Blog

July 10th – 15th, 2022

Note: We have finished our trip and are back home in California. I will continue to update the blog through the end of our trip.

Morning came to our wild camp with warm yellow sunlight and distant sounds of livestock and people. There must have been Himba living nearby. Though we never saw them it’s further proof that you are rarely alone in Africa, even when you think you are. To us this camp was deep in solitary wilderness on an unmapped and barely known road, but to the Himba living here this is of course home. Before packing up we were careful to burry our ash and leave no trace of our campsite.

Thankfully the rest of the conservancy road wasn’t as steep and technical as the short stretch we’d done the day before. It plodded downward across the shoulders of rocky ravines and through sandy riverbeds at mostlypolite gradients. The rest of the route was easy to follow, with obvious tire tracks and it became particularly picturesque towards the end for the final descent into the Marienfluss. 

Along the way we were thinking that maybe Mr. Van Zyl kinda’ blew it, since this route seems to have a lot less up and down than the famous Van Zyl’s Pass, and requires less technical driving. I still can’t believe he did that in a Model-T ford, though he had a team of Himba laborers to clear the way for him.

Right at the very end of the track there are two short steep sections, off camber and barely more than a car length long, but manageable. Afterwards we joked how embarrassing it would be to roll the car just 20 meters from the end of the road.

Just like that we were into the southeast corner of the Marienfluss. It was hazy and the rocky hills flanking the sandy floor of the valley faded in the distance, creating an illusion of the valley going on forever. 

On a good track we proceeded until we finally were back on mapped roads, joining just below where Van Zyl’s Pass enters the valley. We have been to the Marienfluss before so we decided to drive west to the more remote Hartman’s Valley first, and then hopefully take the formidable “shortcut” road from Hartman’s into the Marienfluss. 

This would cost us more fuel, but when exploring remote places we figured it’d be best to start with the most remote part and work towards the more traveled areas, should we have any problems we’d at least accomplish the furthest reaches of our goals and/or if we did get stuck, we’d have the greatest amount of supplies to wait for help.

There is some vagueness about how much of Hartman’s Valley one is actually allowed to visit. Part of Hartman’s is a private concession held by Wilderness Safaris. I had a vague notion that approaching from the west might allow us to see more of the valley before encountering any “Do not enter” signs. We were careful to not trespass on the concession.See route notes in Nitty Gritty section. 

Once into the valley we zoomed along sandy tracks, very happy to find golden grass. In our previous visits it had been parched desert, just red sand and the Himba had abandoned the area due to lack of fodder for their animals.

Two spoor tracks in red sand wove through an attractive carpet of yellow grass and it was wonderful to finally be here. The sharp contrast between the steep and rocky roads to get here and the easy cruising along flats of valley makes it feel like a proper arrival, not just a gradual change. Cutting southwest we headed towards the famous landmark of Rooidrom (Afrikaans for Red drum). 

The road became more rocky here, though not technical, and I noticed the vehicle was riding strangely. We stopped and found the left rear tire flat, with a bad sidewall tear, unrepairable with tire plugs. 

A Note on Tires and Preparation for Remote Travel

Kaokoland is famous for being hard on tires. Our tires, Cooper S/T Maxx’s (265/75/R16) are excellent tires that have brought us through Kaokoland two previous times with nary a whisper of complaint. This particular set of tires was getting tired and we contemplated replacing them prior to coming here, knowing they’d be tested. On the other hand, getting all new tires is expensive, and with only a couple months to go on our trip we’d rather wait until the next trip for a fresh set. This in mind, we resolved to milk this set for all their worth. It would be their third run to Kaokoland, more than any tire deserves to be asked. This turned outnot to be a good plan.

