Long drive days and food shops

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After bush camping with the San people we had a nice lie in, until 11:00am!!!! Longest lie in we have had all trip really, although I was still wide awake from 5:00am it was nice not to have to rush around. Our first challenge was to make it out of the bush camping site without getting stuck again. The way we did this was to let down the tyres on the truck, drive down the sand road and then let them back up again before carrying on down the main road. This meant that we had about 45 minutes of waiting around in the midday sun when we were letting the tyres back up again but I didn't mind that. I found a nice bit of shade under a tree on the roadside and carried on reading my new book.

Long drive days generally involve you trying to split up your day in some way to make the time pass a little quicker. I usually do this by trying to listen to my Ipod for a few hours, read for a few hours, talk to other people on the truck for a few hours and if you can change seats at some point then that always helps. Our day is also broken up with a lunch stop at around 12:00/1:00pm for an hour. This is where we literally pull up on the side of the road, get the food stuff out, all of our chairs etc and make and eat lunch within an hour before heading on. Every other day on average we also stop in a town to do a food shop for the cook groups that are coming up and this is where we can get ourselves some snacks and things too. A long drive day will usually be leaving at about 6:30am and arriving at the next place anything from 5:00pm onwards, so basically about 12 hours!!

After a few hours on the road we stopped in a town for a food shop. I bought an ice cream and made my way back to the truck as I couldn't be bothered looking around the shops anymore, it was too hot! A guy called Helmutt was next to the truck trying to sell keyrings to us which he had made out of nuts. They were really pretty and he had carved animals into the nut and also my name. Then he tried to sell it to me. I didn't really want it but decided that if he would give it to me for $1 I would have it. It also helped that I only had the equivalent of this in local money in my pocket. Lots of haggling later and my tried and tested technique worked and he sold it to me for 10 namibian dollars. Helmutt turned out to be a bit of a character as we chatted whilst hanging out by the truck for the next 30 minutes. He went along with tradition and asked me the same question every African man who has spoken to me has always asked me in the first 5 minutes of meeting me 'Where is your husband?'. Depending on the situation, on some occassions I have said he is on his way to meet me, other occassions someone on the truck has fulfilled that role, and sometimes I have been honest and said that I have no husband. This last response usually gets the most interesting reactions including marriage proposals but more often than not, simply curiosity that a women of my age is without a husband and travelling alone through foreign countries. They also like to point out that I should have had babies by now! Ha ha! So Helmutt and I discussed this for a while, he also told me he would make me a good husband, that he already had a wife but he was allowed more than one. I thanked him for the offer but said I was fine as I was. Some more laughs and jokes and we were back on the road.

After being on the road again for another few hours we arrived at our bushcamp spot (this time literally on the side of the road). We really early and had to wait until it was pitch black to be able to pitch our tents. Even then, as we were so exposed where we were we had to pitch them all really close together and behind the truck. Everytime we saw a car coming along the long straight road on the horizon in the distance we had to turn all of our lights off so that we couldn't be so easily spotted. Then we would sit there crossing our fingers that it wasn't the Police, or an Etosha National Park Ranger patrolling the outskirts of the park.

There was a beautiful sunset this evening. Some of the guys played cricket on the road and then later we turned off all the lights and lay across four stools each to look up at the stars. I have never in my life seen a sky like it! A billion stars appeared from nowhere and it all looked so different to normal as we are in the Southern Hemisphere. It was simply breataking and I honestly can't describe it. I only wish I was able to capture it on my camera. I tried but it didn't quite come out as I wanted it to.

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