Fish River Canyon

We left Henry behind to prepare dinner. Patrick dropped us off. We had a 2.5 kilometre walk to a sunset viewpoint where he would pick us up again. We could go at our own pace. We began by walking up to the edge of the canyon for our first view of it in all of its splendour. There was a real wow factor as we looked down in to it.

Fish River Canyon is the largest canyon in Africa and the second most visited tourist attraction in Namibia after Etosha National Park. It features a gigantic ravine, which is about 160 kilometres long, up to 27 kilometres wide and almost 550 metres deep in places.

The Fish River is the longest interior river in Namibia. It cuts deep into the plateau which is dry, stony and sparsely covered with hardy drought-resistant plants. The river only flows intermittently. It usually floods in late summer. For the rest of the year, it becomes a chain of long, narrow pools.

We took plenty of photos, and then set off to walk back to the pick-up point. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the colours on the rocks kept changing. It was hard to stop taking pictures! At the viewpoint, we waited for sunset. Patrick and Laban brought us a curious selection of snacks and drinks to have while we waited. There was sweet red and sweet white wine, coke, sliced cucumber, pieces of cheese that were still a bit frozen, biltong (which was labelled as ‘moist meat’!), and squares of milk chocolate (mint and fruit ‘n’ nut varieties). We might have raised our eyebrows at the choices, but we appreciated the gesture. Nathan from Australia made a ‘sandwich’ with all the ingredients we’d been given in one go. Nobody else fancied trying it! 😂

When the sunset itself came, it wasn’t that good because of the build up of cloud, but the light on the rocks before and after the sun went down was stunning!

Back at camp, Henry had got a fire going which was very welcome as we were all pretty cold. For dinner, he’d made a delicious vegetable soup followed by lamb leg steaks cooked on the braii served with crushed potatoes, coleslaw, and vegetables. The lamb was really good!!

After dinner, we stayed by the fire chatting. We didn’t stay up late, though, as we have a very early start tomorrow.Lue lisää