You might recall that we got another unrepairable puncture way back in Uganda. Since then we cruised around with only one spare, the other just riding along on the wheel carrier waiting for replacement. This is all well and good when we weren’t traveling anywhere very remote. We made a couple half hearted attempts to find a replacement earlier, but their costs in Zambia was so much higher than further south we deferred until Botswana. In Maun I failed to find any brand of tire in our size at any shop. On a second pass through Maun we finally found a replacement for the tire damaged in Uganda, a BFG KO2, Coopers being unavailable. Our brand loyalty to Coopers was based on them being the best off-road tire we’ve ever used. Mind you, they’re also the only off-road tires we’ve ever used, so that isn’t much of a sample size. 

This meant we had five tired Coopers and one pristine BFG as a spare. Well, now we had four tired Coopers, one destroyed one, and one good BFG. In the months preceding this I have spent many an hour on the road telling Jenny (a captive audience) that we need to figure out how to shave more weight from the Land Cruiser, and the most obvious way to do this is to go to a single spare tire. I went on at length about the benefits of a single spare, about how tire technology has improved such that two spares was now overkill, etc. I can tell you that now that we were way out in the hinterland of the Kaokoland down a tire that I was mum on that subject, two spares now seeming like an excellent plan.

Lest you think us idiots for heading to Hartman’s valley with dodgy tires, I assure you the rest of our preparations were up to snuff. We carry: a Satphone and emergency phone numbers; medical evacuation coverage for even the remotest of regions; an extensive first aid kit; Jenny has wilderness first responder medical training; 210 liters of fuel; numerous spare parts (filters, belts, radiator hoses, alternator brush kit, Chilton’s repair manual, engine manual, extensive tool kit, epoxy putty, various lubricants for oil, brakes, gearbox, etc.); paper maps, two sets of electronic maps (offline phone maps and GPS); and plenty of food & 85 liters of water, enough to wait quite a while for help if need be. 

Back to the story…

Why this tire survived the torture of the previous day’s rocky ravines and this morning’s rugged trail only to give up the ghost on this relatively sedate section of gravel road is a mystery. Regardless, the even terrain made it an easy place to change a tire so I’m not complaining. 

Springing into action we changed the tire, no big deal. Except now we were only on Day 2 of our explorations and we were down to one spare, but what are the chances that we’d get another? There was some discussion of aborting, but we decided to wait until we’d used our good spare before calling a retreat.

This brought us to Rooidrom, an old 50 gallon oil drum placed as a landmark, painted red. Also an ideal lunch stop. During our meal a Himba woman, toddler on her hip, appeared out of nowhere and offered to sell us some bracelets. After we declined she put down her child and disrobed him, showing us his alarmingly inflamed penile tip. She spoke no english, and us no Ovahimba, but clearly she was looking for medical assistance. This was outside our training for sure, but Jenny hazarded a guess at a post circumcision infection, though we don’t know what the Himba traditions are on that front. Careful not to offer anything that could be overdosed, such as painkillers, Jenny instead gave her a tube of antibiotic ointment and pantomimed daily application. The Himba woman was extremely grateful and sat down right there to do the first treatment. The child was admirably stoic, it looked very painful. 

As we set off she kept trying to sell us bracelets, and only later did it occur to us that she might in fact have been offering them as a gift for helping her child. After this realization we felt bad for rejecting her offer. In the book Life is Like a Kudu Horn author Jacobsohn recounts how her Himba friends in Purros chided her for always “being so high,” meaning she would help them some way and then decline when they tried to help her in return. Jacobsohn hadn’t wanted to take advantage of their friendship, but inadvertently made them feel forever in debt.* We wondered if we were now guilty of the same thing with the woman we helped. 

*I hope I have characterized her nuanced story accurately

West from Rooidrom there are other drums to mark various crossroads. Bloudrom (Blue drum), which has some amusing signage, Oranjedrom (Orange drum), and finally the most remote of all, Groendrum (Green drum). Here there is a notebook where people have signed their names and where they come from as well as a dropbox of sorts. Jenny signed us in and we inspected the box. It contained offerings to the next travelers, a couple cigarettes and some other odds and ends. We contributed a can of Windhoek lager to some future traveler with a thirst. 

