Tuesday 19 April: Intu Africa; 0 km

Our two nights at Intu Africa were meant to start our trip with a moment of rest, and it looks like that's just what we need. A plan for some dawn birding fails in favour of extra sleep and a relaxed breakfast. I stroll around the dunes a bit, look at the various tracks, and play around with the tree book. Marike does some birding, Maarten has a longer rest.

Towards 1600 we get ready for the game-drive, have a cup of tea at the lodge, and are joined for the drive by a couple of Italian newlyweds. Bernd and Henrik pilot the vehicle, give us the usual warning about a bumpy ride ahead, especially when the Landrover storms up the crest of a dune. The drive offers the fine sights of the rolling parallel Kalahari dunes that we also wanted Maarten to experience, and there's a steady view of Ostrich, Springbok, Wildebeest, Oryx and the odd Steenbok. The reserve's small group of Giraffe has been breeding successfully, the sight of a tiny young is wonderful. We are not taken to the enclosure that holds the reserveís few Lions, subject of some bad publicity a few years ago when the press accused the reserve of feeding them with live donkeys. I ask Bernd about this when we stop for our sundowner, he asserts that these accusations have all been malicious fabrications.

From here on, things steadily become drier and drier. A pair of Swiss cyclists, easily recognised as such by the flags on their bikes, laboriously work their way up to Aus in the fierce midday sun. Signs warn of crossing feral horses, an amazing population that somehow managed to thrive around here after having escaped from their Schutztruppe masters. We don't get to see any, just a lone Oryx in the distance. Work is being carried out on the railway to Lüderitz, it's obviously being completely renewed, and the works throw up huge clouds of dust.

Towards Lüderitz, signs warn of shifting sands, and a brisk wind indeed blows a steady flow over the road, with work crews constantly combating the moving desert. Alongside the road, dunes cover whole stretches of the former railway line, as well as a derelict station house. On our left, we pass the ghost city town of Kolmanskop, a century ago the epicentre of the free-for-all diamond boom until De Beers took over and the Sperrgebiet (restricted area) was created.

We enter Lüderitz around 1300, fill up, and drive around town. That takes little more than minutes in any direction: Lüderitz is just a small town, its architecture a German colonial anachronism, its only claim to fame being that it was where the first German (and highly dubious) colonial acquisition of land took place in 1883 by Mr. Lüderitz (first known as Angra Pequena, it was re-named into Lüderitzbucht, a settlement so remote and dry that, at first, drinking water had to be shipped in from the Cape! - see also www.namibweb.com/luderitz.htm). New initiatives, like an expansion of the port and fisheries industries, have sought to breathe new life into the local economy. Unfortunately, Namibian fisheries are now falling upon hard times as rising fuel costs, decreasing demands for its mainstay species of Hake and a strong Rand erode into their competitiveness.

Today's destination is Shark island, a former island now linked to the mainland by a broad causeway. It was to Shark Island that captive Nama fighters and their relatives were interned during and after the 1904-1907 Nama uprising, causing them to die in their hundreds from the harsh conditions on these cold and windswept rocks, until Oberstleutnant von Estorff's courageous personal intervention to move them onto the mainland. A small memorial marks their suffering. We check in at the campsite, try (and largely fail) to find a slightly sheltered spot, and have a challenging time setting up our tents. 'It's a bit windy now, but the wind will settle around 7 tonight', said the gatekeeper. The man must have been suffering from terminal optimism.