From city swirl to savanna to otherworldly splendor -- mind the road


The high desert suits the inhabitants of Addo Elephant National Park. (David Abel/Globe Staff)

By David Abel
Globe Staff / March 22, 2009

HOBAS, Namibia - Across the barren horizon, the only hint of life was a trail of dust kicked up by wild ostriches. The only sound was the hiss of an arid wind scouring the vast plains. As our scrawny rental car rumbled over the craggy desert road, casting long shadows as the morning sun sent the temperature over 100 degrees, we felt an ominous thud.

Given the rock-strewn road, given the hundreds of miles that separated us from help, given where we had been and what we had already survived, it seemed best to ignore the jolt - and my girlfriend's glower.

"Not good," Jess said, urging me to slow down.

By that point, thousands of miles into our trip through southern Africa, we had become accustomed to bumps on the road and other surprises that come with driving a compact car in a land better suited to off-road vehicles.

Our journey began in Johannesburg, where we rented a carrot-colored Honda Fit. The Avis agents seemed unconcerned that we were about to test its limits, or that we would be driving with just one spare. Getting permission to cross borders required little more than a 15-minute wait, a $100 fee, and a few forms for our destination in Windhoek, Namibia.

More difficult was learning to drive on the left side of the road, especially while battling jet lag. For days, every time I tried to activate the blinkers, I hit the wipers. And with every turn, I had to overcome an inner GPS that kept guiding me to the right - and a possible head-on collision.

But the true test came a few hours after we left the well-maintained highway and headed east into the winding mountains toward what our guidebook called one of South Africa's most impressive natural features. Unfortunately, as we approached the Blyde River Canyon, it began to pour and a thick mist shrouded the snaking road. Visibility was limited to the brake lights of the car in front of us.

When we finally made it to Kruger National Park, the nation's storied wildlife sanctuary that borders Mozambique, our self-guided safari began on a well-paved road that almost instantly offered glimpses of grazing zebra and watchful impala. They all seemed unperturbed by us. Then we came upon a herd of elephants.

We drove up near one chomping on a tree's leaves. We sat and admired how the massive beast seemed so limber as it stretched its wrinkled trunk into the branches. It felt like being at a zoo, but we were the ones in the cage. Yet there was a difference: Our cage didn't afford the same protection as steel bars.

As I snapped pictures from the passenger seat, the elephant started to approach us, sauntering in our direction. Then it picked up speed. At less than 10 feet away, it appeared to be in a full-on charge.

"Drive, go - hit it!" I yelled, as Jess floored the gas pedal.

It was a good lesson: Keep a healthy distance from the wildlife. We would pass countless other large animals - rhinos, lions, hippos, buffalo, everything from aggressive baboons with a reputation for opening car doors to monkeys that liked to steal the rubber from windshield wipers.

After a few days, we left the low-lying savanna of broad grasslands and boulder-filled hills for a landscape that looked more like the Berkshires. The provincial road we took south toward the great plateau of Lesotho climbed hundreds of miles along rolling green hills, through groves of pine trees, past rainbow-haloed farms. But the deeper we drove into the heart of South Africa, the clearer it became where we were.

At nearly every turn, we witnessed the country's intractable ironies: children begging beside some of the world's most fertile land; sprawling shantytowns in the shadow of gleaming high-rises; the tall, barbed-wire-topped walls that enclose white subdivisions, underscoring that the official end of apartheid has not ended segregation.

Yet as we passed from the table-top peaks of the Drakensberg to the seaside cliffs along the lagoon of Knysna, from the high desert scrubland where elephants feed along with warthogs in Addo Elephant National Park to the lavender fields of wine country in Franschhoek, it became easier to understand why so many tribes, Europeans included, were willing to fight for this land.

And nowhere did the stark beauty stand out more than around Cape Town, a peninsula at the tip of the continent, where steep mountains rise from the Atlantic and Indian oceans and a mélange of Africans, Europeans, Indians, Malaysians, and many others interact more than anywhere else in the country.

We skipped the more touristy sights, such as the cable car ride up to the cloud-covered Table Mountain and the overbooked sail to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned in a tiny cell. Instead, we walked the city center, from the opulent Mount Nelson Hotel to the 330-year-old Slave Lodge, where thousands of slaves were confined in horrific conditions. We explored the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, home to 9,000 indigenous plants and flowers; swam in the cold, turquoise waters off Boulders Beach, where thousands of penguins putter in the white sand; and hiked the cliffs along the Cape of Good Hope, the southwesternmost point of Africa.

We could have spent weeks in Cape Town, but we left the ocean for the desert. For the equivalent of about $25, we filled our tank and drove about 300 miles north to Namibia, a former German colony known as much for its towering sand dunes as its diamond mines.

When we arrived at the sun-baked border in the late afternoon, the heat was intense. Outside, the scattered quiver trees, a squat and spiny symbol of the desolate land, provided little shade. Thankfully, crossing involved little more than handing over our passports, getting our car's papers stamped, and shaking a few hands. The English-speaking border guards echoed our guidebooks, assuring us we would be fine with our two-wheel-drive car.

Minutes after leaving, however, it felt like we were on the moon, with a lot more gravity. The road to our campsite resembled a roller coaster and turned out to be one of the better ones we would experience over the next week. But as we set up our tent we watched a purple dusk give way to a cool breeze and a canopy of stars, and we knew it had been worth the trek.

The next day, after canoeing on the border-dividing Orange River, we ventured farther north, along an increasingly lonely road. For hours at a time, we saw no sign of human life. When we finally made it to our next destination, a 100-mile span of gouged rock called the Fish River Canyon, we breathed deeply as we watched another crimson sunset dissolve into another glittering night. Maybe we were worrying too much.

The next morning, as the temperature surged, I drove with more confidence. The car could handle it, I thought. The roads looked worse than they were, I said to myself as I watched a pair of ostriches sprinting in the distance. It was at about that point that I failed to notice a sharp rock jutting from the center of the road. The car shuddered.

As we rolled on, I began to smell something acrid. A few minutes later, when we came across a pack of antelope-like animals, we stopped to snap pictures. Jess got out to investigate the smell.

"Oh my God," she said, adding stronger language as she gaped at the damage.

When I got out, I saw mostly melted rubber, shards hanging off the rim. The front left tire was destroyed. So we dug out the donut, jacked up the car, and changed the tire. One more bad rock and we would be walking.

The closest town was about 150 miles away. So we went easy on the water and drove down the rocky road, averaging about 20 miles per hour. The stress was enough to make us think about turning in the car. But there was so much left to see.

After we replaced the tire, an ordeal that set us back a few hours but less than $100, we drove farther north into an increasingly otherworldly landscape, where we would meet orphaned cheetahs, explore a forest of quiver trees, hike through deep canyons, and climb oceans of sand that sprouted thousand-foot dunes.

The roads didn't get any better. So we drove slowly and watched the road more closely.

After almost three weeks, we finally made it to the paved roads of Windhoek, where we hand-washed the Honda, scrubbing the dirt from every crevice.

We decided to let someone else do the driving, and a few hours later, we left Namibia on a 22-hour bus ride to Zambia, undaunted by the long road ahead.

David Abel can be reached at mailto:dabel@globe.com.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

For videos & photos of David's trip, visit www.boston.com/travel/getaways/africa/articles/2009/03/22/touring_a_land_of_beauty_and_beasts/?page=full