The sign at Blue Drum is a South African joke. “Load shedding” is when the power company lacks enough capacity and turns off power to various neighborhoods. The satellite dish is also fake.

Somewhere on this route Jenny called a stop, noticing a plastic piece on the side of the road. On these rough tracks it’s not all that rare to find the odd piece of car, a shock absorber, a number plate, a muffler, or most commonly a cracked off plastic cowling from near the bumpers or fenders. This time Jenny had spotted a hubcap matching ours, aha! As we’ve lost two of our own on previous rough roads it only seems fair that we gain one. You know you have a common car when you find a spare part by the side of the road and can just pop it on your vehicle.

At Green drum we turned north onto the most western road to Harman’s valley. A stiff breeze was blowing, whipping sand into the air and making it pretty inhospitable, causing some concern for where we would camp tonight. 

Heading north towards Hartman’s valley is committing to wild camping, for there are no formal campsites up here. Our criteria for wild camping in this setting is most importantly to leave no trace, i.e. pack out all trash, burry all human waste, burn any toilet paper, and burry any ash if we have a fire. We also do not make any new tire tracks, not wanting to add any additional ecological impact, and we use campsites that have been previously used, so the area doesn’t just end up with campsites all over the place. 

With this in mind we headed north. The road was very wide and corrugated, previous travelers having sought relief from the violent corrugations at the verges of the road, thus contributing to its ever widening swath. We resolved to accept our punishment and not further the widening, shaking and shuddering our way north. 

The vastness of this area was hard to grasp. Wind had stirred up a dusty haze, but still to say this is “big sky country” is an understatement. In the distance dunes flanked us to the west, the inland edge of Skeleton Coast National Park. To the east craggy rust red rocks formed a formidable ridge that is the western edge of Hartman’s valley. This western road, north of Green Drum, is actually not in the valley, but on the shoulder between the valley and the coast.

Other than the overly wide corrugated track, I was impressed that up here, where there are no rangers, supervision of tourists or rules posted, that people seemed to have mostly stuck to the main road and not made a zillion side tracks. The land is mostly flat and off-roading would be easy. Sticking to the road we headed north and started looking for a campsite. 

Normally our wild camping criteria include “not visible from the main road,” but here we felt it was more important to not make any new ecological impact. With that in mind we followed some tire tracks to a wonderful crescent shaped dune not far off the road that sheltered us, mostly, from the brisk wind and provided a very atmospheric spot. Out here at the end of the earth the evening was magical.

Having worked hard to come all this way we didn’t want to rush onward, so we had a slow start to the morning, savoring our desert isolation. The wind had died. Now it was still and the silence complete and absolute, so rare in our world these days. The remote vastness was hard to comprehend, forbidding and foreboding, an agoraphobic’s nightmare. 

Heading out in the morning we found that our footsteps from exploring the dunes the evening before had been entirely erased by the wind, and even our tire tracks were on their way to disappearing. 

This western road proved to have plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. Several side tracks not on our map let us wander north and make our own private discoveries, such as some some improbably located trees; one of the lone men of the Kaokoveld and a spot who’s geology looks similar to the famous Spitzkoppe. Five springbok appeared, hearty antelope that are able to live in this environment. Wildlife is rare out here and seeing springbok, so common elsewhere, was just as special as seeing a lion in Moremi.

Also there was grass on these sandy plains. Grass may seem mundane, but in the desert grass is life to the animals that live here. Many seasons might pass with no rain, but this year’s rains had delivered and at least some grass had grown.  At first we saw a sparse yellow-green peach fuzz, but it thickened here and there and made for a wonderful scene.

Later in the afternoon we found another old campsite, a scenic nook in the rocks with a view of the valley. This turned out not to be the best spot. As evening approached the canyon funneled the wind at great velocity, sand whipping up into the air. After our chairs and table started blowing over we retreated to the cab, reading our books in the front seats. Finally we gave up, retreating to the tent with a few snacks for dinner. 

