Africa & Middle East > Namibia > Etosha National Park > Etosha National Park > Landscape > Articles > Namibia Unreal

The lone springbok was staring calmly at the fastest creature on earth, and no more than a hundred yards of bush separated them. Like all spectators, we looked on with divided feelings, silently longing for the combat we might later lament. But it didn’t happen. For that famous 70mph sprint cannot be kept up for anything like a hundred yards. So after a bit more staring and a few feints, the handsome cheetah slunk away.

Less lucky was the little steenbok, surely the most appealing of the dwarf-antelopes, endlessly gracious and nimble. But this time, the step is erratic, alerting us to something terribly wrong. Again and again she stumbles into some low shrubs, and then as she turns uncertainly towards us, we see with horror that those soft, friendly eyes have become hideously swollen and misshapen, all too obviously staring at nothing. For she has just crossed the path of a cobra, who has lashed out with its unerring quick one-two into the eyes. And now she knows she is doomed - perhaps to be disputed between a hyena and a black-backed jackal within the hour.

Those two little cameos of bush life followed one another closely during an evening drive to Andoni in the Northeast corner of the huge and fertile game sanctuary known as Etosha National Park, famous for the great salt-pans that dominate it.

We are almost on to this vast, flat greenish-white wilderness before it occurs to me to question how a briny desert like this could attract some of the best wildlife in Africa. Well, apart from the sudden swarm of flamingoes that breed here at the height of the rainy season, very little of the local game can actually be found on its surface. The pans are really a buried lake, and it is the ancient channels far below that feed the nearby grasslands and fill the water-holes where so many of the great beasts congregate.

Okaukuejo, for example. In the dry winter months (May-August) this becomes a miniature theatre of the wild - complete with floodlights and tiered seats. On come the lions, so obviously the masters, dreaded by all except elephants. Then nervously, the giraffes, never more vulnerable than they have to stoop awkwardly to reach the water. Next, herds of springbok and kudu, who must often sacrifice one of their number to a hungry lioness for permission to drink. And sometimes, under a full tropic moon, a rare sighting of the black rhino, so threatening yet so threatened, our little rendezvous with prehistory.

From the top of the tower at Okaukuejo - largest of Etosha’s three rest-camps - you look out over the grey saline wastes on one side and grass and mopane-woodland on the other, for the best water-holes tend to occur along this line. For the novelty, you may like to spend your next night at Namutoni with its white desert-fort and bugles at dawn, but in fact there is everything to be said for pressing on to the more luxurious Mokuti Lodge, just outside the gates of Etosha, and therefore in private hands.

Even though Etosha - splendidly isolated in the remote North - has the highest concentration of wildlife in Namibia, the distances can still be daunting. That fifty-mile trek to Andoni may tell you rather more about salt-pans than you want to know. Grey against grey. Streaks of sage-green against blurry skylines. Shallow silver pools that could be water or just more clay and silt. Yet slowly its huge nothingness (the literal translation of ‘Namibia’) starts to take on a haunting personality of its own as a long line of gemsbok (or oryx) file into view across the great panorama. And suddenly it’s the biggest oil painting in the world, almost a snow-scene, perfect in composition, heroic in scale, a triumph of subtlety. But learning how to look at deserts is a central part of the Namibian experience.

Of the big colonists in Africa, the Germans were last in and first out, ordered to cede this huge territory to Pretoria in 1919 after one brief generation. So there was no heavy imperial stamp on the old South West Africa, which still does not boast much in the way of architecture or any other urban phenomena. And even at best, it was never one of the glamorous colonies. Old photos are dominated by the trappings of necessity - pans and shovels, cattle-trains, water-trucks, workers’ shacks. Yet today many of those German families are still here, lending a special ambience to the restaurants and shopping malls of Windhoek, echoing a genteel Germany that has always been there behind the blood and iron. (This is really the Germans’ New Zealand.) And those few flashes of Gothic and Art Nouveau - a cherry-coloured dome here, a Lutheran spire there - can suggest a Rhineland touch that is pleasantly bizarre, though frankly not as fascinating as the brochures would have you believe. Interesting countries do not always boast interesting capitals, and Windhoek merits just two paragraphs in a hundred and fifty pages of Namibia, Africa’s Harsh Paradise, a massive coffee-table book from Struik of Capetown. (Definitely too big for your suitcase, so pack the Rough Guide, as always.) Nor is the popular coast-resort of Swakopmund strikingly Teutonic, despite an authentic Bahnhof and a few civilized bars serving local beer brewed strictly according to the Bavarian purity laws. It is not till you have penetrated to the unknown far South, through several days of broiling-hot Namib Desert - actually hotter than the equatorial North - that the exotic sensation suddenly arrives. Out of the sand-blasted remains of the diamond-mines outside Luderitz, there survives a complete ghost-town - once the prosperous Kolmanskop - that is German down to its last window-blind and roof-tile. Somehow these solid, well-built mansions, now deserted and waist-deep in rippling dunes, speak more eloquently of old Germany through their peeling walls and faded lettering than anything else in Namibia, for here is a cherished moment preserved.

