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14th march - 4th april

Overlanding across Afica in our Land Rover Defender: Namibia

Andy Lees
2006-05-16 14:28:42

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streets were teeming with police and we found ourselves bang in the middle of a police convey. the land rover's blind spot caused us to almost crash into not one but two of them. surrounded by flashing lights and irrate policemen we decided to hide out until the shops re-opened the next day and windhoek returned to being its normal sleepy small town self.

damaraland and the coast - 23rd march

armed with shiny, new electronic gadgets (we bought a new laptop as the old one went on the blink) we were ready to leave windhoek; the desert was calling us. we drove through town, moving slowly in the traffic. we could hear a strange clip clop coming from the rear of the land rover. one man at the traffic lights even drew our attention to the noise. we laughed it off. but the noise was there, consistent with the speed of the car. it sounded like a stone caught in the tyre tread but there were no stones. we had a long drive ahead of us but we didn't want to be hanging around any longer so we headed out anyway. we could sort the problem later if it didn't sort itself...

it didn't bit we soon worked it out. the steel plates inside our wheel (ex-military wheels - should bandits shoot our tyres then they should stay on the rim) had worked loose.

we overnight'd at the foot of the brandberg, a massif rising from the whitish/yellow flatlands of central damaraland. the brandberg is namibia's highest mountain range formed 115 million years ago. the brandberg is scattered with thousands of rock paintings dating back twenty thousand years. we took a walking tour to see these stylised drawings of hunters and the hunted. from this desolate and beautiful desert wilderness we headed to the coast, leaving the blue skies behind.

cape cross seal reserve was our destination for a close encounter with one of the largest cape fur seal colonies in the world. from the car park it's a short walk to a low ...