We made a bit of a detour on the way back to Cape Town, to Cape Agulhas, southern-most point of Africa, and the point where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. It had rained on and off during the day, but we were lucky that it stayed dry while we hopped out of the car, read the plaque and took photos. After the mayhem of cars, buses and people at The Cape of Good Hope earlier in the year, we were very surprised that there were only a few people at Agulhas, and no tour buses.

And then the drive on the N2 back to Cape Town. It must have rained a lot recently – a couple of rivers and creeks had broken their banks, dams were looking full, water on flat low-lying areas. The rural part of the drive was just endless rolling green and yellow (canola) hills, and the livestock looked good.  Lots of heavily pregnant cows, and tiny white lambs. Even though it’s now Spring, there’s not much evidence around – we passed orchards where the trees still looked dormant, no blossoms or any hint of green yet.

We’ve done the big cull of stuff we aren’t taking home – 3 quilts, a set of fleece sheets, folding chairs, a spade, tent pegs, SA extension cord, a black denim skirt that I bought when I realised I didn’t have enough summer clothes (what on earth was I thinking – I hardly ever wear skirts!), the food we didn’t get around to eating and various other bits and pieces. Our Airbnb host has offered to take it all to an op shop for us.

Greg took the 4WD to be cleaned this morning and we have returned it and picked up another car that we’ll take back to the airport tomorrow. It was easier and cheaper to do that than get a taxi back to where we’re staying today, and then another taxi to the airport tomorrow morning.

So that’s it … another grand adventure almost over. Thanks for travelling with us. Sorry for the lack of musical accompaniment to this trip – internet access was mostly just too slow to be able to do more than write posts and add photos.

Our friend Wayne Manna is a keen musicologist and he made the following suggestion for our trip’s theme song. Thanks Wayne!

“The Great Heart” by Johnny Clegg. He is a British-born muso (and I think an anthropologist) living in South African who incorporates a lot of African themes into his music and has recorded heavily with South African musicians.”

Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlpKDYJRzMk

We booked a room at a ‘Guest House’ on booking.com, but it all got a bit confusing. We turned up at the Trinity Guest House, conveniently located close to the SA/LS border, only to discover that there are 2 guest houses of the same name, and the one we had booked was 12 kms away. Then when we got there, the receptionist claimed to have no knowledge of our booking. Luckily there was a vacancy, driving in the dark here is … challenging.

Crossing back in to South Africa the next morning was the usual chaos. We’ve done quite a few African border crossings now, and the only thing they all have in common is that they are all different. Some need slips of paper stamped by several different departments, a couple demand health checks, some want all the paperwork for the car, and some just scan our passports and send us on our way.

We spent a night at the Onze Rust campground at Colesberg. We stayed there on our way to Cape Town last time.

We’ve just spent a couple of days camping in the Mountain Zebra National Park, about 1000kms north east of Cape Town. Went for a drive yesterday and saw lots of mountain zebras (they only have black stripes, no grey ones like plains zebras) and heaps of different species of antelopes. This morning it’s very misty and we wouldn’t see much, so we picked the right days to stay. Heading back to Cape Town today and have booked an Airbnb place for our last couple of nights.

We were the only ones in the campground, but there were other campers near the edge of the lake. Finding a cleanish site without too much horse poo on it was a bit tricky, but we did find one, and learnt later that the ‘horse poo’ was actually zebra poo! How exotic! Sadly we didn’t see any zebras.

Something that has really puzzled me about South African campgrounds is that they always have at least as many bathtub cubicles as shower cubicles. This one had 8 baths, 3 showers and a disabled shower cubicle with a broken shower head … so that would actually be a disabled disabled shower cubicle ….HA! Yes, I think I’m hilarious, you may beg to differ.

Last time we were in South Africa, we listed some of the things we saw people selling by the side of the road. We saw the funniest one so far in Harrismith … a guy selling whips! Obviously a rural area, unless he was including a free copy of ’50 Shades of Grey’ with every whip he sold.

Last night we stayed in an Airbnb cottage in Himeville, and we’re very glad we did that rather than camp. Huge electrical storm and heaps of rain in the early evening, not typical weather for this time of the year according to our host. This morning it’s fine and clear, so hopefully the drive through Sani Pass will be okay. I’ll leave it to Greg to add some photos.

See you in a few days, we won’t have internet access while we’re in Lesotho.

