Day 5 Aus City Limits
280 km to Aus said the small sign at Reception. Can’t be too bad. Three hours maybe. Betty, our trusty GPS, said over 12 hours
this time.
Stopped at the Canyon Roadhouse, sister establishment to our
lodge about 15 km back on the C12, a gravel road. Lots of wannabe Route 66 feel to it, Fifties
vintage Dodge Truck rusting in the rock garden, cactus growing out of the void
left by the removal of the hood (bonnet), license plates from everywhere, even
Arizona!, dismantled cars inside the restaurant forming the legs of dining
tables.
We chose not to get gas, violating already our Golden
Rule: “Never pass up a chance to fill
up.” Which is a corollary to the maxim
handed down to me years ago from my friend, Jerry, a few years my elder, who
told me, “Never pass up a chance to piss.”
So, I guess as far as fluids are concerned, take advantage of filling
and emptying whenever the possibility presents itself.
We had gotten a good Namibia map from the lodge, and could
see the route we needed to take to reach Aus-the C12 to the C37 to the B4.
Let me explain at this point what I now have gathered about
the Road Designation system here in Planet Namib. First, there are no A Roads. They are all down in South Africa or up in
Europe or over in the USA. There ARE B
Roads, however. They are the Major
Highways of the Namibian Highway Network.
In the USA they would be called “quaint country roads,” like what you
might find when you leave the Interstate, leave the state highway, leave the
suburbs, leave civilization and are left with a two-lane blacktop surface, no
shoulder to speak of, no gas stations, very few other vehicles, so few that it
is common to wave to oncoming drivers in a show of common solidarity, the two
of you against the brutal forces of Nature.
These are the super highways of Namibia.
C Roads, the most common, are what Americans or
Mexicans would call “a dirt road.” When we go to our beach houses in Mexico, we
leave the “B road” and take a C Road in about 7 km to the seafront. They have been graded, at some stage in the
preceding decade. They slope down
sharply at the edges to a spiky carpet of flinty rocks that can slice a tire
like a caveman slices his mastodon.
There ARE stop signs when you reach a rail crossing. There are occasional Curve warning signs when
a speed higher than 50 kph would put you off-road. Namibians and South Africans travel at speeds
nearing 100 kph on these. I keep it
under 70 and get rewarded by clouds of dust that swallow me every time they
blast past me.
D Roads are C’s minus the decade grading and upkeep, they’re
narrower, rougher, they are more at home in a Ford Pickup ad at halftime of the
Super Bowl, truck taking a rutted hill track like John Wayne on steroids.
And then, the lowly F Roads.
Not sure why E got left out, but E should be relieved. An F Road is, well, without mincing words, a
F$%*#-ed Up Road. Even using the term
“road” does a disservice to road kill.
You can see the green signpost labeling something like the “F 452”
pointing left or right off of your thoroughfare, and you can slow to check it
out, but often as not, you do not even see a jackrabbit’s prints, let alone a
surface on which you might take your vehicle. I guess when they skipped the E they just
assumed that you knew that the F Road would be “E-roded.” Ha ha.
And, now that I’ve driven one, I understand that F Road is simply
another way of saying Off-road. As in, “
I got me a Jeep 4x4 and I’m a-goin’ F roadin’”
On our merry way from Canyon Lodge to the B4 and onwards to
Aus, we came upon a fork in the road, and dutifully took it, regards to
Yogi. After a few short meters, the
road, the C12 that we had been doing a casual 70 klicks down for an hour now, degraded
rapidly. And at the same time, Betty,
our trusty GPS, cautioned, “turn around when possible…moron.” Coasting to a stop, we consulted our map. This junction was not to be found. Hmmm.
OK, let’s follow Betty’s directions. U turn and a right down the other dusty
fork. It seemed just a tad better than
the other side, so, yes, maybe this was the correct route. And then.
And then we saw the dreaded sign.
“F 427.” No. Aaaaaaargh!
Not that! Too late to backtrack,
and heck, the road doesn’t seem so bad at all…
We learned that when a Nissan XTrail is shaken hard enough,
the sun roof cover will slide open of its own accord. We learned that our Gansbaai dentist had done
superior work last month as not one of our fillings were jarred loose. We learned that the speed limit on an F Road
approaches zero, like a calculus problem gone bad. So that’s why Betty predicted an arrival time
after midnight!
Eventually, finally, at long last, after jostling along for
over 2 hours and covering 48 km (36 miles) and seeing only one other sign of
humanity, a shepherd with his dog and flock of sheep, the sheep seemingly not
bothered by the F 427’s condition, we reached the smooth paradise of the B 4. And after an hour’s cloud-like cruise, we
reached the little town of Aus.
Aus. In my pre-trip
thinking I had adopted as a directive that we would not hurry through
Namibia. We would take our time. Hence, we have no one-nighters in the whole
itinerary.
I made a mistake.
Aus.
Aus was once the sight of a German POW camp during one of
the big wars in the early 1900’s over who would be the colonialists here, the
British or the Germans. The Germans
lost, but you wouldn’t know it with towns bearing names like Luderitz,
Swakopmund, and Helmeringhaussen. Anyhow,
that was the highpoint in Aus’s history.
Its heyday. Its pinnacle of
civilization.
We are ensconced in the comfortable Bahnhof Aus Hotel. Bahnhof means train station in German and we
are located just across the road from not the quaint old German railway station that
was appropriated to haul diamonds and prisoners to and fro, but the derelict lot littered with old rail ties, broken
concrete and , well, litter, that once was the quaint Aus Bahnhof Railway
Station.
When we asked the young hotel manager where we should go for
a walk, he shrugged and said, “It doesn’t really matter.” He was correct, since we walked right, and we
walked left, saw most of aging, depressing Aus in 20 minutes, and as the fog
rolled in over the mountains and the temp dropped quickly, we hightailed it
back to the Bahnhof Hotel for warmth and a wifi hotspot.
Deciding then that perhaps two nights in Aus might be a bit
much, we (Mimi) talked to the young manager and he happily agreed to our
cutting our stay short by 24 hours. We
weren’t the first tourists to leave the Aus city limits early the morning
following our overnight stay.
We then had to contact our hotel in Luderitz, our next destination,
and move those dates, which we (Mimi) took able care of. This left a day sans lodging, but we would
sort that out later. Inshallah.
