Fish River Canyon and the hot springs at Ai Ais

With a long drive ahead of us, we knew we had to make good progress during the day to get to Fish River Canyon... and unfortunately it is always on such days that things go wrong. Christel and I had been driving in front, and had lost sight of the other car in our rear view mirror. We turned round and headed back to the location that we had last seen them at. As we came round the bend, we saw them by the side of the road, with the remnants of their hire car's tyre hanging off the rear wheel. Maina and Leo had already got their jack underneath the car, but had been unable to get the Hilux up high enough to get the wheel off properly. We then used the air jack, which wasn't as successful in its application as when we had previously come to the aid of the stranded German couple. So, we got out the Nissan's jack as well and from two points lifted the car up high enough to put on the spare tyre.*

We pushed on and got to the Ai Ais campsite at Fish River Canyon just before sunset. We set up camp and decided to head to the campsite's restaurant for a dinner of eland, kudu and impala. The next day we slept in, caught up on some reading, and relaxed at the natural hot springs, which pump out water at a hefty 60 degrees Celsius.

That afternoon, Dia and I experimented with baking bread in a cast iron pot, called potjie, in the fire... it initially looked like an unparalleled success

but, it turned out I may have stoked the fire a little too enthusiastically.

Christel also found some time to play some more guitar, whilst sitting by the edge of the canyon.

The second day Christel, Maina and I headed off into the canyon for a bit of a hike. The canyon, the second largest in the world, after the Grand Canyon, offered amazing scenery of the mountain ridges, sand banks and rock-filled dried-up riverbeds.

On Thursday, we went separate ways, with Leo, Dia and Maina heading back towards Windhoek, whilst Christel and I made our way down towards Springbok and then Cape Town.

* For the record, that was already the second blown tyre the Hilux had had, evidence that the Windhoek-based Okanvago Car Hire did not equip their vehicles with good quality tyres and that the tyres themselves were also too worn to allow problem-free driving. The BF Goodrich A/T tyres on the Patrol have so far done about 15,000 miles and are still going strong. This is hopefully the point that the car hire company issues a grovelling apology and improves its practices, and BF Goodrich offer to sponsor the rest of our trip through Africa :-)