29 June, Swakopmund

27 June 2011 Grootfontein Namibia

We had a very sad farewell to Ralph and Winandi in Maun on Sunday morning and we headed to the border between Botswana and Namibia, fair tar roads and very very quite.  Saw lots of elephant droppings but no elephants on this section of the road.  Plenty of fuel so we were in the pound seats!!

We arrived at the border post and we had a very friendly greeting from the Botswanan officials and told us to fill in a small counter book for customs, passports stamped and we were on our way, Namibia just as friendly and efficient only thing they did differently was take R140 road tax for each bike, not bad at all!!

Straight out of the border post we got onto a gravel road, not bad, a little bit corrugated but nothing to worry about, this is also entrance to a national park called Mahango, about 24 000ha and we immediately saw a group of kudu and then one of impala, couldn’t tell if they were black faced or not as they were very skittish.   And then Larry got really excited, he had spotted a group of roan antelope!!  We were really lucky to see as much as we had as there was a fair amount of traffic on the road.  We exited the park and a couple of km further we were back onto tar road.

We travelled for a further 5km and then had to turn off the nice tar road onto a track with lots of deep sand and this was for 4km!!  We had been fairly cool up until then but now it was mid afternoon and we were getting hot.   I had to paddle through the deep patches of sand and on more than one occasion cars going to the camp had to wait for me to get to a section to pull over so that they could pass.

Someone with a good sense of humour has done a large number of signs getting to and in the Ngepi Camp.  The one that nearly gave me a heart attack read:  Engage 4x4 now, Low range if you have, Lock your hubs.  And then in small writing - you may as well use the 4x4, you bought or hired it, but you won’t need it!!  Another one was - we like our kids and our grass please don’t park on either!

The camp was really great, lots of little touches had made it really special unfortunately this was spoilt by a group of people who woke us at midnight singing and shouting until camp management put them to bed.  I heard him tell one chap to hold his hand like a lover, talking to the local guide, who had to lead him to bed!

The next morning we chatted to a SA couple that we had met in Kasane, then tackled the sand road again and it really does get better with practice!!  I thought that we would take at least an hour to get back to the tar road but we did it in about20 minutes!!  Once on the tar it was continuous villages for the next hour and so fairly slow riding.  We refueled at Rundu and then headed towards Grootfontein.  The countryside kept changing and by the time we got to Grootfontien there were a number of hills and koppies around.   We did some shopping at the local Spar (everything available, all South African and prices not toobad) and then headed out of town heading south, past the bad gravel road leading to the meteorite area (we will be back to have a look at this in a 4x4) and found a camp site just outside of town called Lala Panzi.  This is obviously a new development and the camp area was very bare but with very nice facilities.  Unfortunately we had another bad night when the only other camper, someone working for the construction company arrived back at the camp at midnight and had a loud discussion with his girlfriend and then at 2am I think she must have wanted some more money because then they really started to fight.  He then packed all his worldly goods, including the tent into his bakkie and disappeared.   Just after that something made a noise just outside our tent but we thought it was someone walking past.  Then at 4am Romeo came back and re-pitched the tent in the dark and by 6am he was up and away to work, must have had a very productive day!!  We discovered that the noise that we had heard in between him dismantling his tent and re-pitching it was in fact our left over supper which was supposed to be lunch for the following day in our very nice camping pot had been stolen.  Larry went to the management and asked them to help look for the pot, it did appear from the construction workers camp, apparently a dog had stolen it, luckily the dog did not have very sharp teeth to damage the bottom of the pot.

We left there, not sorry to see the back of the place and headed for Swakopmund, a ride of about 600km.  We had decided that if there was any nice looking camp site en-route we would stop for the night.  We did make one detour off the road to have a look at a camp site, but once we were told that the night time temperatures got down to -5 we decided to carry on.  We are not really equipped to camp in the very cold as most of our trip has been in hot weather.  The roads are very good, long straight stretches very few potholes and very little traffic.  About 100km from Swakopmund we could feel a very distinct change in the weather as a cold wind started to blow from the west and by the time we arrived we were both cold.  The desert as you get closer to the coast is not very pretty and reminded us of the desert in Sudan, ugly and lots of black rocks.   The golden sand dunes that we had been expecting were visible in the distance, hopefully we will see more of the sand desert the further south we get.  We arrived in Swakopmund at about 4pm local time with very sore backsides and went to the local tourism office and found that because of SA school holidays and a big re-union in Walvis Bay everything was very booked up here, the lady did tell us that the Municipal chalets were cheap and clean so we decided to have a look.  The setting is not pretty but the accommodation is adequate and we decided to spend two nights here to have a good rest and have a look at the area. 

Internet VERY slow, probably no pics now!!!