travel@pangolin.li

Namibia 2003

www.pangolin.li home

Travel directory

Namibia 2003 Main

Part 1 Etosha

Part 1a Animals

Part 2 Otjitotongwe

Part 3 Highlands

Part 4 Van Zyl's P.

Part 5 Marienfluss

Part 6 Kaokoveld

Part 7 Damaraland

Part 8 Twyfelfontein

Part 9 Namib

Part 10 Wolwedans

Part 11 Gamsberg

Panorama pics

Namibia '03 Gallery

contact
last updated: 7-Aug-2005

Text/pictures subject to copyright by pangolin.li

Part 11 - Gamsberg Pass and Hakos - home

Please do check out our Namibia '03 photo Gallery
Go directly to Wolwedans-Gamsberg or Hakos.

Travel details

From Wolwedans we headed back to Windhoek, via Gamsberg Pass. We had booked for the night in Hakos Guest Farm.

From Wolwedans Reception, we drove back to the C19 (79 km). After 5 km on the C19 northwards, we turned East on the D854 again, leading to a crossing with C14 after 72 km, close to Büllsport - so we went round the Naukluft Mountains on the other side. We then followed the C14 northwards for 121 km, past Solitaire, until we reached the turn-off to Gamsberg Pass, very close to Kuiseb Canyon. From there to Hakos it takes ca. 60 km - mostly up.
The next day, we drove back to Windhoek (ca. 110 km), where we gave back our car. The friendly guys from Asco brought us to the International Airport.

From Wolwedans to Gamsberg Pass

We had driven from Kuiseb to Wolwedans two days earlier, so we wanted to at least take a little detour to see some other landscape. Therefore we decided to follow the D845 to the region of Büllsport, instead of again taking the C19. I very much liked this route, partly because the mountains are closer to the road, and also because the vegetation differs from the plains in NamibRand. There are many shrubs, and several aloe were in bloom.


The Tsauchab Büllsport area	On Gamsberg Pass

The Gamsberg Pass has a very long ascent - but no descent. It is to get up the Escarpment. First the road meanders through low hills, but the hills increase, and the vegetation gets greener and greener. The road is good. The last piece before reaching the summit (is there a summit with a pass like this?) is the steepest, but also most beautiful - the view now opens over all these big and small hills, and on into the Namib. Check out the panorama picture! The Gamsberg towers above everything here - you can clearly see the rim of its table-mountain top, but it is still quite far away.
Top of page

Hakos

I had read about Hakos in a guidebook before leaving for Namibia, and very much liked the idea of staying in a guest house which doubles as the International Amateur Observatory. We had travelled under the Namibian sky for 3 weeks, and had marveled at the sights it offers at night - without knowing them! So in our last night in Namibia, we wanted to know more...

The Hakos Guest Farm is led by a friendly elderly couple, daughter and father, of German origins, and being involved with astronomy for a long time. All other guests were German hobby astronomers - even though hobby is maybe the wrong word for the passionate or even addictive affection some of them showed for astronomy. Several of them spend all their holidays here, without going anywhere else in Namibia - a strange idea for us! The atmosphere was therefore somewhat peculiar: Everyone was really nice to us, but in a way we felt like intruders.

Stargazing in Namibia is a different thing from what you can do in Europe - here in Switzerland you're in most places lucky if you see more than 50 stars, and the milky way is only seen far from inhabited places and if the air is dry. Namibia has many uninhabited places, and the air is dry everywhere. Hakos adds the advantage that it is on 1900 m asl in really clean air.

< Orion seen from Gamsberg - I stole this picture from the International Amateur Observatory site.

So, at night we were given a private tour of the observatory, led by one of the "amateurs". He showed us the new telescope they had just built, but also many interesting stars, clusters and nebulae - some of them visible by the naked eye, but much more interesting or beautiful when seen through this telescope. I don't remember half of what we've seen, but I remember I was amazed by the beauty of many of those star systems.

Hakos otherwise offers walks, drives into the surrounding mountains (including Gamsberg), a swimming pool, and lots of solitude - but the main attraction is really the observatory.

We left the next morning and drove back to Windhoek, a short pleasant drive. We gave back our car at the Asco office - nothing broken, but it was very dirty!

Our flight home offered one more highlight: sunrise over the alps. But I preferred the sunrise over the Namib...


Ticino	Lake of Constance

Top of page

Go to: