Day 8
Wednesday 6th November 2015
Well after a good night sleep we decided to have a look around The Road House.
Its quite a sight, they have used the American theme of a typical road stop a bit like Route 66.
They have old car bodies all around and antique car stuff everywhere and I swear they must have every antique car that was ever made, man they had some, in the grounds they were everywhere, often with trees growing out of them.
Even the main restaurant was not left out, there was everything you could think of to do with old cars, trucks, tractors.
We actually had breakfast sitting next to an old ambulance...haha
We could of stayed hours taking it all in, but our time was short, so we packed up and set off once more to find the elusive Fish River Canyon.
Personally I was over it all, I just wanted to get back to the boat, I was sick of the dust, dirt, sand and the never ending wind.
But we pushed on I'm so glad we did, it was so worth it, even if the wind almost blew us into the canyon several times.
We stopped at a few lookouts here and there, some had a safety rail most not, it was a bit unnerving getting close to the edge I tell you.
But what am awesome sight, man it takes your breath away just looking at it, and it's huge.
The Canyon is considered to be the 2nd largest canyon in the world. At 161 kilometres long, 27 kilometres wide and 550 meters deep, it's 2nd in size to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
They say the beginning of the canyon started many millions of years prior to the Fish Rivers meandering journey. Some five hundred million years ago the canyon began to form when a fracture in the earth formed a broad valley, deepened by the moving glaciers of an ice age. Further faults and erosion crested canyons within canyons.
And some Fifty millions years ago or so the Fish River started to cut its way through a valley in the canyon, it still flows through each wet season.
History lesson over...haha I know what you really want to know, but is there fish in the Fish River Canyon?
Yeap well line up behind us, cause we would like to know that as well...haha
As you might remember I often collect stuff as we travel here and there, and always get sand from each countries beach's that we visit, I also collected some at the big Sand dunes, and here I collected some rocks.
But also to The Captains horror I wanted a few leaves from a quiver tree and actually try and grow them.
The Quiver tree is actually a form of aloe, they are prehistoric in appearance and they can reach up to seven meters high, ( I didn't tell The Captain this) they are so characteristic of Namibia.
Ok another little history lesson. ( in June and July quiver trees are covered in bright yellow flowers, attracting large numbers of birds, insects, but Baboons also love them and tear the flowers apart to get to the nectar, often stripping off its blossoms soon after they appear. One of the quiver tree's most attractive features is its bark, which is smooth, often with a pearly grey or golden sheen, sometimes flaking and cracked into diamond shapes, frequently folding like melted wax.)
See why I think they are great, just not sure I want the baboons chasing us all over the world...haha
Anyway in The Captains words we were traipsing all over the side of this canyon to get a few leaves...haha it was a bit, but not really that bad, besides a little bit of adventure never hurt anyone.
But Wind Wanderer was calling us, and we moved on, the trip back to Luderitz was long and dusty.
We stopped one last time so I could pick up some rocks from the restricted area, just outside of Luderitz.
This is a no go zone, you are allowed to stop on the road, and the side of the road, but nothing else, it's diamond country, so me being me wanted some of the rocks from the restricted area, well you never know they could have diamonds in them.
Talking about diamonds, actually I'll talk about them in my next post, I need something to entice you back to reading my next blog, if it's only the girls....haha we do love diamonds.
We drive back into town, and we actually felt very anxious, what if the boat wasn't there anymore.
But there she was still floating thank god, the guy who was looking after her, ran us back to the boat, with way more luggage than we started out with.
Oh man, I thought we had seen enough sand and dust to last us a lifetime, this vessel of ours almost looked like the Namibian Desert itself.
Well tomorrow is another day.