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Published: October 16th 2012
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It was another full day on the road getting from Maun to Windhoek. I was up at 7 a.m. to pack my tent away, which was one of the coldest experiences I have ever had. I thought my fingers were going to fall off from frost bite. As I said in the previous post, Botswana public transport is not too plentiful, so I made sure I was on the bus to Ghanzi at 8.30 a.m., where we arrived at around 1 o'clock. To get to the Namibia border, I needed to get to a place called Charles Hill. After some confusion, as to whether the bus was actually going or not, I managed to get on a bus, which arrived in Charles Hill at around 5.
Charles Hill is the very definition of a one horse town. Half the men I saw were wearing cowboy hats. It was still 10 km from the border, so I made my way to a big petrol station at the edge of town and waited to catch a lift there. This proved easy enough and I got stamped out of Botswana, quick enough. As I walked over the border, I thought I had a
lift arranged to Windhoek with a truck driver, but after I got stamped into Namibia, he told me it could to take 3 hours for him to get through as there was a massive queue of trucks trying to get through.
So, I pretty much began to walk 300km or so to Windhoek along the Trans-Kalahari Highway. I, of course, never intended to attempt to walk this and got picked up after about 10 minutes by a couple going to Windhoek. Like Botswana, hitching is the main way people get around, once you agree a fare. I agreed the equivalent of €15, which I thought was a bit steep, but I didn't have much choice, as at this stage, it was beginning to get dark. It was after 10 p.m. when we arrived in Windhoek and after some difficulty in finding my hostel, I managed to get the last available bed of the night.
Windhoek is a very strange city. If you woke up, not knowing where you were, Africa would not be your first guess. Looking at some of the street signs, you would think you were in Germany. One of the junctions near where I was
staying was between Mozartstrasse and Beethovenstrasse. These, however, are not the only street signs that prompt a second glance. They have named streets after quite an array of political leaders. Some of the architecture is also very European, such as the Christus Church.
The city centre is also very modern and developed, if quite small. There is a big Hilton in the middle of town. It is also a very plaesant town though, with lots of well maintained gardens and palm trees in abundance. The people are a strange mixture of white (residents and tourists), coloureds (as people of mixed race are known in southern Africa) and native Africans, which are predominantly made up of the San people who were the indigenous people of Namibia before the German colonisation.
This does lead to a strange mix, when you are walking through the city. You see San women at a market selling souvenirs to tourists in their traditional clothes, which leavves their breasts exposed, with a backdrop of multi-storey shopping centres and a KFC restaurant.
I spent some of the day obeserving all of this, but most of it was spent running around the city trying to organise
a trip to the Sossuvlei, several hours south west of Windhoek. This involved me dropping into various hostels and information centres leaving notes of what my plans were. That evening, these efforts seemed to bear fruit and I arranged a trip to the Sossuvlei a few days later. With not much more to see or do in Windhoek, I prepared to go to Swakopmund the following day.
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