In this time of marvels, the fundamental miracle is evolution. As the dazzling light ebbs from a huge southern sky, I look out at the creatures gathered around a waterhole in the Etosha National Park.
From the gloop of the same primordial soup that created humanity emerged elephants, giraffes and rhinos, and now they have all plodded over for a drink.
Far away, a lion roars to remind the more vulnerable animals of their place in the food chain.
On this side of the barrier, evolution has seen to it that 100 humans can line up to watch, their jaws dropping and cameras clicking in unison. I have a drink in my hand – not primordial soup but ice-cold Namib lager. From such moments are the best travel memories etched.
Rural Africa is about three things: animals, landscapes and people. It is not about high culture, haute cuisine or smooth and predictable travel. To explore it you have a choice: you can cast your fortunes to the road and flag down whatever cars and buses (a loose concept in Africa) are heading down the dusty road towards a horizon corrugated by rock or acacias. If you have time on your hands, and are prepared to shift your risk threshold, go ahead. But, should you be fortunate enough to find yourself with a family, there is a wiser plan: sign up for an overland trip in a truck piloted by African experts and populated with like-minded travellers.
On a camp site in the middle of Victoria Falls (the township, not the water feature) Charlotte, Daisy, Poppy and I met our fellow adventurers: a family from Australia; a mother, son and daughter from Switzerland; a mother and son from Hertfordshire; and a father and daughter from Leicestershire.
The professionals working for Dragoman put up our military-style tents, and welcomed us to an unfamiliar world. The tour leader, Ellen, is an American who combines a passion for Africa with formidable organisational skills.
Matt, Ellen’s husband, is a wiry Englishman possessed of the ability to drive flawlessly all day through MMBA (“miles and miles of bloody Africa”) with a sense of humour. And the most popular person on the trip by an African mile is Denford, the Zimbabwean cook, who can concoct extraordinary meals in the most challenging circumstances – the culinary equivalent of alchemy.
Then there is Neema, the truck that would bear us across rivers, frontiers and salt pans for 3 200km. She is painted in Dragoman’s colours of white and orange, making her easy to spot from 1km and instantly differentiating us from the dozens of other trucks transporting travellers around the southern African circuit.
The full version begins and ends in Cape Town, heading north to Zimbabwe, going west into Botswana and Namibia, before returning through the Western Cape. Fine for those with 12 weeks, but for normal people the travel company has curated the best bits achievable within three weeks and R88 640 for a family of four.
This included a visit to Victoria Falls National Park. We gaped at this masterpiece of the elements. Earth is represented by ancient rock gleaming like new, wind by the natural aerosol that attenuates the afternoon sun, fire in the dazzle of colour refracting from the mist, while water plummets from a plateau to carve a course to the Indian Ocean.
We carved our course in the opposite direction, to the Atlantic – the pretty way. Over the next 19 days we passengers remained impervious to the tricky business of organising a journey through a precarious part of the world. Matt used his expertise from crossing a million African frontiers to navigate the jigsaw of post-colonial borders, Ellen negotiated park and campsite fees, and Denford shopped – often trailed by a procession of youngsters keen to learn the secrets of on-the-road alchemy.
We shared a daily regime of dismantling tents, helping prepare meals, packing up the truck and hitting the road – which, this being Africa, sometimes meant the road hitting us with a volley of blows only partially dampened by the shock absorbers.
Overlanding evolved from ex-army trucks, and family trips demand military discipline to avoid unravelling in a mess of kit and recrimination. Every piece of equipment has its place beneath the belly of the truck, and everyone has a designated task.
Lunch would have lent itself to being filmed on a time-lapse camera: truck pulls into shady grove, everyone piles out, tables and chairs unfold from two to three dimensions, salads appear from nowhere, a kettle whistles in the wind, washed-up plates are waved in a crazy semaphore to dry them, everything is safely stowed and the truck disappears, leaving only tyre tracks.
Night brought the entertainment of putting up tents. The design of these heavy-duty structures is idiot-proof, but that didn’t stop some of us from struggling – and cursing when hooks trapped fingers, zips snagged and torches dropped. To continue the back-to-stone-age-basics theme we gathered around the fire – sometimes sharing South African wine.
Thus we meandered through Africa, our trip punctuated and rewarded by a dozen wonders: the glare from the salt pan in Etosha sliced through the polarised protection of the mightiest sunglasses, opening up an apocalyptic vision of Earth as a fossil...
The eerie curves of Spitzkoppe, a rock the size of a an asteroid – its rough edges smoothed over millennia. In the hour before sunset, we clambered to the top for a photograph...
Palmwag, a desert oasis where finally the unrelenting horizontal scrub crumpled into something much more interesting: ochre hills thrown into sharp relief by the harsh sun, interrupted by shadow-filled valleys and a blossoming mirage-like farmstead – with the added benefits of cold beer and warm wi-fi...
The dunes outside Swakopmund, where you interact with Africa by lying face down on a slice of hardboard shoved down a 45-degree gradient while a chap with a police speed gun measures your speed (48kph was my limit)...
Animal magic. Early on, a boat trip along the Chobe river revealed elephants and zebras, and a bush walk in the Okavango Delta taught us all we needed to know about dung – though closer and more rewarding encounters (with animals, not dung) awaited...
A surprise wildlife attraction during a brief stop on the Skeleton Coast – the strip of Namibia perpetually in cloud because of the atmospheric fault line between ocean and desert. Amid the wreckage of countless ships that lost their way in the fog is a raucous colony of Cape fur seals that you can smell from 3km off, hear from two, and photograph from a distance of a 1m as they frolic and flatulate.
Namutoni stands as a reminder of European involvement in this corner of Africa. Its heart is a fortress constructed by the Germans to consolidate their hold on the then Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika. Their influence is explained in another fortress-turned-museum in Grootfontein, while German impacts on city life are most visible in Swapokmund and make you feel you’re walking in the Black Forest rather than beside the Atlantic.
Encounters with local communities were rarer than I had hoped, but two stood out. The first was with the San Bushmen, whose society has been violated by colonialism and alcoholism, but who shared with us the secrets of survival of a diminutive people in the harshest environment.
Even more rewarding was a day that promised little more than a stay in a campsite near the scruffy town of Rundu, beside the Okavango River. We could gaze at Angola on the opposite shore, but not touch. Then, in a textbook example of good community tourism, a guide turned up to invite us to a nearby Namibian village. We got a glimpse of how the nation lives, works and plays – culminating in a game of football.
Fears that a journey with a bunch of strangers could turn into a real-life coalescence of On The Road and Lord of the Flies proved unfounded. For the finale, humanity and landscape converged at Dune 45. We clambered to the ridge of the dune to watch the sun set on the day and our trip.
Thenwe plunged down the escarpment, leaving billows of sand and echoes of laughter at the end of an evolutionary journey.
The Independent