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Catching Cats

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Our last stop before the journey home began with another puncture. There was no drama, no having to change wheels in 40 degree heat and no worrying about lack of spare tyres. On arriving at our car the morning of our departure one of the rear tyres was quite deflated. So after a quick change we ended up with The Tank having two decent tyres on it for the final journey, and as an added bonus, it was tarmac all the way! Or so we thought..... We spent the first 30 minutes on suicide watch for warthogs that wanted to run out into the road from the long grass, as we had learned they are want to do, but luckily the only warthogs we saw seemed happy enough with their lives not to want to end them early. When further away from the game reserve we started to relax again. Okonjima Plains Camp Main Lodge Our next stop was a place called Okonjima Plains Camp , which was on the way back to Windhoek, and where we were to spend our last night in Namibia. This camp is home to the Africat F
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There Are No Animals In Namibia

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We headed north to Etosha National Park, which is a very large park centred around a salt pan which is dry for most of the year, but attracts pelicans and flamingos for the brief time that it has water in it. When dry, as it was on our visit, not much wildlife lives in the pan itself, but plenty live in the greener areas around it. Emma and I have a points-based 'spotting' game to relieve the boredom of long drives. In the UK it amounts to 'There's a cow. How many points?', or 'There's the sea. I get 10 points' etc. I am the one that generally allocates points, and funnily enough, I usually win, though I'm sure there is no correlation between these two facts. Points often get allocated after the spot too, so if Emma sees a cow, that often ends up being 1 point. If I see a sheep, strangely that can be 5 points. At least until the next time we play the game. In Namibia, this game became a lot more interesting. Rather than cows and sheep, we were
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Cave Art or Doodles?

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We managed to get another spare wheel organised for The Tank, as we now knew what sort of surface we would be driving on for the rest of the trip and I wasn't comfortable with just one spare and very little rubber on the other 4 wheels. We collected it on the way out of Swakopmund, and it proved timely, as on the trip to our next destination, another 350km drive on gravel roads, we got a puncture. It wasn't a dramatic, explosive blow-out, but a definite pop after going over a couple of larger bumps, and the noisy hissing sound coming from one of the tyres did rather give away the problem. Changing the wheel for one of our (well-treaded) spares was simple enough, though doing it in the middle of a desert plain in the mid-afternoon heat was a little, well, hot. I was glad we had another spare as we still had 150km to go. Namibia seems like a very clean country, though part of that could be explained by the lack of people and traffic, and there was very little mess at the side
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Navy Seals

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A slightly more sensible wake up time this morning, and a leisurely breakfast. Since it gets dark by 6pm each night, we are in bed early anyway, so early starts are not really a problem. There's a lovely full moon at the moment, which means not many stars are visible, but looking over the plains and distant mountains by moonlight is peaceful and serene. A very good, loaded breakfast (well, loaded for me, sensible portions for Emma) and we headed down the very slow and bumpy 7.5km driveway to the faster but still bumpy gravel road, and the 350km drive to the coastal town of Swakopmund - another place we had trouble pronouncing until after we had left. This journey had many varied landscapes - plains, mountains, canyons, some green areas but plenty of arid ones. The roads were actually pretty good, though did need concentration as there was no guessing when a rut or a large stone would appear in the gravel, and the shadows of the gravel road made it hard to spot obstacle
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We Need To Wake Up At What Time??!!

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A 4:15am wake up time, in order to be at the gates of the Sossusvlei (a dead salt pan surrounded by large sand dunes) park for opening at 6:15 was actually easier than I thought it would be. We piled into the 4x4 vehicle, driven by our guide, luckily, as I wouldn't have trusted any of us tourists to drive at that time. The queue of vehicles to get into the park wasn't too long, and the entry was quick, though since it opened just before sunrise it did mean we hadn't got far into the park before the sun came up, meaning the view of the sunrise wasn't as iconic as hoped for (we hadn't got as far as the main sand dunes, so the sunrise was just over the distant mountains, rather than the red dunes). Our first stop was, for me at least, a very interesting one. Our guide, Simon, took us over to the base of a dune and talked through some of the animals that lived in the park, using their tracks as a starting point, and explaining how they manage to live in the hot
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On The Road To Somewhere

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We set off relatively early, through the late rush hour traffic of the capital, which turned out to be less busy than Oxted on a Saturday. Stopping at the nearby supermarket to pick up some food for lunch, Emma did a good job of parking The Tank in the car park, managing to only stick out a few feet more than other nearby cars. Parking charges to be jealous of - only N$5 (about 30p) for 2 hours parking in a secure car park. We said a temporary goodbye to Windhoek. We also said goodbye to tarmac.We knew that we would encounter gravel roads on our travels. We didn't realise that this meant the majority of the 3,000 or so km we would travel on our holiday. The long, straight, empty, tarmac roads gave way quickly to long, straight, empty, gravel roads and we had to get used to driving on gravel. Generally pretty easy, though took more concentration as lumps and bumps often appeared without warning. We also had to get used to 'corrugated' or 'washboard' roads  at
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