Hands Off the Baobabs by Gillian Ivory

The great thing about Namibia is that there isn’t a sniff of that sycophantic attitude towards tourists. No servile flattery here. It’s not to say that there isn’t service and efficiency (its Germanic colonial legacy takes care of that) but there’s an unwritten rule that “if you’d like to visit we’ll be very pleased to have you, but mind you stick to the regulations”. Namibia is a cocktail of Africa with a large twist of German to sober it up.

Making our way back to the border point with South Africa, we discovered the answer to how many Namibians it takes to protect a baobab tree. We were at the end of a journey almost the length of Southern Africa, starting at Cape Town and covering copious miles from coastal dunes to savannahs in one short week.

Three sturdily built white African men in khaki shorts and kneehigh socks signalled to us to stop the car. With accents as thick as overwhipped cream, they decreed that “they must search the vehicle”. There was to be no messing about - that was implicit in the tone - and just the body language was enough to make us question if everything we had was fully legal.

We piled out and they duly lifted every cover and prodded every nook and cranny. There was a problem. “You cannot leave with the baobab”, growled the largest, with the emphasis on first syllables that defines many white southern africans. He ceremoniously confiscated a branch we had collected off the ground, never imagining it would offend the peculiar laws of this country.

Like the Namibians themselves, the baobab is used to surviving in harsh conditions. This silvery barked twisted tree stores water inside its swollen trunk to endure the driest of droughts. Some contend they are thousands of years old, but the wood doesn’t mark up the annual growth rings that other trees do, so it’s impossible to prove.

Its leaves are eaten as a type of vegetable and its seeds are used as a thickener for soups, and to top it off, it is famous enough to have gotten a mention by Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s most curious character. The Little Prince fretted for days with the thought that these “trees as big as churches” would take over his small asteroid. But the Namibians are protective of their flora, regardless of how prolifically it grows.

With Angola to the north and Botswana to the east, you might expect this sparsely populated country to be all straw roofed bush huts and long legged people built for arid climates. And that’s what it is in places, but there are also some comical and occasionally preoccupying surprises.

In Keetmanshoop lace curtains framed tiny windows in pastry shops, where the shelves were laden with german gebäck. For a moment it looked like Hans and Gretel might have made an appearance on the edge of the meticulously kept pavements. The town was founded as a mission station in 1866 and named after a German trader Keetman, who funded the pious work of the new arrivals.

But there was no sign of fairytale characters in the bar we hit that night. We were propping up the counter before we realised that the walls were covered with flaming coloured flags, banners with insignia and military garb. The owner, second generation German, proudly presided over his territory, happy to chat wth foreigners. He walked us through his collection. Was he just an aficionado of antique parapernalia or a hobbyist with a penchant for Aryan culture? We kept an open mind, and were either too scared or too polite to ask, but leaving the bar, the sign on the door read “no dogs, no blacks and no coloureds”.

There’s also a lot of upside to Namibia. Heading north to Kokerboom to see the quiver tree forest, a stooped old man on the road was trekking the 40 miles to see his son. A dark and wizened face broke into an infectious albeit toothless grin. It seemed common to him to have taken to the road with a tied up bundle slung over one shoulder. He was in his natural habitat but to us he was like a 19th century traveller plonked firmly into the 21st century on the back seat of our hire car.

When we hit Sossusvlei it was as if the world had turned orange. A clay pan enclosed by dunes, it is the Barry Manilow of the Namib desert, where you can balance on the razor sharp ridge of an ochre coloured dune, provided you can manage the climb. Do it barefoot and you’ll feel the rising heat of the sand in what is possibly the oldest desert in the world.

In the Fish River Canyon, the world’s second largest after the American Grand Canyon, the 550 metre gorge is a spectacularly deep, dry wound in the landscape. Driving on through miles of totally uninhabited terrain, we happened on Solitaire. Until very recently, Solitaire was one house, one shop and a petrol pump, run by a man and his wife in the middle of nowhere. Their only company, other than those passing through, was a bunch of pet adders kept in a shallow pit in the back. It features on a map only because it was, and still is, one of the only petrol stops on a quiet but important route.

These days there is a lonely star motel to cater for anyone foolish enough to be surprised by nightfall in this deserted spot - with the curve and gradient of the mountains you drive at your peril in the dark. ‘Cats eyes’ belong to real cats of the large variety in these parts of the world.

Swakopmund is an inoffensive seaside resort, so after a sweeping visit we went in search of the flamingoes in Walvis Bay. In season they spread for miles, as pale pastel pink as a Barbie’s wardrobe. Windhoek, the capital, is home to the good lager of the same name. With only 230,000 people living here, it’s more Maidenhead than Mumbai, at least in terms of body count.

We sailed past the pretty colonial architecture mixed with 20th century mish mash and moved quickly on to local specialities on the food front. Likely to feature on a politically correct list of ‘tasty ethnic snacks’, the mopani worm is pried from the branches of the Mopane tree in the northern parts of the country, dried and sold in the markets, and lies black and rigid by the time it arrives on your plate. It has been a valuable source of protein for Africans for years. While you may be more used to a Kellog’s breakfast bar, if you can swallow this worm you’ll never be intimidated by an oyster or an escargot again.

After Sossusvlei, Etosha is the guiding light for travellers to Namibia. 22,000 square metres of grass and thorn savannah at the centre of which lies a dried out saline lake, it’s indoubtedly one of Africa’s greatest safari parks. Its management bore out the comforting Mary Poppins no-nonsense attittude of the rest of the country.

Unlike many other safari venues on the continent, a trip can be done on any budget. While Botswana’s parks attract the luxury market, in Etosha you can camp under the stars in a real tent – one of ‘the rusty poles and pegs’ variety. There’s none of ‘the gold taps and draped water beds under tarpaulin’ clan here. The Big Five are all in the vicinity, but so are all the annoying little ones, so shake out your shoes for scorpions, a deadly black colour with an even more deadly sting, and mind the wild dogs that tend to roam into camp at night time.

On the straight, open road back down to Cape Town, hugging the length of South Africa’s west coast, crashs are common on the miles of smooth monotonous tarmac, built compliments of the last century’s prisoners. There’s nothing to keep the driver alert, and the barren horizon lulls you into a stupor. To counteract the danger, a blast of traditional Oshiwambo music picked up in Windhoek did the trick, powerful enough to rouse Tutunkhamen from any covert tomb.