The corrugations started to claim various victims, starting with the latch on our tent. Temporarily fixed with twine.

Right around when we’d finished our unexciting meal the wind died completely. The moon was up, nearly full. The sky was so clear and the moon so bright that I could see colors by moonlight, the red of the sand and the yellow grass out in the valley. It was stunning. 

In the morning we dropped into Hartman’s valley proper near Hartman’s Junction. The valley is extraordinarily unique in its beauty. To the north we could see the tall and extremely rugged grey mountains of Angola looking mysterious and imposing. On the Namibian side of the river that forms the border there were big tan sand dunes, to the east another monster dune of red sand and rugged peaks.

From that lookout we could see a huge swath of the valley. Our eyes were greeted with a pastel pallet, red and pink and tawny sand, tall stands golden grass as wispy as an old man’s beard, and in a few magical spots life giving grass as green as an emerald. In the binoculars we could see oryx and ostrich grazing in this green grass. 

The views were sweetness to the eyes and Jenny and I agreed that it was one of the most striking places we have ever visited. It was frustrating that the private concession made so much of it off limits to us, but we were grateful to see what we could. Hartman’s impressed me enough that I would actually consider paying to stay at the Wilderness lodge just so that we could see the rest of the valley. 

As we were dropping back down to Hartman’s Junction we saw a rental 4×4 speeding north. We stopped to watch, wondering if they would drive past the “Private Concession, No Entry,” sign at the junction. They didn’t, and we ended up chatting with them for a while. 

After a congenial conversation we said our goodbyes and they pulled away. As they drove off I heard the telltale shh-shh-shh-shh of a punctured tire, hissing at each revolution. I wanted to go back and tell them they had a flat, until I realized it was us. 

Day four in Kaokoland and our second flat tire. I got out to survey the tire, Jenny rolling slowly forward until the hiss of the leak revealed the location. It was another sidewall tear. I went for the tire plugs and Jenny told me, “You can’t repair a sidewall with a plug.”

Conventional wisdom is that sidewall tears can’t be fixed with tire plugs. Of course we’d heard this, but I suspected that this was because of the danger of a high speed blowout on a sidewall repaired with a plug, not that the plug wouldn’t stop the leak in the first place. A Google search will return a trove of “it can’t be done” results, all of which are wrong. Can’t and shouldn’t being the operative words here. Since we’d rarely achieve the lofty speeds of even 3rd gear over the next few days we figured the blowout danger was negligible and we’d give it a try. 

Lathering up the plug with contact cement, I pushed the plug in with the T-handle. Jenny rolled forward again to test it and a hiss revealed we’d failed. Remembering a time where we brought a tire to a shop that a plug failed to fix and all they did was put in a second plug, we thought we’d try again. After installing a second plug, hiss again. Third times a charm? Yes, yes it was, three plugs did the trick. Even if it didn’t last we figured we save our last good spare tire for a little longer. 

Heading south and out of the valley we watched that tire carefully and kept checking the pressure. It was holding. We passed the airstrip and took the eastern most road, heading towards an unnamed pass between the two valleys, which we took to calling “Hartman’s Pass.” 

The terrain south and east changes. We were out of the valley now, making our way between shallow ridges of pale chunky rocks and driving through, over and around dry riverbeds. Settlements, small clusters of a few huts, are here and there and women were tending to children in the thin shade of the occasional lone tree near their simple homes. We wave and they wave back. Herders tended goats or cattle, sometimes very far from their homes.

In the late afternoon we made camp on the bank ofa long dry riverbed some distance from the road. Just before we were headed to bed we saw the headlights of a car in the distance and we wondered who would be driving this rough track in the dark. Eventually he passed a few hundred meters from us and Jenny picked out the silhouette in the moonlight. It was an open safari car like the ones used for game drives. We supposed that the Wilderness Lodge had dispatched this driver to bring some essential, or perhaps a replacement vehicle, and they were doing the drive at night. Whoever it was they sure had a long way to go before reaching the lodge. 

