all good things must come to an end...

I can’t help but feel like we’ve rally got this whole spontaneous traveling thing down. The day after Christmas we had a much-needed sleeping-in day followed by one last mini bus ride back to Windhoek where we found ourselves at the Cardboard Box Backpackers again.

The last few days of our trip we rented a car and made our way south towards the border. These days were semi-lazy but not without moments of, “what is my life?!”

Our first stop on the way south was at Brukkaros, an extinct volcano. This volcano formed 80 million years ago when a magma pipe encountered ground water about 1km below the earth’s surface and caused a series of volcanic explosions.

Brukkaros.

The travel book we had been using, Lonely Planet (which I am never using again – half of the contact information in the book is incorrect and that’s just one of the many problems), told us that there was a hiking trail that would take us to the crater of the volcano. This trail was basically non-existent but we decided climb the volcano anyway.

Scrambling down rocks.

This was probably not the most intelligent move we could’ve made, but we figured that you only live once and wanted to do something we were pretty sure very few people have ever done. There were moments when we were literally rock climbing without any sort of gear or safety equipment. It. Was. Awesome.

At the top! The crater is to the left.

After making it down from the crater right as the sun was setting we continued south, hoping to find Fish River Canyon. For the first time on our entier trip we got lost and ended up camping behind a Shell Gas Station. This ended up being a surprisingly nice campsite.

Our Shell campsite - it had it's own bathroom and everything!

Wednesday morning we got up, asked for directions to Fish River Canyon and arrived safe and sound just in time to have our breath taken away. Fish River Canyon is the second largest canyon in the world. It is 160km long, 27km wide and up to 550km deep.

Day hikers aren’t allowed in the canyon – the heat is considered too dangerous – but we spent a good amount of walking around the canyon’s edge.

We then headed east towards the South African border. Driving through Namibia has been amazing. The landscape is constantly evolving and there are hardly any people anywhere. Unlike in South Africa, the highways don’t pass the townships; instead the only way to get to the townships is to turn off of the highway onto dirt and gravel roads and drive 80km or so before seeing any signs of civilization. All towns are small.

People that we meet continue to be very friendly, though. Everyone is always willing to give us tips or direct us towards a place where we could camp. We spent our last night in Namibia camping in an older gentleman’s backyard (he runs a B&B, so this arrangement wasn’t totally random).

Thursday, December 29 we drove to the border. We were all a little nervous that Trevor might not be allowed back into the country (his work permit still hasn’t come in yet and his tourist visa expired at the end of November). But a very friendly immigration officer listened to Trevor’s story and issued him a three-month temporary residency permit.

To celebrate safe entry into South Africa, we decided to visit Augrabies Falls National park in order to the thundering falls. The falls derive their name from the Khoi word meaning “place of great noise,’ and they definitely lived up to their name. The falls were cool but my favorite part of the park was driving/ hiking to different points that over looked the Orange River as it cut through the granite ravine.

Now some of you had to have known that this was coming - the geology fascinated me and I was so glad that I was able to spend some time in a bedrock river canyon (Joe, Matt and Greg - this is the next place where we should collect data).

We spent one last night camping before finally completing our journey. When we arrived in Kimberley both of the intern cars had flat tires… Yep, nothing had changed while we were away, but it did feel good to be back.

Our beloved Condor. What made this situation even more amusing was
the fact that we were missing the tool that was needed to release the spare
tire from the bottom of the car. We have since found the tool and I am
now a pro at changing tires.