A Day in Ai Ais

Ai Ais was the location of our final rest day on the tour, a small government-run resort that serves as an entry and exit point for walks in Fish River Canyon. Depending on the location rest days can be a busy, touristy, shopping affair or a day where you catch up on sleeping, reading, do your washing properly, sort out your red box meticulously, eat copious amounts of food and if there is a bar with a tv, then you can indulge in a few quiet ones (sometimes loud) and find out the latest rugby scores (admittedly, tvs have become more prevalent in the south rather than the first part of the trip). Ai Ais was busy enough with a few overland trucks, plenty of tourists, walkers filtering out of the canyon and the crew from TDA. Our first night there, people stayed around the trucks for the majority of the evening while some hit the small outdoor bar and a few went and made the most of the lukewarm swimming pool. Temperatues had climbed as we descended the corrugations into Ai Ais so it was a great night for staying out of doors and fortunately there were not too many mosquitoes. For once, most people stayed up past 8pm, a rare sight for the last month or so. The following morning, a few folks donned their walking gear and took a 1hour walk up to a view point above the resort scrambling over rocky outcrops and up scree slopes to enjoy a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. Others meandered along the canyon floor, choosing to look down rather than look up