The Fish River Canyon is one of those places where the map and the eye disagree. On paper it is a crack in the far south of Namibia, in the Karas region, a long way from anything. In person the ground simply stops, and a gorge on the order of 160 kilometres long and well over 500 metres deep drops away in a series of giant hairpin bends carved by a river that only runs properly after the summer rains. It is regularly named as the second-largest canyon on earth, which is a claim worth a shrug, because standing at the rim you are not comparing it with anything.
Getting there is half the point. You come in on gravel, mostly graded and fast enough, across a flat and stony plain of dry grass, dolerite boulders and the odd quiver tree, with the horizon so far off that a bakkie's dust plume is visible for ten minutes before it reaches you. Corrugations are the real enemy. Let some air out, keep your speed honest, and give oncoming trucks the whole road, because they will not give you any of it. Wind can be fierce on the plateau and sand blows across the track in thin snakes.
Time your arrival for the end of the day. The rock turns from grey to rust to something close to purple, and the baboons and rock hyrax come out of the cracks as the heat drops. Midday is harsh, flat and hot enough to make the viewpoints a quick-look affair. The Nama people lived and grazed this country long before German colonial maps put names on it, and the canyon's famous five-day hiking trail is closed through the hottest months, for good reason.
Practicalities are thin, so plan them. Fill up before you leave the tar, in towns such as Keetmanshoop or Grünau, and carry water. Camping and basic accommodation exist near the canyon, and the hot springs at Ai-Ais lie further south at the end of the gorge, a lovely place to soak sore shoulders if you have time. Without a spare tyre and a patched-up sense of patience this is a bad road to ride; with both, it is one of the best silences in Africa.