Apart from this, the accent is as much Afrikaans as German, and those great generous barbecues (or braais) vividly evoke South African hospitality at its best. My friend the oryx tastes delicious straight from the griddle in any number of game-farm dining rooms, though only Mokuti Lodge offers a carvery of roast springbok, eland, and the tough smoky kudu. For wine, they have only to reach across to neighbouring Cape Province, though the schnapps is just as likely to be German. And the Namibian contribution? Just the one liqueur, Amarula Cream, from the Marula tree, whose berries, even undistilled, are said to make elephants tipsy. And if that isn’t true, then it ought to be.

The Skeleton Coast is a newish label for what Bartolomeu Diaz called the Sands of Hell as early as 1488. And the skeletal remains of ships lying half a mile inland tell their own story. Gales, fogs, treacherous reefs and fierce cross-currents continue to take their wretched toll to this day.

Viewed from the air, the dunes surrounding those stranded vessels are often described as a sea of sand. But that turns out to be more than just a fine phrase. All over the vast Namib Desert, you can watch the ebb and flow of thousand-foot dunes with their great wave-crests and tossing spray blowing to leeward across the slipface. And the myriad little creatures that live inside the dunes do not run or burrow or climb; they swim.

But why don’t more humans swim off this eight-hundred mile beach that looks like a dream of privacy and clean bathing? Unfortunately the big Antarctic current keeps the water hovering at around sixteen or seventeen at best, so although swimmers and surfers are not unknown, most visitors just prefer to work on their tan. But this constant cold swell of water, rich in plankton, provides a bigger feast for anglers and deep-sea fishermen than the Indian Ocean, even if the sport is less spectacular.

That mention of aerial views reminds us that this is one gigantic country, where air-hops are often a necessity and always a joy. For example, about half the Skeleton Coast is forbidden to traffic; you have to fly in. (Even tyre-tracks can pollute the intricate desert ecology.) And the large mining region on the Diamond Coast is out of bounds to tourists altogether, so only a balloon-trip or a charter-flight will give you a close look. But of course, Air Namibia’s regular internal services offer you an ever-changing grandstand view of everything from the red sands of the Kalahari to the fantastic lunar valleys that wind through the thirsty dunelands of the Namib.

Overviews are strange. While showing you fresh wonders every minute, they also show you an uncompromisingly physical map that highlights the flimsiness of political boundaries. What, then, is the essential Namibian dimension? Or are we just looking down at any old stretch of planet?

Well, one factor is undoubtedly the sheer exhilaration of venturing where others haven’t. This may be partly snobbish and superficial. (Only the other week, Namibia came first in one league-table of names to drop at parties.) But there is also an innocent side to this quest for new destinations. For once, it is you who will judge which of its countless natural wonders will go on to become tourist-sights, you who will help to frame tomorrow’s clichés.

And a first tour of Namibia reveals so many intriguing features - many unique - that the future can only be rich with further discoveries. The world’s biggest meteorite, fifty-five tons of iron and nickel, only a short drive from the clear footprint of Tyrannosaurus Rex. A felled tree still recognisable after 200 million years. Exquisite rock-carvings older than Lascaux. The plentiful welwischia plant, a succulent that mysteriously survives whole centuries without rain. One hour that gave us the rare Hartman’s Mountain Zebra, the Dark Chanting Goshawk, the Secretary Bird and the tracks of the sidewinding adder. The tiny dik-dik antelope, just over a foot long. Too many moths leaping into my lager. And the Herero women’s incredible turbans, modeled on the hats of Victorian lady-missionaries.

In a country of so many fine-looking people of all races, the most ravishing woman of all was definitely the one who announced the six o’clock news, but our TV was behaving so wildly that I could never tell what colour she was! And I like to think that she is the same one who enlivened the 1990 independence celebrations (Africa’s last ever) by announcing the arrival of Queen Elizabeth the Eleventh and the Duck of Edinburgh. There are worse ways to bid farewell to an era.

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