All Guns Blazing

Wednesday 21 July 2010

We catch up with Marcel Habets on his quest for fish in Namibia. This time he happens on Nams most popular wave, GUNS, complete with 8 gnarled locals, a dog and the inevitable brandy pickled fishermen from the North West Province.

How Guns got its name is a mystery, maybe it was named after all the guns passing north during the dark years of the Angolan War or it could be that when a set rolls through it sounds like a 21 gun salute. Here is his photo essay.

This is the bakkie we rescued, the vehicle’s chassis was lying flat on the sand, the farmers did not have a spade, just a broken cable that broke again when I tried pulling them out the 1st time, we ended up getting them out after digging the vehicle out of the sand, jacking each wheel up and placing stones under it. Len was bright enough to get desert stones while it was still light, they ended back on the road two hours after dark. If we had not helped them they would have lost their vehicle with the next high tide that evening. We were the last car to drive past. It shows once again – “brandewyn het nie brieke nie” don’t drink and think you can drive on the skeleton coast - there was an empty Bols bottle lying on the passenger side floor.

The Skeleton Coast is the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean coast of Namibia and south of Angola from the Kunene River south to the Swakop River, although the name is sometimes used to describe the entire Namib Desert coast. The Bushmen of the Namibian interior called the region "The Land God  Made in Anger", while Portuguese sailors once referred to it as "The Gates of the bad place".

The locals could not understand why a biscuit would paddle so far to the inside, Andre Habets got a few shacks, and the end section is slow so he ended up creating a few speed bumps with his cutbacks.

Len had a wave where he had a freefall drop and ended damaging his wrist, the long shadow shows how flat the world is in Nam.

We arrived at 16H00 and there were 2 locals in the water, ½ hour later there were 8, Guns seems to be a very popular surf spot, it handled the side onshore well. The Labrador is one of the locals dog’s – wonder if it is called Guns.

I did end up catching some fish. Here is a photo of an 8Kg cob I caught. The fish was nearly as big as Nadia, my daughter – she is 1.2m.