TROPIC OF CAPRICORN AND A CANYON

WEATHER: Tops 36C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: A photo at the Tropic of Capricorn

BUMMER OF THE DAY: It’s hot

BUYS OF THE DAY: My 2 bangles I bought in Solitaire for 10AUD

WORD OF THE DAY: Correct

CAMP SITE RANKING: Warm showers, flushing toilets and a pool - 4 out of 5 stars

Today was mainly going to be a travel day today, but we did get some highlights to break-up the journey which always makes the day go a little bit quicker when you are in the truck. 

Wake-up was at 6.45am, bags onto the truck by 7.45am and then we walked into town to ‘our bakery’ for the third and last time before getting picked up at the activities center at 9am. 

We have 450km to travel and it is now hard to believe that we only have 5 nights left on tour.  Where the hell did the last 55 days go?  This has been a mammoth journey and I have made some pretty awesome friends, we just need to make the most of the time we have left. 

We drove for a few hours before GG got Ben to stop for a scenery shot looking over a plain with a few quiver trees and lots of pretty, and as Manu would say, bling bling rocks before stopping for lunch next to a dry river bed at 12.15pm.  The scenery has changed from flat plains to rolling green hills and it is just beautiful.  I have to say Namibia is one of my favorite countries so far.  It is so contrasting from the game park of Etosha, the seal colony on the Atlantic Ocean, the sand dunes of Swakopmund and now driving through the Namib Nauklauf Reserve and it’s rolling green hills heading towards Sesriem.  It is an AMAZING country. 

We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn at 1.15pm.  I was able to get a Bernstar jump here to add to the 2 Equator ones that we got when we were in Uganda and Kenya, so it is a pretty cool claim to fame.  The Tropic of Capricorn marks the most southerly latitude at which the Sun can appear directly overhead. This event occurs at the December solstice, when the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun to its maximum extent.  It is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It currently lies 23° 26′ 16″ south of the Equator.  Rolf had his GPS out and his machine had the mark around 15m away from where the sign was but It is currently drifting north at the rate of almost half a second (0.47″) of latitude, which is about 15 meters, per year, so that is probably right.  There is also room in my Globetrotters book for the latitude passings as well, so I am going to shrink my photos when I get a chance and stick them in the book.  Cool idea right!

We had one more stop at a small place called Solitaire before getting to camp.  This place was really cool.  They had bodies of old cars around the place with cactus’s growing out of them and it was all set up like an old western movie.  I felt like I had stepped out of Africa just for 20 minutes that we had stopped there and it had a Canadian bakery of all things next door to the roadhouse.  It was a little surreal.

We arrived into Sesriem at 3.30pm and our camp for the night.  This camp site is quite spread out with reception and the pool about a 15 minute walk from where our tents were set up.  The view we had from our tent once it was up was pretty spectacular though and one of the best on the trip so far I would have to say with a backdrop of yellow plains and mountains.  We had free time till 5.30pm, so Lisa and I went and sat by the pool for the hour after we went to the bar to purchase a cold beer.  This is the first time I couldn’t be bothered going for a swim, so I took the laptop and pumped out another blog instead.  To save us having to walk back to camp for the 5.30pm pick-up we got GG and Ben to pick us up on the way back and we thumbed a ride and technically Ben picked up 4 hitch-hikers, but I guess he knows us, so I we really aren’t hitch-hikers after all. 

We drove about 15 minutes to Sesreim Canyon which is the second most important tourist attraction in the area after Sossusvlei. It is a natural canyon carved by the Tsauchab River in the local sedimentary rock, about a kilometer long and up to 30 meters deep. The name Sesriem is Afrikaans and means "six belts", given by settlers returning from the Dorsland Trek who had to attach together six belts (made of oryx hides) in order to reach buckets down into the canyon to scoop up water. The Sesriem Canyon is only two meters wide in some places, and has a portion that permanently contains water.  As we got there late in the afternoon, the sun on the rocks made for some beautiful photos.  You can walk both directions once inside the canyon, so we went to the waters end first and then the guys walked the other way, up out of the canyon and walked all the way around.  We all got back in time to see a beautiful sunset over another glorious day in Africa.  I can still say after 55 sunsets, you can never get too bored of them and each one is different every time.

We headed back to camp and got Ben to stop off at reception to let us off to buy some cold beers and walk back to the camp site around 10 minutes away.  As usual, when we have something on later in the afternoons, Si had dinner cooked and ready for us, so it was a matter of having some dinner, PFT, chilling for a little while, hit the showers and as it was a quite site we retired to the tents earlier than usual and with beers in hand I blogged a little and Lisa read for a while before turning off the head lamps.  We have an early start tomorrow morning with the climbing of a massive sand dune called 45 so time to get some shut eye.