Canyons and Border Crossings

To break the long drive between Windhoek and South Africa we stopped for two nights in Grunau so we could visit Fish River Canyon. This is described as Africa’s Grand Canyon, it is 160 km long, 27 km wide and in places 550m deep. It’s also Namibia’s second most visited tourist attraction.

We thought it would be pretty busy, however when we arrived at the view point we were the only ones there. I think we must really be outside the typical tourist season.

The canyon was pretty impressive but its really hard to get an idea of scale without being able to walk along it. There is a 5 day 88 km hiking route which runs along the floor of the canyon, however you can only get permits for this between May and September. This is because there can be flash floods and the temperature can get to 50 degrees at the bottom of the canyon in summer.

The hike is quite committing, there is only a single escape route from the canyon and this at the beginning of the second day. After a rise in the hikes popularity and a number of difficult rescues from the canyon you now need a medical certificate dated within 40 days of your permit date. You also must walk within a group of three or more.  It sounds like fun so maybe we will have to come back and do this another time.

After our second night in Grunau we packed our stuff in our prison like but very functional room (which had air conditioning!) and headed for the eastern border with South Africa.

We got to the crossing and managed to check out of Namibia pretty quickly. The Namibian border offices are actually at the last settlement so you then have to drive 20km through no mans land to check into South Africa. 

We arrived at the offices and it seemed to be the same old office 1,2,3 in order system. Perhaps a little complacent we went to show our passports and fill in the form for the car. Olly wrote down the number plate from memory, I noticed he got the last 2 digits wrong which he corrected then handed over the form.

After a few minutes the guy behind the desk asked “are you sure this is the correct vehicle reg” Olly said yes and then found a picture of the car on his phone and showed the guy. Turns out it wasn’t and Olly had actually got another digit wrong which I hadn’t noticed. The guy tapped on his computer and told us the police would now be looking for a stolen car. We thought he was joking, he then pointed at a police man walking past and said “here he is”. We laughed at his joke. 

Then the police man then came into the office and took us away into office number 4 (at which point we weren’t laughing). We then proceeded to explain we had written down the number plate wrong as we had done it from memory. Queue half an hour of photocopying evidence for a file; passports, incorrectly filled forms, the car details sticker (which had to be prised from the windscreen) and eventually we were allowed to leave. Lesson learnt, fill in cross border documents correctly.

After that stressful morning we then headed to Uppington and laughed at our mishap over a few hours of wine tasting at the Orange River Cellar.