The condensed version is that we’re actually spending very little time in The Beautiful Country and we’re heading to Lesotho. We’re back at the Woodlands Stop Over and Lodge just north of Francistown … we spent a night here on our last trip. In Jo’burg for a couple of nights, then to Lesotho for about a week before heading back to Cape Town and home.

Being in the far east of Namibia, the time zone has switched to ‘Caprivi time’ – which is the Botswana/South Africa time zone. We’re now 7.5 hours behind ADL time. We’re spending a couple of nights at the Nunda River Lodge, which was recommended by our fellow campers at Kunene. We’re camped right on the eastern bank of the Okavango River, and across on the other bank is a bloat of hippos (I don’t know if ‘bloat’ is the official collective term for hippos, but in this case, it seems about right). They spend most of their time lying down very close to each other, but whenever a tour boat stops nearby, some of them get up to give the tourists a bit of a show. We think we heard them during the night over on this side of the river, and there’s grass on the bank that looks like it’s been mown by hippos. They are vegetarians and even though there seem to be a lot of stories about how dangerous they are to humans, they may be exaggerated. We won’t bother them, so hopefully they will leave us alone.

We’ve spent the last couple of days driving along the Trans-Caprivi highway. We spent a night near Rundu at the Kaisosi River Lodge campground which was okay, the campsites were very close together and thankfully they weren’t all occupied or it would have been VERY squeezy. Rundu has a population of around 80,000 and is the 2nd largest town in Namibia, after Windhoek. It was originally built as a bus stop in the 1940s to transport local labour to German-owned farms. Apart from a couple of sealed roads, most of the streets are sand (yes, more dust!). A new shopping centre is being built on one of the sealed streets.

As we drove to Rundu on Friday afternoon, we passed lots of small villages with dwellings built of sticks and grass roofs. They seem to be arranged in extended family units, with multiple huts inside a fenced-off area about the size of an Australian house block. Some huts are open – just some vertical sticks and a roof, others are closed. Different huts for different uses – sleeping, eating, storage. We saw loads of people walking along the highway. It took us a little while, but we realised that they were getting water from the nearest water tanks, which were often several kms away. I guess this is a daily occurrence for the villagers – lugging water. The most amazing one we saw was a woman just about to cross the highway with a full 20 litre drum of water on her head, breastfeeding a baby! Yesterday morning, Saturday, was washing day and we saw women and children carrying washing tubs full of clothes to their nearest water tank to wash, then take home and dry. We take such a simple thing as having potable running water in our homes for granted, don’t we?

The trip though Namibia so far

But wait! We have to tell you about what we did today. We walked to Angola. Really. No stamps in our passports or anything official like that but we have some selfies so that’s proof, right? There is a waterfall downstream from a dam on the Kunene River, and it’s possible to visit it by crossing the Namibian border into a sort of no-man’s land before reaching the Angola border control. There’s a derelict power station near the falls, and lots and lots of steps down to see the falls, where we stood on the Angola side of the border. Then climbed all those steps back up. We didn’t realise it while we were there, but the power station buildings were damaged by mortar shells during the Namibian War for Independence.

The eye-popping stuff started this morning when we went to get fuel and some food. The retail area of Opuwo is a seething hub of people. Local Himba women with their plaited hair covered in ochre mixed with butter, wearing a short skirt made of hide, some jewellery and not much else. One tried to sell me some jewellery, and I stood behind another young Himba woman in the supermarket. They walk barefoot and their feet must be tough – there are loads of thorny bushes, prickles and other sharp objects all around.

At the other end of the scale were the Herero women dressed like Mammy from Gone with the Wind – voluminous colonial-style dresses with long skirts, crinolines, petticoats, shawls and horn-shaped headgear made from the same fabric as the dresses. Some of the women wore a variation of the dress, but made of patchwork. And then there were the men – Himba men wearing a fabric loincloth at the front, with a hide cloth covering their bottoms. There were some dapper older dudes wearing trousers, long-sleeved shirts, buttoned-up cardigans and carrying walking canes, and even a young guy with a bow tie.

It was an amazing parade of humanity and while we were buying fuel I commented to Greg that I felt like I’d landed on Tatooine, or  some other distant planet far, far away. Adding to the entertainment were cows wandering across the street, locals selling stuff by the side of the road, people trying to hitch a ride or just sitting waiting.

