Land Rover in Namibia

WHITE MISCHIEF.
 
Nothing, we’re told, focuses the mind quite like fear… Codswallop. Truth is, when the ocean liner of sang froid inadvertently clouts the iceberg of blind terror, courage instantly tramples the women and children of wisdom and logic underfoot in a frantic scramble to be first aboard the lifeboats.
 
I know this because the wind has just shifted. And, to the accompaniment of synchronised, nostril evacuating snorts of rage, the white rhinoceros family hitherto contentedly grazing 25 yards away is now hurtling through the trembling Namibian bushland. Straight towards me.
 
Confronted by the five tons of miffed muscle topped off with seven feet of horn which collectively comprise this particular family outing, the parts of the body I’d expected to count on in just such a crisis have called a hasty meeting, made a lightning assessment of the situation and, as one, promptly popped out the back for a crafty smoke. Someone appears to have replaced my heart with an amphetamine laden bullfrog and I’m standing, blotting-paper tongue and legs of water, rooted to the spot.
 
“Quick… Stand behind me” hisses our guide with a fine display of the bravery imbued by the carrying of a Very Big Gun. “Down… Get behind the tree” he adds, toppling me politely, yet firmly, into a handy nest of Mr. Universe contestant ants. “Tree”? Discuss: The pathetic shrub behind which we’re cowering would be hard pushed to spurn the advances of a well struck football. Happily, rhinos run Ray Charles a close second in the field of ocular elitism. And an entire goods yard of thundering, runaway locomotion thuds by with inches to spare. Unhappily, however, rhino ears work exceptionally well. Which means -until the two ton patriarch who has shuddered to a halt on the other side of the bush into which he’s now peering with all the studied concentration of a golfer after a lost ball gets bored- absolute silence. Perhaps not the best time to mention my smoker’s cough, then…
 
It is entirely appropriate that Land Rover should unveil the 2002 Defender model range in this, frankly, terrifying environment; merely my fault for ever agreeing to climb out from behind the wheel. For much of the development of modern Africa is a tangible legacy of the car’s reputation as the most competent off-roader on the planet, and nowhere more so than in Namibia.
 
Rumours that Lord Lucan settled here come as no surprise; the country is truly vast, and empty. Just 1.7 million people live in an area the size of France and Britain combined. That’s about 1.5 people per square kilometre. Or, to put it more accurately, 0 people almost everywhere. As a result, this is very much the last corner of Africa to have dragged itself, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century: Across the border in neighbouring Botswana game hunting licenses were only abolished in 1957. Human game, that is. To the tune of two bushmen, per license, per annum.
 
The successive ministrations of Germany, Britain and South Africa have afforded Namibia a respectable starter kit of endless, dirt track roads to nowhere and a scant few yards of posh tarmac. But the rest of the country comprises simply a bewildering selection of brutal landscapes from which, at any moment, something huge and hungry may detach itself and come after you with unalloyed vim. All of which means that if you wish to pop to the Post Office you’ll either need a pair of stout boots and considerably braver pants than any in my wardrobe, or a long wheelbase Defender 110 TD5.
 
Which, by happy coincidence, is exactly what greets us as we blear off the red-eye in the Namibian capital, Windhoek. Land Rover have assembled a posse of international flavour for this holi…, er, gruelling 5 day expedition. So of the nine car convoy heading north from the airport, two speak Japanese, two British, one Italian and one German. The remainder house a swarthy selection of guides and instructors sporting teak furniture tans and impossibly crisp, Land Rover branded adventure clothing. The knees on display are uniformly hairy; a sure sign of long-term short trouser abuse.
 
A 45 minute lunge up the week’s only tarmac provides a relatively stable platform from which to assess the latest revisions to a car that seems to have changed little since the birth of the Wilkes brothers’ original, 1948, untroubled-by-stubble farm hand. The first thing that strikes you, if you’re not especially careful, is the door catch protruding from the B pillar. Living with a Defender requires many subtle adaptations of traditional driving techniques, the very first being a peculiar hip shimmy at entry and dismount to avoid having the arse torn out of your trousers with monotonous regularity. Mention this to a Defender die-hard, however, and -such is the reverence the car commands amongst off-road aficionados- he will simply dismiss your criticism, and all others for that matter, with the aid of a cosy, anecdotal retort. In this case by pointing out that said couture castigator doubles as a fine bottle opener.
 