The crossing over “Hartman’s Pass” is a rough track and we got on the road fairly early in case we found that we had to go the long way around into the Marienfluss. By this time we were able to drain the fuel in our jerry cans into the main tank, getting all that weight off the roof prior to tackling this pass. 

On the way a man came jogging over to us and asked us for water, speaking unusually good english. He said that he’d walked all the way from the village in the Marienfluss to his kraal here. This seemed less like the common opportunistic “tourist give me something because you can,” and more like a genuine request and we gave him a bottle of water. I asked him if the gate was open on the pass and he said it was. (There is a steel gate, sometimes padlocked, that blocks this pass at times. I don’t know who manages this gate or why/when it gets locked).

The gate being open was good news, removing one more uncertainty from the day. Arriving at the pass we got out to inspect the first technical pitch. While here a Himba woman herding some goats approached us and tried to tell us it was 100 Namibian dollars to use the pass. We demurred, confident there was no toll, and she continued to watch us. As we began to stack some rocks in the steepest of holes to make passing down this part of track easier, she leapt to assist us. After the road building was done Jenny directed me down this pitch. At the end we gave the Himba woman some food in return for her help. 

There were two more technical sections of this pass, the rest of it is just rocky and slow going, but it was very scenic as the track snakes through rocky clefts and ravines. At the next pitch we were surprised to meet some other travelers headed the opposite direction. As we had already started down they kindly parked off to the side and helped us pass this section.

Anyone care to identify this little guy we found under one of the rocks we used?

From there it was smooth sailing. Astonishingly the sidewall of our thrice plugged tire had stood up to the rocky pass. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves in the Marienfluss Valley, which is scenically superb, and also has very different character than Hartman’s. 

The other challenge for the morning was a damnable rattle that we had been unable to track down was back. On these corrugated tracks it was driving us totally bananas. We thought it was inside the door somewhere, but we had taken the door apart many times before to try to find it and always failed. 

This was particularly aggravating today, ruining our triumphant return to the Marienfluss. At a small tree we pulled over to make yet another attack at this problem. While Jenny worked on the door I took yet another gander under the hood to see if I’d missed anything. And, lo! The smoking gun. The bracket that carries the auxiliary battery had torn out of the body of the car. This wasn’t great news, but finding it was an immense victory. 

With a new nut Jenny managed to reach far up inside the fender and we secured the bracket in place. On our test drive we were rewarded with sweet merciful silence. At least if you discount all the other rattles, for these washboard roads have probably never seen a grader and are badly corrugated. 

At the head of the valley we camped at the community campsite. It’s a big swath of sand along the riverbank, with a couple big ana trees providing some shade. Since our arrival in the valleys the weather had turned hot and we were reveling in it, such a change from the cold temps in the Kalahari and the windy & cool coastal climate of Swakopmund. We sought out the campsite at the very end, which had shade all day, a wonderful view of the river, and Angola’s mountains dominating on the opposite bank.

Sadly swimming in the river isn’t advisable due to the crocodiles. Though locals do use the river for washing and bathing, we saw them doing so with caution, no carefree splashing around in the water. The community campsite had wonderful open air ablutions, with solar heated hot water. The whole campsite was immaculately clean and organized and the woman who came by to check on us periodically was very friendly. I was sad that there were no other guests here. 

Friends of ours were flying into Maun to meet us in ten days, so we couldn’t dally too long. There was still more exploring to be done before we made our way back to Botswana. After two nights we hit the road, heading south towards the village of Purros and the Hoarusib and Hoanib riverbeds. 

