There was also another abandoned marble mine close by
After travelling through the Otjiha Plains we came to the next intersection of the Rooidrom (Red drum).
Then onto the beautiful plains leading to the Kunene, past the Ondau Mountain (Holy site of the Himba) and onto Marienfluss.
The most exciting part of today’s journey was trying to find the elusive ‘Lonely Stone Men’. There are apparently 27 in total, maybe more, scattered around the Kaokoland. They are stone and metal sculptures of men in various poses, scattered around the landscape. We came across 5 today, interestingly one on the patio of The House on the Hill. The artist is elusive and unknown.
Our destination was awesome, and worth the drive in. We arrived at Camp Syncro, early afternoon. It is a beautiful camp site on the banks of the Kunene River, overlooking Angola on the far bank.
The day did not come without it’s casualties, the rough roads broke the spare wheel latch, so that needs to be tied with a ratchet each time we travel. Also somewhere along the way, our table mounting broke so we arrived with no table. I hope some Himbas find a good use for it.
The camp has hot water, but it was so hot here, we rather had a cold one. A dog befriended us at braai time and shared dinner with us, I’m missing mine at home. We also saw some nice birds and had very noisy frogs not lulling us to sleep but it was lovely to hear the sound of the river flowing by.
Pandas in Africa 