Otjikoto Lake - Namibia

PSquared · 3rd September 2007, 11:30

We got back last week from almost two weeks in Namibia. We had been diving Lake Otjikoto near Tsumeb in Namibia. The original intention had been to dive at Lake Guinas as well but more of that later.

After a 1900km drive through Botswana from Johannesburg we arrived at Otjikoto. Stef, Pieter and Cowboy from Otjikoto Diving Enterprises were there to meet us and were to be our hosts for the next week. As the site is a national heritage site, permission is required to dive at Otjikoto. Stef had kindly organized this for us as well as brought a compressor. We had taken all our own O2 and mix from South Africa.

Otjikoto itself is a dolomite sinkhole of the classic “inverted mushroom” shape. The vertical sides make access a bit tricky but the Namibian divers have installed a set of lockable stairs and a diving platform on the waters edge. A capstan winch is used to lower and haul out gear. All very civilized in the middle of the desert. The site is well known for armaments dumped in the lake by the Germans during the First World War and the cannons were definitely on the dive agenda. The rest of the “sites” have names such as “shopping mall” (the area right below the entrance where people tend to drop their gear), “kudu” and “deep kudu” (obviously two Kudu skulls, one adorned with sunglasses, a snorkel and dive watch), “toilet”, “the reef” (a ridge of rubble circling the openwater section) and obviously the cannons and “deep wheel” (a cannon carriage wheel half buried in silt).

There are vertical shots to most of the sites and the sites are generally linked by lines which, considering the depths involved is a good idea. The shallowest point on the reef is about 35m and most dives end up somewhere close to 50m. Our deepest dive was 69m under the overhang. The famous cannons are at 50m.

The silt is deep and very fine. This coupled with the darkness makes for a 50m dive with 1m viz if someone’s buoyancy control isn’t too great. Even though the water is 22 degrees C, the locals (all on open circuit) tend to do short bottom times to limit deco obligations as they dive with smaller cylinders than most would consider customary. As a result, our first few dives were a bit shorter than we maybe would have liked. Nonetheless we had 8 excellent dives and could have squeezed in more if we were not in holiday mode.

We drove out to Guinas (another dolomite sinkhole) and after walking around looking at access and landowner issues we decided to give it a skip on this trip due to only having permission from one of the farmers to dive there. The farmer with the easiest access out is anti diver and whilst we were happy to drop the gear and abseil 40m to the water we didn’t really feel like SRTing out in 30 degree WINTER heat after a 90 to 100m dive. The free climbing exit was on the “other” farmer’s side and we didn’t feel like taking chances with an irate farmer with a shotgun if we decided to free climb on his side without permission. Stef has siege type winches and stuff to make life easier and we decided that we’d go his way on a future trip with more people to cover the costs and make transporting the gear up to Guinas more viable.

We also took drive out to look at the entrance to Dragon’s Breath and Harrasib – possibles for another future trip to Namibia but both will need more dry cavers’ support. Once again heat is an issue. From mates’ accounts, Draggies takes at least two days to rig and involves a lot of SRT which we were (or I am) more than a little out of shape for. Harrsib is an 80m vertical drop to the water from a Tyrolean. We had permission to go and look at the caves but not to enter – access permission was quite a mission to organize as the farm run by a trust – we were on holiday so we were sightseeing by now.

Obviously, as we were in the area, a mandatory trip to Etosha National Park was made – not being game freaks it was a very short, box ticking, trip.

A good trip, well worth another visit. A lot of thanks need to go to Stef Viljoen our host, organizer of access at Otijikoto and provider of underwater photos as well as the great guys from Windhoek Underwater Club and Skeleton Coast Scuba Club for their hospitality while we were there.

steveflight · 3rd September 2007, 12:29

Very nice.

Thanks for sharing.

3rd September 2007, 12:29	#2 (permalink)
steveflight New Member Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Ft lauderdale Posts: 31	Re: Otjikoto Lake - Namibia Very nice. Thanks for sharing. __________________ Be prepared,. when Noel Built the Arc it wasn't raining .. Unknown.
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