Welcome to PLUS online

I am a fully registered and qualified Namibian tour guide with a NATH Elephant Diploma. I take small groups, mostly in one car and sometimes in two cars, into the Kaokoland. I specialise in the desert elephant, the Himba and the Kaokoland – and I foresee for all three a catastrophic future as mass tourism is now being promoted into this area, seemingly without any controls.

Various companies are organising big convoys of inexperienced self-drivers into Kaokoland. These organisers, sitting in offices in Windhoek, South Africa or Italy, probably have never been in the Kaokoland themselves, and hence do not know what they are doing to this beautiful part of Namibia. South African companies usually offer guided safaris with a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 10 cars per convoy. Lately the Italians go self-drive in big convoys with a local driver (tour guide?) in the front car. And they go everywhere – and next year they will be back to go even deeper into remote places. Who is promoting this? On the 9th August this year, a convoy of approximately 16 cars came into Kamanjab at high speed and bumper to bumper. On a recent trip to Epupa I found besides various convoys of Italians, also 4 overlanders, 2 planes and, can you believe it, even an Intercape Mainliner bus!

Jan Joubert’s "4 x 4 Route Guide" and other similar publications have opened the door for big convoys of GPS freaks who now can go to previously unknown and hence undisturbed areas. Dr. Andreas Klinke in his book "Reisen mit GPS durch Namibia" even offers a free book for any new route supplied. These authors probably never realised, or intended to do, what they are now unleashing.

In general, I have found that self-drivers in small groups especially in single cars, are well behaved, maybe because they do not want to take chances going off-road. But big convoys of cars pose a real threat to this fragile environment. Often they act like grown-up children and do things in their new "play ground" which they are not allowed to do in their own country. And if you politely reprimand them, you get an arrogant or often rude answer, especially from the Italians. If the car hire companies would only know where I have seen their cars, even small sedan cars!

On one of my trips in August, and for the first time ever since going there, I did not find a single elephant in the Hoanib river! No wonder when big convoys at high speed and bumper-to-bumper "in search of desert elephant" scare them out of their natural habitat. The elephant cow "Clarissa" used to munch happily some distance away, while her youngest calf walked to within 10 metres of my car to lie down and snooze. Now they are hiding in side valleys.

Why such big convoys? Can the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and TASA maybe do something about this? I should be glad that I have seen my beloved Kaokoland the way it used to be– a remote and untouched wilderness, probably the last of its kind in Africa.