The Desert Cycling Adventure – 5 Days

Summary

Enjoy the fascinating Adventure in Namibia. This tour will keep your eyes busy on exploring the beautiful Namibia Landscapes, and your feet giving your bicycle a power.

Itinerary

Day 1: Arrival at Windhoek
On arrival at the Windhoek Airport proceed through passport and customs control, once in the arrivals hall you will be met by a representative of Haika Expedition. You will be transferred to your overnight accommodation in Windhoek.

Depending on your time of arrival we will do our first afternoon ride on the lower farm. We make sure the bikes are fitted and all your equipment is in good condition. The riding on the farm is lots of single tracks, jeep tracks, climbs and technical sections as well. Seeing that it is the day of arrival we will not spend more than 2 hours. Afterwards sundowners and your first tafel lager.

River Crossing is located on a pristine 6500 hectare game reserve. Rediscover the nuances of a bygone era of farm life and offer the discerning traveler all the modern amenities.

The main lodge building comprises a dining room, a centrally situated bar, a lounge with fireplace, a wellness room, and a curio corner. Nestled outside between the lounge and dining area is the pool (great for swimming lengths – it really is quite long!) The elevated wooden deck offers a fairytale view of Windhoek.

The Lodge and the rooms have been designed to emulate old German farm houses – think ‘stoep’ with ‘afdakkie’ and pots of geraniums.

Day 2: Namib Desert
We make an early start and do a road transfer of about 2 hours until we get to the top of the Gamsberg Pass, here we get on our bikes and enjoy the longest continuous downhill on a gravel road in Namibia. Once we hit the bottom (about 10km) we enter into the dry river bed and follow it as it crosses the gravel road many times, we stop for an early lunch before we enter private farmland about 30kms north of Roatick Ritz. Our back up leaves us as we simply find our way through river beds, open plains and small dunes, canons and possible water until we end up at Rostock Ritz. This is true off road cycling, our bikes allowing us to go wherever we need to go, today’s total time in the saddle about 6 hours.

Rostock Ritz is built on the slope of a hill overlooking the Rostock Mountain range to the north and the colorful dune landscape of the Namib Desert, to the southwest. Thanks to Rostock’s distance from Sossusvlei the atmosphere here is quieter and more relaxed than that experienced
at many lodges closer to Sossusvlei There is much to appreciate here in the form of landscape and astonishing sunrises and sunsets.
Insect, bird and many species of wildlife are found here.

Day 3: Swakopmund
We depart after breakfast in the vehicle for about 90 minutes of road transfer, we get onto our bikes on the edge of the Namib Naukluft Park. We cycle about 50km on flat gravel roads with just endless vistas and no traffic whatsoever, we hit the mighty Kuiseb River with its huge Anna
trees and camelthorn trees. We cycle down river towards Gobabeb, visiting the local Topnaars, these are a people that make a living alongside this dry river bed. We serve lunch under a large tree of our choice and continue due west as far as we like to go. Once we have decided that we have enough (at about rooibank) we load up and road transfer the last 80km to Swakopmund.

Swakopmund Guest House is situated in the town centre, a mere five-minute walk from the beach and main shopping area. The Swakopmund Guesthouse is more than just a bed-andbreakfast facility and is run with an eco-friendly approach, making use of solar energy. It is not
your conventional type of guesthouse, that’s for sure.

Day 4: Swakopmund
Today we take you into the dunes, we start on the beach and cycle towards Walvis Bay for about 10 km before hitting the dune belt. We cross it diagonally all the way to dune 07, this will take about 4 hours and soften up our legs if they are not soft already from the previous day. At dune 7 we are picked up by the vehicle and drive back to Swakopmund, afternoon at leisure to relax, shop or maybe do some quad biking.

Day 5: Departure
This is our last day, depending on your time of departure from either Walvis Bay or Windhoek we will have to time our departure. If your flights are in the afternoon then we will have time for a final ride on some single track along the Swakop River and into the Moon landscape – endless fun guaranteed!!