We’ve had a few days of wind and dust, but now we’re camped on grass by the Kunene River in the far north of Namibia. Angola is on the other side of the river. When I was being shown to the campsite, I asked if there were crocodiles in the river …. ‘only on the Angola side’. Er. right. It’s not a very wide river, so those crocs might just sneak over this side. We’ve done 2 tyres in the last couple of days. One also has bent rims, but Greg and a fellow camper were able to plug the other one, so we do still  have a spare (we started with 2 spares).

We’ve been as far north, and as far west as we’ll travel on this trip. Now we’ll head east to the Caprivi Strip – a weird, narrow strip of Namibian land in the north east, between Botswana to the south and Angola & Zambia to the north.

A drive through Opuwo

Anyway, that took care of the rest of our day in the big city. I started cleaning up the glass while Greg went and joined the enormous queue in the nearby cop shop, only to finally reach the head of the line and be told that they only stamped forms or  something. If we wanted to report it, we’d have to go to the main station in town. We also had another problem with the car – it made a clunking noise when it was in 4-wheel drive, and we had to take it to the rental office to either be looked at or swapped for one that (hopefully) didn’t make clunking noises. The rental office and our hotel were very helpful and told Greg where to take the car to have the window replaced, which took a couple of hours and cost $100. We didn’t bother about reporting it to the police as we aren’t claiming anything on insurance, and the rental office were pretty half-hearted about whether they needed it or not. When we returned the car, you couldn’t tell there had been a problem, apart from a bit of glass under the passenger seat that we couldn’t reach.

We swapped all our stuff from one single cab Hilux to an almost-identical car, apart from the ‘new’ one having 45,000 fewer kms on its odometer, and the back door of the canopy being much easier to open. Even the number plate is very similar. There was a roof tent on it, which was removed because we didn’t want it – those things look like canvas torture chambers to me – several metres off the ground, only accessible by a flimsy ladder, very unstable in high winds, and apparently prone to collapsing if not put up properly. Because of its weight and increased roof height, it increases wind resistance and lowers fuel economy. Here endeth my rant against roof tents.

So, we’re back on the west coast – at Swakopmund. It’s about 350kms west of Windhoek, sort of like the Gold Coast of Namibia, but on a much lower scale. Some nice houses, lots of holiday accommodation, fancy shops, beaches, cafes. You know the kind of thing. We’re spent the last 2 days at the Alte Bruck Holiday Resort and Conference Centre, camping in our tent in an en-suite campsite. Bathroom, huge paved area with sink, braai (bbq), drying rack, power … all the things. It’s lovely. Yesterday we drove 30kms south to Walvis Bay, another seaside resort that offers lots of holiday activities – cruises, sand activities including sand-boarding, go carts, 4WD tours. Undeterred by our recent sand dune experience, Greg was keen to do some more sand dune driving to the northern end of the Namib-Naufluft National Park (Sossusvlei is also part of the same part, but further south), so we headed for the dunes, with more success this time, despite my reservations. Just a bit south of Walvis Bay is a large flamingo colony, and a sand mine.

We’re heading north towards the Skeleton Coast today, and will probably be ‘off the grid’ for a few days. Have a good weekend, all.

The entrance to the Namib-Naukluft Park at Sesriem is 60kms from Sossusvlei. Inside the park is a campground and some up-market accommodation. In our usual ad-hoc style, we hadn’t pre-booked a spot in the campground and it was full by lunchtime, so we ended up at the overflow campground with just a couple of other vehicles. Probably much quieter than the main campground, but a long walk to the showers and toilets. We set up our tent then drove the 60+ kms to get to the dunes. Staying inside the park means an extra hour’s access to the dunes in the morning, and an extra hour in the afternoon. The park’s main gates open at 6.45am and close at 5.15pm, so anyone not staying in the park doesn’t get in before sunrise, and has to be out well before sunset. The inside gate opens at 5.45am and close at 6.15pm, which in theory gives people time to get down to the dunes and watch the sun rise, or watch the sun set and then drive back before the inside gate is closed.

Not being morning people, the idea of getting up in the dark and traipsing down to the dunes with a convoy of other vehicles held absolutely no appeal, but the idea of watching the sun set over the tall red dunes in the desert sounded pretty nice, so we opted to do that. We stopped at Dune 45, at the 45km mark, and walked about halfway up, watching the wind blow sand over the footprints of previous visitors. It feels like the dunes are in constant motion. A lot of the area is inaccessible in order to preserve the area, but a few dunes can be visited. There is a sealed 60km road, then 4kms of sand, which is only accessible to 4WD vehicles. But that was no  problem to us, ‘cos we have a Toyota Hilux 4WD.

