News Update 22.09.2011

Hello friends of (Gund and other wild) animals

We pulled it off. Shipping the car to SA and travelling, mostly off-road, for 15000 km in Africa is no mean feat even with impeccable planning and a suitable vehicle. Ours was a blundering improvisation with a geriatric truck.

We had to hang in Cape Town for ten days before we could clear and collect the car and although CT is one of the more pleasant cities in SA it was loosing it’s charm a bit in the end. Lot’s of beggars and street kids.

Once mobile we didn’t waste any time and headed for the open veldt up into the Tankwa Karoo. Beautiful wide spaces with Platte clip’s like out of a Marlborough ad and a huge diversity of succulents. The first nights camping where a shock . Below zero temperatures in our flimsy Chinese made roof tent saw us putting on every stitch of clothing that we had. We still managed to catch an instant cold and as soon as we got to Upington we bought some fleece blankets, long johns and beanies. We used all of the above virtually every night for four months even up to a latitude equivalent to Fiji. Why did I not think  to bring all my Antarcic expedition gear to Africa… ?

The plan was to spend as little time in SA as possible since it is a dangerous and unpleasant place to travel in. But we were keen to see some animals so we did a 400km detour to have a peep at the Kalagadi Trans frontier park on our way to Namibia. This is the Southern edge of the great Kalahari dessert. We were surprised how busy with campers it was despite it’s remoteness. Afrikaner campers have from the beginning failed to endear themselves to us for reasons better not elaborated here.

We were hoping to see the fabled black maned lions in Kalagadi. Instead we had lots of Oryx and wilder beast and more Oryx.

It became apparent very early on that shooting out of a vehicle with a window tripod is frustratingly limiting and hardly produces quality images and that the best images result from habituated animals that frequent the camps where you are allowed out of the car.

Crossing from SA to Namibia felt like crossing into the real Africa. From the word go we fell in love with Namibia. You drive through endless colossal landscapes with no people and no other traffic in sight for days and got over that lost feeling of  you savour the space. Every turn of the road you could shoot another breathtaking panorama. Contrary to my initial fear I didn’t mind spending 8 hrs. behind the wheel on corrugated gravel roads most every day. When you concentrate on the road all the time so you don’t land in the ditch there is no time to get bored. There is this weird German-ness in Namibia. In Aus (German for The End) there is a “Banhofsresaurant” in the middle of a derelict dessert town that looks like straight out of a German village and has the menu to match. Needless to say we stuffed ourselves with sausages and sauerkraut and washed it all down with Namibia’s own Camelthorn Weissbier. 

Southern Namibia is all about landscapes and very little about animals, but I managed to entertain myself with shooting weaver birds and small reptiles. You can’t go to Namibia and not go to Sossusvlei, the most accessible place into the great Namib sand dunes. We didn’t care much for the overland truck crowd that had to climb every dune as recommended in the Lonely Planet (should be called the crowded planet actually) and spoil the picture but it is impressive and it was my first experience of deep sand driving. I developed quite a taste for it in the end. From there the next Stop was Swakopmund. Another German town complete with Beer garden and grumpy waitresses. We took a guided tour through the sand dunes in the vicinity and the guide kept digging up critters where on your own, you would see nothing but sand. Our favourites are the Chameleons. They just have this otherworldly expression with their googly eyes moving independently.

We decided to skip the Skeleton coast and headed inland into Damaraland from there and found our favourite camp of the trip near Sesfontain.

We should have stayed there longer, but the urge to see it all was to strong and we motored all the way up to the Angolan border only to turn back the 400kms or so to this magical place. We spent the most blissful days there waking up with the spring bock and oryx grazing in the savannah below and not a human soul in sight. Nearby is the Hoanib river that leads down to the Skeleton coast and even though the camp wasn’t that nice we saw our first wild elephants outside a national park.

These days if you want to see the main parks in Africa you have to book months in advance so we where on a schedule to get to Etosha. I despise this kind of planning and it made me realize what a free and easy life I lead cruising on Nexus in the South Pacific. And give me and my cameras salt air over road dust ANYTIME.