The Nitty Gritty

Unmapped Route into the Marienfluss

I had read about this route on the 4x4community.co.za forum, referenced in two posts in the Namibia section, here and here. One poster said it was a “good road” and they drove it out, from the valley to Otjithanda. Jenny and I spent quite a bit of time discussing the various routes into the valley, and we both agreed that you could drive this out, but we would rather not unless we really had to. There was in particular one steep section with a lot of loose rocks that without a lot of road building effort would risk to damage of diffsand other underparts. I’m sure others are more adventurous on this front. I suspect the rains this season may have degraded the track.

Our ranking of the routes in/out of the valley, from easiest to hardest:

1. Western route via D3707 and Blue drum. We haven’t driven all of the several variations on this route, but as we understand they’re not technical, however are super corrugated at times. Make sure your vehicle is up to the beating of the corrugations. I read online of someone driving this route and their spare tire fell off the rear of the vehicle entirely and it was never seen again. After this discovery they turned back, not wanting to continue without the spare. 
2. Joubert’s Pass (aka Rooidrom Pass). Can be taken from the south (D3707, corrugations) or from the East, via Etanga and the D3703. This Etanga side is rocky and slow going, and excepting one steep section is not technical. That one pitch isn’t so bad, we just used 1st gear low range and then there is no drama. Joubert’s Pass looks terrible, like a tire torture test, but the risk of damage to the vehicle is negligible, just go slow and try not to damage your sidewalls. The track is mostly very narrow, meaning you don’t have to worry about what line to take, there is really only one choice, just drive slow and watch your tires.
3. Unmapped Marienfluss Conservancy road. Could be driven both ways, but we are happy to only drive it east to west, descending. Mostly really nice, but there is one steep and rocky section that we didn’t like, and a few short manageable sections that you need to pay attention. 
4. Van Zyl’s Pass. Awesome views, mostly rocky track with several “cruxes” that require a lot of attention and care. Risk of damage to the vehicle is very real. One way only, east to west. 

Jenny thought that Joubert’s Pass might be harder than the Unmapped road, but after deliberated on this for a while and we decided that it appears bad, but there are fewer steep gradients and loose rocks, so ranked it narrowing easier than the new road.

Hartman’s Valley

Before our trip I emailed Wilderness for details on where their concession is and they responded with a not unfriendly but somewhat vague answer: ”Please note that I unfortunately do not have the map with the exact area at the moment. However, it does stretch from the Hartmanns Valley Airstrip to the camp with no access to the river as this is part of our exclusive area. The only place West of camp you can get to the river is at the waterfall, which may also be part of our  exclusive area – though it is difficult to say at this point in time”

In practice we saw no “do not enter” signs on the western road. This road is not in the valley, but higher up, between the western flank of the valley and the Skeleton Coast National Park. I suspect this road is allowed to transit, even though T4A marks it as “no access.” I don’t know why T4A has this marked thus, maybe just to keep things simple. 

Within the valley we saw “do not enter, private concession” signs at Hartman’s Junction, which is north of the airstrip. We saw no signs at the airstrip forbidding travel north, though there are several roads here so maybe we missed those. Interestingly we did see a sign saying “No entry” to the south from here. How this sign is supposed to apply is unclear to me. If you can’t drive the road heading south, then how would you get to the airstrip to see the sign in the first place? 

I had also scoured the internet for hours looking for a map, and emailed several other sources (including the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, the Marienfluss Conservancy) to no avail. We felt we’d done our due diligence and abided by the “Do Not Enter” signs we felt we visited the valley responsibly. Most importantly we didn’t want to violate the exclusive area and lead to reduced access for future visitors.

While driving a few tracks that lead up to a viewpoint west of the valley we saw a Wilderness Safari vehicle and the guide just waved at us, which we took to mean we had successfully stayed out of the concession.

In contrast to our previous visits we saw other travelers every day during our time in Kaokoland, so even though it is very far “out there” I suspect that during this time of year you’d be able to find help sooner than you think.