On board, a swanky new, Ford buttoned centre console houses a radio, air conditioning controls and electric window switches. The lever operated air vents beneath the windscreen, ousted when air-con’ first made an appearance in Defender, are back by popular demand; once again offering an intoxicating blend of vaguely chilled air, dust and freshly diced hornet. All else remains the stout hose down interior we know and some love, complete (discretion being the better part of velour) with waterproof seat covers, as befitting a car equipped with a snorkel. Thus armed the Defender will quite happily wade through 4ft of water, thereafter promptly adopting the persona of a boat with the bung missing.
 
Scant millimetres of map north of Windhoek, the rolling hills of the Devon sized Okapuka Game Reserve offer endless off-roading potential. Over lunch -an opportunity to eat some of the very few wildlife species that won’t, over the coming days, be trying to eat me- expedition leader Rob Timcke lectures us on the appropriate use of high and low ratio gearboxes, the correct application of the diff lock and the dos and don’ts of the bush.
 
All don’ts actually: “Do not, under any circumstances, get out of the vehicle unless I tell you it safe to do so” he barks. Now, since it transpires that even the harmless looking lake behind the lodge plays host to a pair of 15ft Nile crocodiles prone to lash from fully submerged to uninvited, 45mph arrival in the thick of your agreeable picnic before you can arm yourself with so much as a chutney spoon, there’s little threat of dissent. More worrying, though, is the final directive; “Do not leave anything, at all, behind in the bush.” We can only hope that nothing untoward occurs on board to prompt ‘Mr. Brown’s’ sudden appearance in ‘reception’: The centre arm rest stowage box is commodious indeed but nonetheless not, I suspect, intended for use as a commode.
 
The rest of the day is spent re-learning further physical and emotional driving adaptations required by the Defender via the odd 100 miles of dirt track, precipitous slopes, bungalow sized boulders and several, mercifully arid, river beds. And the first essential, once you’ve shattered your elbow (yet again) closing the driver’s door onto it, is to wind down the window. This is not merely the means by which to acquire a tan of comedic imbalance. So laughably close is the steering wheel rim to the door that it’s physically impossible to helm a Defender with any aplomb without exiling the elbow. Yet, in Africa, even this simple ergonomic easement is fraught with danger…
 
Uncommon quantities of rainfall over the last couple of years -to whit, any at all- have transformed the heart of Namibia into surprisingly lush pasture thick with stunted trees. On closer inspection afforded by the barged aside branches’ propensity to whip back into the open window, said foliage proves laden with thorns of such stature that any individual prong would pass muster as a trophy winning kebab stick at a fattest-bachelor-contest barbecue.
 
There’s no escape. Defender steering boasts more turns lock-to-lock than a fairground dodgem car. And, despite the fact that much of the trickier rock conquering takes place at speeds more usually associated with the growth of facial hair, occasional acts of frantic helm winding are nonetheless required to stay out of trouble. So by nightfall my savaged right elbow resembles the back of one of HMS Bounty’s more insubordinate deck hands.
 
The addition of ABS and electronic traction control to the Defender’s armoury has undoubtedly stretched the car’s off-road capabilities further still; requiring far less driver ability to complete precipitous feats of derring-do with an egg-free face. But the low revs lethargy of the 2.5 litre turbodiesel is a less wholesome development in a car once famed for its ability to chug, at idle, up gradients on a par with your granny’s bosom. No amount of insistence on the part of our instructors that the faintest applications of throttle are, in the main, all that’s necessary to tackle most tasks will counter the number of times I witness even the pro’s stalling the TD5 whilst manoeuvring round humble car parks.
 
A quarter mile long convoy of telephone white Land Rovers each clattering through the bush like a kid running a stick down a picket fence is no way to sneak up on the promised sighting of the elusive leopard. So, this evening, we must content ourselves with a pleasing, sunset amble on foot up a dry river bed, marvelling at the raucous enthusiasm of both a nesting love bird colony and the outward-boundah from GQ magazine whom, whilst boasting of a 6 colour Wellington boot wardrobe, simultaneously conspires to trip headlong over every single rock in Africa.
 
Expedition leader Rob’s beer enhanced banter concerning the red-hot-coal-on-inner-arm pain of a scorpion sting guarantees a fretful night of fantastically tentative, big toe based bed linen extremity exploration. Just the thing to set me up for a 300 mile dice with the loose dirt, switchback surface of the road to the heart of the Namib desert.
 
