The wildest part of Namibia.
A strike mission. Two vehicles. One Prado and a slightly inferior Nissan Hardbody. Four Gentleman and a lady. Bags packed and ratchets strapped.
We set-off from Windhoek. Anton and Ed in the Nissan. Pieter, Ané and myself in Jane (my Prado). Our course set North, we had some hard driving ahead of us, before we hit the Kunene. The Kunene separates Namibia and Angola and makes its way towards the Skeleton Coast while passing through varying landscapes. For the most part, the Kunene is full of palm trees and a people from a tribe called the Himba. These Himba people move around the northern part of Namibia allowing their cattle to find good grazing. Often we would stop in the middle of nowhere, after a hard few hours of driving through the desert, and a not long after we had setup our snack table we would see some curious Himba eyes watching are doings.
We camped along the Kunene for a few days and then swung south to start the pass through the mountains and the desert that would lead us back to Windhoek. We managed to severely underestimate the drive time each day thanks to inaccurate estimates of the Track4Africa maps.
On our first day in the mountains, we got slowed down by a vicious downhill 4x4 track that we dubbed “Klein Van Zyltjie” after the notorious pass that has taken many vehicles to their demise. We were rock hopping. The driver trying their best to bounce the tire from one large boulder to the next as the person outside a few meters down the road gave them hand signals to avoid any serious damage. Sweating bullets, we made our way done the treacherous road with no serious damage or injury.
