Spitzkopff

We're in arguably the coolest camp of the trip so far. We're in the middle of a circle which is about eight hundred metres across. Forming the circle are huge rocky outcrops, of the same deep red as the Namib Dunes. There's something eerie, yet wonderful about this place. This is a true 'bush' camp. There are no facilities ,apart from a 'long drop'. You can probably surmise what this might be from the sort of thing you might want to drop a long way. It's quite incongrous, anyway, comprising a cubular shack of loosely tied bits of bark, with a 'sitting-height' concrete cylinder above the, frankly, not-long-enough drop. What makes it look quite comical, though, is the plastic toilet seat and lid attached to it. It's about fifty metres from the camp, and I'm not planning on going anywhere near it now the sun's gone down. So, after pitching the tent in our usual 'blitzgreig' style-ee (despite the lack of mechanised infantry), we all headed up to the top of the rocks above the campsite for a 360 view of the surrounding area. The rocks were fairly steep, but I had no trouble with them, prompting me to utter four words I never thought I'd say until I was fifty-five (and isn't interesting how that number has pushed out ten years since I turned thirty):

'These sandals are great!'

Yes, anyway, we were taken on a walking tour of the surrounding area by a local guide. Bjorn, with characteristic candour, told us beforehand, 'look, they're not very good, but it's Nomad's way of supporting the local community'. It was 'okay', we saw some trees, and some faded bushman paintings. You wouldn't believe the number of Armoured Crickets all over the place, either. The first time we saw one, a week ago, it was, like, 'Wow! Look at the size of that thing.' Now it's, 'Meh.'These things are like crickets on steroids, Actually, no they're not: Imagine a young British cricket – picked on at school and probably an orphan – becomes a top cybernetics expert and builds himself a powerful robotic suit of armour, for the purposes of fighting crime... They still go 'squish' when you tread on 'em, though. Yuck. We returned to camp to find six foil-covered loaves on the fire, and dinner is served...