Having established that speeds over 60mph are liable to set the tail of the Defender squirming alarmingly through the sweeping bends of the unmetalled yet well cambered, westbound C28 from Windhoek to the coast, there are only three potential pitfalls to this morning’s slithery entertainments. The first takes the form of hidden gullies into and out of which the road lunges so abruptly that you fear the TD5’s nose will simply plough in like the bows of a boat into a steep wave; the merciful reality merely being a change of attitude so sickeningly abrupt that your passenger must, once again, retrieve his tonsils from the footwell. The second is a please-and-thank-you-free German film crew who have decided that we are to be unpaid extras from now on; enough said. And the third is dust: Impenetrable, billowing clouds of the stuff, pouring from the stern of the car ahead. Even with hatches battened down and air-con on, this airborne talcum powder surges blithely through telephone directory fat panel gaps and into everything. Within the hour my hair is the consistency of candy-floss and, but for want of a deck chair and topless popsy, the inside of my nose has the makings of a serviceable beach.
 
Steadily losing altitude from Windhoek’s 5000ft altitude, the rolling verdant hills of the interior flatten and scorch as we shudder -dashboard straining at its recalcitrant mountings with a sound uncannily like a turkey farm the week before Christmas- out into the edge of a desert covering one third of the country. Even here the rare luxury of rain has left its mark: This relentlessly arid, achingly flat plain dotted with bare rock outcrops of indeterminate size more usually replicates a vast, badly baked cookie with generous chunks of chocolate chip bursting through the surface. This year, however, grass seed that has lain dormant since we were in diapers has sprouted a rippling, endless, silver blue inland sea dotted with distant herds of oryx; Africa’s coolest antelope.
 
Hot, now. And my right arm’s the colour of carved rare beef. But we do not get out of the vehicle. The tale currently enlivening the walkie-talkie airwaves is of the unfortunate Japanese gentleman who got out the vehicle last year: He was just two paces from the door when the lioness hiding in the grass pounced. He did not make it back on board. Hearteningly, however, and as further evidence of Defender density in the Dark Continent, the wildlife is now so familiar with the Land Rover that it’s largely dismiss as simply another benign species. Which means that, even in an open topped specimen, as long as you don’t stand up you remain part of the recognised profile of the car and are not considered lunch. On the whole.
 
Finally, deep shadowed and stark against the cloudless late afternoon sky, the dunes. Namib desert dunes are the real, Lawrence of Arabia, McCoy and, at up to 300ft high, the biggest in the world. A staggeringly beautiful environment, utterly still but for the tiny, Tintin quiff of sand blown off the tips of the tallest dunes, and so resoundingly silent that all you can hear is the inside of your own head; an unpleasant unfamiliarity.
 
It’s impossible to shake off images of precariously camel perched, wildly ululating Bedouin wielding those 6ft long rifles that fizz for two minutes when they pull the trigger before going bang. And it’s equally impossible to drive on this sodding sand…
 
The windward face of a dune, ruffled into minute ripples by the breeze, has the merest hint of a crust underfoot. Don’t be fooled. The instant a tyre touches the surface, it’s through into egg-timer fine innards that flow like water yet cling like cold treacle. From the top of a distant dune, our knee-hair and sand expert crackles intercom instructions and encouragement whilst eight other Defenders flounder about far below like a pod of beached whales. “Low ratio, diff lock, third gear, foot to the floor, maintain momentum at all costs…”
 
Trouble is, the car needs to be on top of the sand before you nail it or it simply makes like a sunburned mole. So, try to pick a previously untrammelled patch of sand to avail yourself of the scant assistance offered by that eggshell thin crust. First gear just to get moving, catch the revs by banging it into second far faster than the gearshift wishes to allow, then again into third. With luck, you’ll now be planing majestically along building speed for an assault on the nearest summit. More usually, you’ll be up to your axles in sand and stuck fast. Again.
 
There is, I’m assured by the experts, no shame in getting stuck. The trick, we’re told, is to enjoy it. This, entirely due to the enthusiasm of a crew blatantly happier under, rather than in, a Land Rover absolving me from any shovel based threats of liberal perspiration and unpleasant bending, I manage.
 
