The logo is a zebra, the motto “a hiker’s paradise”. Welcome to Naukluft National Park, a seemingly less-known park in western Namibia. Ready for some hiking, at last, after all those long and bumpy drives.
Leaving from the more or less disappointing Sesriem camp, we set out early again on the very bad road towards Naukluft. Luckily the conditions improved a lot once we took the first turn-off, but oh no, it was the wrong direction. We realised after 50 km on that road. So we took the scenic detour route, which took us slightly longer than anticipated, but we still arrived well in time to hike the 10 km Olive Trail in the afternoon. Not always easy because it follows most of the time a dried-out river bedding, but in the end very rewarding before we returned to our camp site and started a fire to cook the sandy chicken which we intended to eat at Sesriem.
On Sunday we set out for our longest and only day hike here in Namibia: the Warerkloof trail. We suspected this trail would also follow mainly a dried-out river bed, but no. It went up and down, left and right, past a family of baboons, unconscious zebras and lots of lizards. And as it would appear also past the path of a leopard! A couple which crossed us saw some footprints over our fresh ones, took pictures, asked a ranger and it’s a possibility we indeed got followed by a hungry (?) leopard… Lucky for us we didn’t know until next morning, when Véro saw the couple again. The trail itself was quite long, especially the last kilometre, since the trail turned out to be 18.2 km instead of 17 km displayed.
However, we had had the foresight booking a diner at the camp’s restaurant and it turned out to be quite a treat with three courses! Njommie!