Etosha lived up to it’s rep and delivered pretty much everything there is to see in Africa and then some. The roads and camps are good but it doesn’t have that wild feel to it though. That’s why we had planned to head for Kaudum, Namibia’s wildest and most remote park. We teamed up with a lovely Swiss couple Martin and Andrea in their Landy for this adventure because you are supposed to go there only in convoy. The old Toyo managed valiantly next to the Land Rover on the deep sand roads and the great companionship and cook ups where a highlight of the trip. Kaudum is an ex hunting concession and the few animals that have survived where extremely weary. We still had a ball because of the un-touristy feel of the place.

After two months in Namibia it was time to move on to Botswana and we motored down the Western side of the Okawango delta’s panhandle. The lushness of the bush and animals in and around the Okawango makes you wonder why the animals want to live in the desserts and savannahs of Namibia. Again we where on a schedule to meet the bookings we had made for Moremi and Chobe national parks, so we proceeded swiftly to Maun.  Maun is just a shambolic  congregation of commercial buildings that cater for the Safari industry and has all the charm and atmosphere of an Auckland shopping mall. Botswana doesn’t really cater much for individual tourists and self drivers and the people in the Safari industry don’t like riff raff like us who don’t spend 1000$ a day in a lodge. We had a few days to kill so we made a sortie to the Makadigadi and Naxi pan. These pans are really at it’s best in the rainy season when they feature the closest thing that Southern Africa has to the wilderbeast migration of the Serengeti.  We where there in the dry season, so we didn’t have the numbers, but still had some decent encounters. The most remarkable feature was the high number of vultures, a good indicator of the health of the ecosystem.

Back in Maun the truck got some new shocks and bearings for the hard slog through Moremi and Chobe (and because the old ones where shot). With all this off roading more and more bits had rattled themselves loose with every mile, but we never lost anything essential and lo and behold did not have a single puncture on our cheap and nasty Indonesian made tires. We also had no opportunity to use the sand-boards or high-lift jack or any of the other recovery gear we carried. I can only confirm what I read in a travel blog of some other overlanders before the trip, that you really don’t need any of this gear. Better spend all your money on heavy duty suspension and tires.

Moremi, expensive as the park and camping fees are, is worth the money. It not only has good concentrations of wildlife but beautiful scenery too when you get to the waterways. The flipside is that you get to the waterways and you have to cross some of them with the vehicle and without the benefit of a bridge. We mostly didn’t since we didn’t have a snorkel on the air intake and the consequences of sucking water into a diesel combustion chamber doesn’t bear thinking about. The most prominent feature of Moremi and Chobe are the elephants. In some parts there are so many of them that the bush looks positively elephant ravaged. But we got to love the big guys. They are so interactive and smart and the baby ellies are just adorable. The remote operated vehicle I built in New Zealand got it’s first use in Moremi and I promptly drove it into a waterhole, camera and all. It cost me my 16mm fisheye lens, but the rov and the camera survived. In the end the rov proved to be of little use, because the terrain is hardly ever suitable and the animals are almost without exception weary or scared of it.

We changed plans again from Botswana and entered Zambia at Kazangula instead of going to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and it turned out to be the right decision. The main reason for this change of plan was that it is possible to import and sell used cars in Zambia. But before we were ready to quit Africa we wanted to explore Kafue national park in Zambia and the fabled Mana pools park in Zimbabwe. Kafue might be a great park but the tsetse flies spoil any enjoyment or photo opportunity there. You just cannot drive around with your window open or they’ll pounce on you. Apart from being a major nuisance they also carry sleeping sickness. Mana pools was the holy grail of African national parks for us because you are allowed to walk around and leave the car. The wildlife concentration there matches that of Moremi in Botswana easily. There are more hippos and crocks than you could wish for. The crocs are extremely shy and there is no way I could get close enough for a  decent shot. 

After a full four months of hard and constant travelling, dust, freezing nights and frustrating wildlife photography we decided to pack in and sell the car in Livingstone.

Putting ourselves through the torturous process of importing the car would fill several more pages and if you are still with me I’ll spare you the details, Suffice it to say that nerves of steel and patience of a saint are definite job requirements.

Now I’m off to Fiji to dive into the post production of all the Africa material, which will keep me busy but maybe not entirely out of the pub for the next couple of months. The longer term plans revolve around boats and sailing expeditions once more but the hows and whens are to vague to make any announcements yet.

If nothing else the Africa diversion has brought home to me again, that I am a water person and must be an underwater photographer.