Yet it’s only once you do finally get underway that the real difficulties of dune driving surface. You simply cannot afford to stop anywhere except on the firmest level ground or, even better, on a slight downward slope to assist the next launch. Furthermore, in areas devoid of shadow, dunes disguise their relief so absolutely that one minute you’re careering, giggling fit to bust, over level terrain and the next, wholly unannounced, the Defender is thrown forward and over at such an alarming angle that only the frenetic winding on of lock will stop the car rolling. With dunes of this size any mistake will incur a long, painful downhill passage. And the stark, military issue hardness of a 110 TD5 interior is not the place in which to be tumble dried.
 
Matters improve considerably when Rob Trimcke points out that we’re not actually on sand tyres and should all lower our tyre pressures to just 16psi. In the absence of a gauge, this converts quite readily to the 45 second application of a matchstick to the front tyre valves and a full minute to the rears. Thus soggily shod, it’s time for a little light surfing…
 
Best for none but the brave to watch anyone else toboggan down the 40 degree slip face of a 200ft dune before committing themselves to a go. Thankfully, though, as you roll the car up to and over the lip of the dune (no stopping, remember), you’ve only just begun to panic at the sheer magnitude of the drop that lurches abruptly into the windscreen from under the bonnet when the braking effect of that cloying sand takes hold. Indeed, so stately is the car’s downhill progress that burgeoning confidence promotes the increasingly heavy use of the right hoof. At which point it is undoubtedly a Good Thing that bad light stops play, and we wobble coastwards to Swakopmund on drunkenly under-inflated tyres with a view to immediately replicating this unusual sensation through the medium of cold beer.
 
Next morning a fistful of Cessna’s diminutive ‘Vomit Comets’ disgorge us an hour’s turbulent flight north to Damaraland. And, over the course of a riverside picnic in which I inadvertently enrol the services of a small python as a makeshift cup-holder, Rob expounds on the “do not get out of the vehicle” element to this afternoon’s dry river bed based proceedings. This time it’s elephants. But, in fact, not getting out of the vehicle won’t help much if Jumbo goes off on one: A bull elephant can do much the same trick with a Defender as John Belushi used to manage with empty beer cans on his forehead. The best bet is to turn quickly and quietly around, and high tail it.
 
Which, with at least five cars line abreast, flat out in low ratio 5th gear, jostling for position across the full width of a dry river bed choked with yet more, axle deep, talcum powder sand, comes under the fat chance category. Despite increasingly strident “keep your distance and stay in my tracks” walkie-talkieing, national pride is clearly at stake: Through dust so thick in the air that visibility is zero for 100 yards behind each car, the Japanese are hell bent on staying so close to the lead car that they can see what the driver had for breakfast. The Italian is just happy to be racing again under any circumstances. And the Germans are puce with rage because their unpaid extras won’t do as they’re told and refuse to wait for the camera.
 
Another interesting overnight result-mosquitoes 11, human 0- finds us finally convoy free and running flat out for our final destination; the absurdly opulent Ongava Lodge on the edge of the massive Etosha Game Reserve. And, by now, my driving technique has completely subsumed to the demands of Defender ergonomics. Fine ground clearance the car may have, but the head of the windscreen is low for such a high driving position and the side windows worse. Enter the Defender Game Viewing Slouch: Hunched, Quasimodo like over the wheel, right elbow out of window, right hand atop wheel and left hand resting on gearknob the size of a toddler’s fist. Comfortable? Only for the first 200 miles or so.
 
Under perfectly spaced, drop scone clouds, the salt flats of the Etosha Pan -large enough to relegate Bonneville’s meagre offering to the status of dinner party cruet spillage- dominate the Game reserve. Hundreds of square miles of salt crusted, crazy paving cracked mud punctuated only by the distant dot of the occasional, lunatic ostrich. Driving on the pan is strictly forbidden.
 
The surface turns out to be worryingly soft. Tyre tracks scar a foot deep no matter what exhilarating velocities we achieve. Indeed, venture too far into the Pan’s interior and a return journey may be denied you: Somewhere out there is an earlier model Defender. Originally unreachable and abandoned with chassis snugging ground level, the roof rack is now a good metre beneath the salt crust…
 
And that pretty much… Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about that white rhino. We did make it back to the safety of the car, only to learn that ‘safety’, in this case, is a relative term: Though made of hair, the horn of a grumpy rhinoceros will go through the door of a Defender, and the contents of the adjacent seat, like a sharpened pencil dropped into a sherry trifle. This car may very well be dubbed Defender of the 4×4 Faith throughout Africa. But, if it’s all the same with you, next time I go on safari I’ll take an armoured car.