Almost getting to Sossusvlei


After we parted ways with Felix Unite, we headed north to this place called Ai-Ais. Ai Ais is literally translated into “burning water,” and while I was planning the trip, I though that we could go swimming and chill in some beautiful hot springs in the middle of a Namibian dessert. I WAS WRONG. I am a gullible bru, or at least I cannot read properly, to realize that instead of there being many warm and pleasurable hot springs, there was one scorching hot pool of water, that may be the size of a hot tub and only an absurdly stupid/courageous person would even dare putting their foot in it.

Luckily for us, my friend Dexter is an absurdly stupid/funny/daring human being. After lightly testing out how hot the water was, Brooks (who we now call Bruce- or B-A-R-O-O-O-S-S- because that is how our taxi cab driver pronounces his name) declared that he’d give 50 Rand if someone ran around the hot water pool (there was a little path around the hot spring- I don’t know why, because the water is way too hot to even go in it). Immediately, without even testing the water, Dexter started trekking through the hot spring. His face turned from a fatty smile, to a face of absolute pain and regret. It was the fastest I’d ever seen someone run. Once he was half way around the pool there was no turning back….the sound coming out of his mouth was unreal. Imagine listening to a giraffe give birth (ouch!). After he came out of the pool, his calves and feet were dark red and his feet were tingling for the next hour.

The official water temperature was 65° C (149° F)…we had seen this on the sign out front, but since Dexter doesn't really know how to read celcius, it was more understandable that he completed this feat.

Anyway, since we realized that Ai-Ais is basically a spa resort, we decided to trek to Fish River Canyon, which was only about an hour away. Since I felt bad for Spencer, who had been driving for a long time, I took a couple of laps driving/learning how to drive stick in the parking lot, and felt comfortable enough to take over for him for the rest of the drive….this was the beginning of one of my bad decisions...oops. Once I got the car into gear, everything was just dandy…it was just starting the car that gave me a lil issue…I’ll get back to this later.

As we entered the Fish River Canyon, which I guess is located in Ai-Ais National Park, no park rangers were there to make us pay for anything, so we were stoked to just cruise in for free…YAY.


To get to the canyon, we had to drive on this dirt road that created a lot of dust and made it almost impossible to see as the light from the setting sun made the most ridiculous glare….so basically we had no idea where we were driving to until we reach the edge of the canyon. The sight of the second largest canyon in the world coupled with the most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed literally left me breathless. I had no words…all I could do was howl like a satisfied dog. ROOOOOOOOROOOOOOORROOOOOOOOOOO!

After taking a SHITE load of photos, it started to get dark and we didn’t really know where we were going sleep. We could go back to the entrance of the park and sleep in the campsite, or we could sleep in a random spot on the edge of the canyon….we obviously chose the latter. We found the viewing vista point, which had a couple of picnic tables and even a nearby outhouse and decided to lay our tarps on the rocks there and camp. Since we were no longer in the presence of Felix Unite rafting guides, we were left to fend for ourselves for food.

Luckily we brought a portable gas stove, and used that to cook baked beans and noodles. Just lovely. We spent the night listening to music, and throwing large rocks off the edge of the canyon and waiting to hear it hit the ground.


We woke up right with the sun, packed our gear, and hit the road. As we reached the exit/entrance to the national park, we were met by the all-mighty park ranger. He ran up to our car yelling at us because we didn’t pay the park entrance fee and didn’t pay for camping. He also said we weren’t allowed to sleep in the canyon…but we argued that we hadn’t slept in the park, but in fact drove in right before sunset to see the sunset. He obviously did not believe us, and closed the exit gate so we couldn’t drive off. We literally spent 45 minutes arguing with the ranger and were able to get away with only paying for the entrance fee…YEBO YES! It was more of a predicament than I am describing it, but whatever. Anyway, as we hit the road, after I got the car into gear after stalling and kind of burning the clutch a couple/few/a lot of times, we were making good time trying to get to Sossusvlei….

(By the way, before I tell the next sequence of events, I need to let you know that when we stopped at a rest stop after leaving the canyon, Dexter had slyly taken a rusty, old school Marlboro cowboy hat….this hat is to blame for what happened next…I think). Everything was going fine until Dexter started wearing this hat.

An hour after stopping at the rest stop, a truck passed our caravanning cars and knocked up a rock from the road into the driver’s window on one of our cars completely smashing the glass. Everyone was fine, it was just a lil hiccup in our journey…the only bad thing about it was that that car no longer could use their air conditioning to keep cool in the disgustingly hot sun. Anyway, after another couple of hours we needed to stop for gas, keep in mind that I was still driving. We pulled into the gas station in Tickle-me-Elmo, Namibia (I have no idea where we were, so that’s what I’m naming the place.)

We filled up the gas tanks, got a lil food, and everyone hopped back in the cars to hit the road. The first two cars got going before we had started our car…unfortunately, we could not shift out of fourth gear, and could not reverse or do anything with the car. Hey MOM, remember that time when I learned how to drive stick in Namibia? Hey MOM, remember that time when I broke my car in the middle of the dessert…yah, that’s funny. UGH! So basically, the other two cars that I taken off ahead of us, finally realized after driving for about an hour that we were not behind them, and had to trek back to find us. On the way back, the car without the broken window, popped their tire (I guess things do come in threes-Btw, I blame that damn cursed hat for the all these hiccups). So to say the least, I wasn’t the most popular person at that time….Oops, my bad guys. So I called the car rental company, explained the situation to them, and they said that they could bring me a new car within the next 5 hours…Legit. So that meant they would probably be here around 10 pm….of course I naively thought that they’d be on time. Anyway, we spent the day talking to the owner of the rest area…his name was Yohan, and he lived there with 9 other people. That is the size of the whole town, and nobody else exists in his world, except for stranded American students. Pretty absurd.

The rest of the day we played parking lot football, played cards, chased goats, and made some soup from a packet. Pretty eventful. I also waited all night for the car to come, but they didn’t show up until 7:30 am the next morning (the drivers of the tow-truck had decided to camp out on the side of the road that night.) Also, that night, we slept on our tarps again, but this time surrounded by six or seven guard dogs. They dogs were massive (like the size of a 12 year old kid) that slept at our heads and feet and supposedly they were protecting us from jackal (I feel like I could beat up a jackal though). So many times throughout the night, they would start growling and barking and then start running off towards something, which made me kinda pee my pants. I thought they were gonna eat my face during the night…whatever though. The dogs actually licked our faces while we slept, so that was pleasant of them. I became very happy when the rental company brought me a new toy car to play with in the morning.

In order to fix all of our cars, they took a tire and a window from the broken car to replace all of the other car injuries. Unfortunately I was prohibited from driving for the rest of the trip by the other members of the crew….AWWWWWWW! That’s sad. But we hit the road once again….

1 comment:

  1. Seeing as this blog has made its way to my family's eyes I would like to clarify that Bruce-my-Bruce gave me 100 Randals not 50. I am not that "stupid/funny/ignorant/nice/wow" of a human being.

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