At least, it was no problem until we got it bogged in sand on the way back. Drat! And then we had one of those adventures-without-really-meaning-to. We had left ourselves exactly enough time to drive back on the sandy bit, watch the sun set over the dunes, then drive the 60kms back while sticking to the 60km speed limit, so that we could be back at the inside gate before 6.15pm. Getting stuck in sand was not part of the plan.

So … let the tyres down a bit, no go. Let them down a bit more, dig out all the sand from the middle of the car, start the car in 2nd gear … success! Then we had to re-inflate the tyres once we were back on the sealed road … but wait! One of the tyres is leaking! More pumping, more lost time, finally back on the road, needing to cover the 60kms in 45 minutes. In all the excitement, we completely missed sunset, although the colours in the dusky sky before it got completely dark were beautiful. So we zapped those 60kms to the gate, going just a bit over the speed limit. Okay, probably quite a lot over the speed limit. Passed a herd of some kind of antelopey-thingy close to the road, and then every bush, sign and stone marker looked like more wildlife that we needed to not hit. Passed a stationary car about 15kms from the gate … what were they doing, and why were they still in the park? No time to stop, but that car got going and followed us back. We made it with about 90 seconds to spare, and the gate-closing guy was there ready to do his thing. Phew, that got the adrenalin pumping! It was only after we were back at our tent that I realised our headlights would have been visible for miles, and he probably would have waited for us, but there wasn’t time to think about that while we were trying to cover the distance. My head was too crowded with watching out for things to avoid hitting, and calculating how much distance we had to cover in the time we had left.

If we had been smarter, we would have gone down to the dunes with our tent in the car and camped down there for the night. A photographer has just won a National Geographic  award for a photo she took of one of the dunes at night. Magnificent photo, but the only way she was able to take it was by staying down there well after sunset – here it is, with other prize-winning photos.

There is a canyon at Sesriem, not on the scale of Fish River, but interesting because it gave the village its name. ‘Sesriem’ means six lengths in German – when the canyon was first discovered, it took 6 lengths of rope to get water from the canyon to the surface. Now the canyon is dry, although when it rains, it really, really rains.

But let’s backtrack a bit and recall the last couple of days. After we left Luderitz on Saturday afternoon, we headed east back to Aus, then north towards Sesriem & Sossusvlei. If you’ve ever seen any Namibian desert photos, they were probably taken in the sand dunes of Sossusvlei. More about that later. We had to stay somewhere along the way, as we aren’t allowed to drive the car after dark, and it’s just not safe to drive after dark here anyway. We took a scenic route a bit west of the main road and noticed a few signs for accommodation and camping along the way. With about an hour or so of daylight left, we turned off towards a farm which offered camping and other accommodation.

We drove 12km on a track towards the Tiras Mountains, with the 16,400 hectare Namtib Desert Lodge complex nestled at the foot of the mountains. Incredible location. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as it all turned out), the 5-place campsite was full, but we were able to stay in one of the en-suite ‘chalets’ and share dinner and breakfast with the hosts and other guests. Sounded like a bargain at Nam$ 900 (around AUD$ 95) and it was getting a bit too late to find somewhere else to stay anyway. Plus, we’d been camping in the tent for a week, and there were more strong winds forecast for that night, probably a good night NOT to camp, given the choice.  So we settled in, wandered up to the Sundowner bar area to watch the sunset and ambled in to the dining room for dinner with the 17 other guests and our hosts. Delicious 3-course meal, great company and we learnt a lot about South African politics, economics, food, travel and other stuff from the Cape Town couple we sat next to. They own an apartment in CT that they offer on Airbnb, and it was really interesting to hear about it from the hosts’ side – they love Airbnb as much as we do! We also chatted with Thorsten, our host, about weather patterns, rainfall, the current drought and other stuff about Namibia. Breakfast was also delicious and we were ready to head north to Sesriem with most of our fellow guests. The only minor shock came when we paid the bill. That ‘bargain’ price for dinner, bed and breakfast was per person! If it seems too good to be true and all that stuff. But we both really enjoyed it all and we both thought it was worth it. In Australia, the equivalent would be going somewhere like El Questro in WA, and it would probably cost 5 times that, or more!

I think I’ll finish this post and write another one about Sesriem and Sossusvlei, otherwise it will get too long and I’m sure Greg has plenty of great photos for 2 posts.