More driving. A lot more

The country does not have a huge number of inhabitants, just 2,5 millions over a huge territory.

Riding in the southern regions, one hardly crosses anyone. Except for some gas stations at crossroads between major gravel highways, no sign of villages around.

And, then, the interlude of the odd gravel road with gates which you need to open by yourself every 2-5 km.

One fascinating desert after the other and then a  few cities. Swakopmund, Walvis Bay and more north Tsumeb and Grootfontein: neat, green, orderly, well maintained, with the most equipped pharmacies and medical practices. Incongruous, in a way. Not the image one has of cities in Africa.

But head northwards and cross the red line of animal disease prevention and the country changes dramatically. No more dried up prehistoric waterways but real rivers, forests of trees, cattle grazing by the (tarred) highway. And villages and schools scattered around, people walking by the road and children waving at cars.

Cities in the north look different too. Take Rundu: markets, noise and music, dusty roads, and neighbourhoods of huts made of mud or zinc, alongside neighbourhoods of houses made of bricks. And in some places the sad view of plastic garbage as if growing from trees and plants.

Another country, probably poorer, more humid, where malaria has not yet been eradicated, inhabitants are mostly farmers, when they do not move south to work for the tourism industry.

Beautiful in a different way, where you can sit on the side of the river Okavango looking at Angola on the other side.

Or going further east, taking your time to spot hippos bathing on the other side or warthogs happily having breakfast, while birds of all colours fly in and out of your room

Oysters in Bavaria

The end of the desert surprises us with a series of ponds inhabited by flamingos, just next to a waste recycling facility and a shopping mall.

We are in Walvis Bay, former British and then Southafrican enclave in German colonial land and huge port to access Namibia.
Here the orange dunes slide gently into the ocean and the road in between the two sides lead to Swakopmund, a corner of Bavaria in the southern hemisphere.

Impossible to say if tomorrow is going to be chilly or hot, our hosting lady tells us with an unusual tight accent, Swakopmund has 4 seasons in a day.

Tomorrow was going to be very hot and we would be watching hundreds of thousands of black seals cramming the sandy strip leading to Pelican Cape - it looks like an Italian beach in August, some could say.

Today, however, is pretty chilly. Warm clothes and hats on, the end of the afternoon is our time to go check those out-of-context Teutonic buildings and to walk over the Jetty onto the Ocean, swept by the west wind, towards the austral sunset.

And possibly some seafood.
Oysters here are not like in a European country I would not mention - Captain Yanni would say - they do not taste like salty water, they are sweet and fleshy and if you do not believe me, here a plate of twelve for you and a glass of bubbly.

You should always believe the captain.

Deserts

Prepare to drive hundreds of km on long, straight highways made of gravel, running silently in the middle of nowhere. But be on the look out, as the next bump can hide the beginning of a new breathtaking nowhere. This, we learned, is the Namib. Not by coincidence the name is supposed to mean something along the lines of wide dry plains. And not by coincidence, this has given the name to the whole country, one of the driest in the world.

After a red, dusty start of the journey, a flat yellow land takes over, as if some kind of sand had spread itself all around. Except it is not sand: looking closer, it turns out it is a kind of short light grass, betraying the presence of some water somewhere sometime.

We cross very few cars. And a lonely cyclist, looking even lonelier against the yellow nowhere he has decided to challenge.

But the gravel highway goes on and after the next road bump, the grass disappears and a dark rocky world begins, bringing with it a hilly landscape, a sequence of unexpectedly slippery curves and lookouts over a moon-like valley.

A bus has stopped on the side of the road. People replacing a broken tyre is common sight on this road. We already crossed three of them just today. But not the case for the bus: there is a road sign indicating we are crossing the Tropic of Capricorn. Photo time. Actually, good idea.

But this is not yet the end of the journey. First we need to cross a long stoney white nowhere, with the deteriorated gravel highway turning into an endless sequence of small bumps, shaking the 4x4 and our stomachs.

But there we are, at last. Or almost: we reach Sesriem, the gate to the most scenic, best known part of the Namib. The gravel turns into smooth asphalt accompanying us for 65 km through the amazing orange dunes of the Sossusvlei.

Ever changing shape, heights of up to 350 metres, against the wind incessantly blowing off the superficial layer, we try to climb the most accessible one, Dune 45.

The end of the journey brings us to the Dead Vlei: in the zenith of the midday sun, a bunch of dead trees stand like an accusation, in a lake of white salt, against the orange of the dunes and the intense blue of the sky. The stunning reward of the long desert route.

The classic Namibian postcard photo in our pocket, exhausted by the heat, the wind and the dust, time to go back and prepare the next stop: Bavaria of Africa.