Tsauchab 4WD

Saturday morning. The Land Cruiser has a flat tire. Easy to change but we were going for a drive and it is nice with a spare. Now the Land Cruiser had none…

Anyhow, we were only doing the easy drive through the surrounding area. Above you see several animal tracks through the dry landscape.

Amazing how one tree is green in this extremely dry winter landscape.

It is a strange landscape, seemingly endless and with almost no traces of human activity.

We followed a nice little track…

…with several places to stop…

…for a drink and a chat amongst the old men…

…and the young girls.

Lots of chances to admire the views…

…with strangely shaped mountain ridges…

…and trees that look dead but are not. Soon spring will come and with that the leaves – water or not. It’s amazing!

It is not a very friendly or welcoming landscape, but it is beautiful and very much worth a visit…

…if you have the car that will take you out of it.

Tsauchab does have a 4WD track but we were not going there. We were even warned – don’t enter that track! And the plan was clear – go back the same way we came. So how did we end up here?

Don’t ask me! This was to be just as difficult as we were told…

…and after going down this steep slope there was no way back. At the end of it I had a flat tire…

…and it was not easy to change it. The road was inclined and we had to support the car with man-power to stop it from falling over. 

Now we had two cars without a spare wheel and one Honda CRV. This was crazy!

But there was only one way out of it.

Continue ahead!

Quite comparable to Van Zyl’s Pass…

Looking back the slope we were glad to have survived it with all cars still rolling on undamaged wheels. We had more problems ahead of us and the sun was quickly dropping. Twice, cars were seriously stuck but by then everyone was so focused and in a hurry to move on before it was all dark that no filming was done.

The oryx is much better equipped for this landscape than we were.

The moon provided us with light for the last kilometers back to the camp where we all had a glass of hot Swedish mulled wine. It had been quite an adventure…