Naukluft

Naukluft is a walk of its own: Made by masochists for masochists. The days are all about 16 km over all kinds of terrain, varying from roads to riverbeds and steep rock faces. Along the steepest parts, chains have been laid along which you have to go up or down. At the end of the day, everyone was just tired, the strongest walkers included. In addition, the many rocks over which we had to walk caused a large number of blisters in the group. At he end even, Annabel sprained her wrist during a stumble.

Naukluft started off very cold. the first two days, we walked with our raincoats on to stop the chilling wind. The temperature in the sun must have been something like 15 degrees. The first night, the temperature plummeted to 3 degrees above zero, which made all of us crawl into our sleeping bags by 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Russell was cooking with his sleeping bag wrapped around him. We all went to bed before 8 o'clock in the evening, and at night the temperature dropped to minus 3 degrees with a constant wind.

Two nights later, we had a different kind of weather, and I had to unzip the sleeping bag at night to prevent overheating. It got ever hotter during the day, and instead of looking for shelter from the wind, we were now looking for shelter from the sun. The land was barren with only the occasional tree and a lot of low shrubs and cactusses. Virtually everything was dry, and the water at the campsites needed to be pumped up, or had been transported in (at two places) in water tanks.

Naukluft has spectacular views and gorges, but for a walk I thought it a bit too tough to be enjoyable.