On a cold winter morning in July 2022, my wife Christa and I were shivering in Pretoria and we decided we urgently had to find a warmer place to spend our time. We chose Brandberg in Namibia, which we’d visited for the first time as an engaged couple 55 years previously, in 1967.
The first 4x4 vehicle I owned was a small Jeep and that’s what we set off in, all those years ago. We wanted to see the north-western parts of the country, mainly Damaraland – a place that would draw us back many times in the future.
I had lived in Namibia as a child, but it was Christa’s first time in the country. My first time back under my own steam had been in 1966, when my Namibian friend Hennie Mynhardt and I drove to Windhoek in a Volkswagen Beetle. I remember my parents paying R1360 for the Beetle and the trip from Cape Town cost about R10 in fuel. Still, money was tight and we didn’t have enough to pay for accommodation, so we slept on
