August 05

Fish River Canyon, Namibia

Posted by hazel vint on August 5, 2013 in Travel Writing | 1 Comment

Fish River Canyon

Can you imagine driving along a road at night and seeing an oncoming vehicle with something white coming out of one of the windows? Only to get closer and realise it’s somebody’s bottom and they are pissing!

Let’s just say I had refused to pull the car over for one of the Israeli boys to go to the toilet earlier that day and now this was his payback towards me. Even worse was after driving on dirt roads, you could see down both sides of the car where we had urinated!

Traveling in a car for hours on end with two Israeli boys will always inevitably end up in mischief and giggles. We were finishing our tour around Namibia, it had been a very long days driving to the south to Fish River Canyon, we arrived at the Ai-Ais Hot Springs Resort in the dark and couldn’t face cooking, so I treated the boys to a meal at the resort. They got to try two different kinds of antelope; Kudu and Springbok and we drank a fair few beverages and felt nicely lubricated, but did still have to deal with erecting the tent.

Quite loudly we put up the tent and then lay on my duvet staring up at the night sky. The other campers did not enjoy our company and the night guard came over numerous times to tell us to be quiet. I felt like I was a naughty school girl on a trip, pretending to sleep when the adult came over and sniggers escaping our childish mouths.

Fish River Canyon is the largest canyon in Africa and second largest canyon in the world, after the Grand Canyon. There are lots of hiking routes available, most through the canyon take five days, which need to be organised through Namibia Wildlife Resorts. The lazier option is to drive up to the view point, which has amazing acoustics for producing long echoes. Shouting Israeli slang into the canyon was a lot of fun, I hope there were some Israelis trekking in the canyon that heard the absurd shouting of “Benzona!”

Another long day of driving followed, trying to reach Botswana where our hire car had to be dropped. Eventually 50km from the Botswana border we decided to pull over on the side of the road and pitch the tent. The next morning I woke up to, “why is there a screaming Chinese baby outside the tent?” It was true; the Israeli boy had described the sound of this annoying African bird perfectly. It was time to leave Namibia, bring on the Okavango Delta and the other National Parks in Botswana.