Before we left I elected to put in 15 litres of fuel from my plastic can on the roofrack. I only carried this can for this leg of the trip with the intention of disposing of it once used. I still had my two further metal jerry cans, each with 20 litre capacity. I guessed that this would be sufficient to get me to the next fuelling point at Sesfontein. As we passed the police station I gave the plastic can to Officer Kwambe, who was delighted, and he then immediately invited us to contribute towards his Christmas Police Ball!! We [View Full Entry]

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We had all rather been looking forward to today’s drive - with mixed feelings! Van Zyl’s Pass is about 12 kms long and descends some 1000 ft from the plateau area we have been on, down to the lower planes of western Namibia. What we drove through yesterday was the nursery school for today’s challenge of the Pass. No vehicles are allowed to travel this route west to east, only westwards. The steepness in parts is horrendous, the track - if one can call it that - is narrow and the boulders and rocks the cars had to traverse are huge.. [View Full Entry]

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We retraced our steps down this lovely road, made even better because the countryside was stunning in the early morning light. We all felt that this must be one of the country’s real beauty spots. Back at Okongwati we left the good road and took an indifferent track westwards. We have all been anticipating this road with mixed feelings. Many have warned that it is a really, really bad and challenging drive, should not be undertaken by a single car, never without 4x4, and to be sure you have enough spares with you. Well, we have all driven down bad roads [View Full Entry]

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The maps we have of this part of the world are rather vague and imprecise. We filled up with diesel, as this is the last outlet for fuel we can expect for several days. But we could not find the road we wanted . Eventually the lady who ran the BP Station, after we had driven several miles abortively, put us on the right road. - it was the one that followed the river demarking the national boundary. The evidence of the recent fighting in this area was there. There were no wild animals whatsoever - apparently everything that had moved [View Full Entry]

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It was a delightful camp and we were sorry to leave it. But nobody found us there, despite our hearing someone chopping wood nearby and, much to our surprise, nightclub music when it got dark. When we drove away we found we had camped within half a mile of a little village which, yes, had a night club! It took us about an hour to reach Oshakati as we had to go via Ondangwa, a rather circuitous route. Ondangwa had a shiny railway station and many, many car spares outlets and auto repair shops. Judging by the number of wrecked cars [View Full Entry]

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Our second cooked breakfast in a row! But we were soon off into town, Camilla and Chris to do the shopping while Ian and I tracked down an internet cafe to get off some photos. We found one where a delightful young lady manager helped us through the niceties of getting our photos off and printing out long newsy emails for us from Karen and Neil. Unfortunately the speed of internet here is not much better than Botswana. I expect we will have to wait till SA before we will find any broadband. We also found an excellently stocked Bottle Shop [View Full Entry]

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Dawn brought steady rain - the last thing we wanted! We packed the cars as best we could, leaving the tents in place in the hopes that it would stop before long. Meanwhile we went back to the lodge and had a cooked breakfast there and watched the steady downpour into the papyrus and river. It was nice to have a cooked, English breakfast, but there was no marmalade! It didn’t stop raining and looked as though it was set for the day so we dismantled the tents in the wet and set off for the Namibian border, filling up with [View Full Entry]

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A day of rest. We all agreed unanimously that we needed a day off from driving so we didn’t rush. I spent a good deal of time bringing the Blog up to date and the very kind owners of the place had a satellite internet connection and they very kindly agreed to send off an email with the Blog. It was too slow for pictures, so they will have to wait - sorry about that. There was also a lot of laundry to be done. Fortunately the sun shone and we were able to get lines out of the shade so [View Full Entry]

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We left “disappointment” camp and set off through the sand tracks for the tarmac once again. Ian was leading, guided by his gps, and we followed. At some point, I inadvertently took a different track and suddenly we realised that we were no longer behind Ian. We had neither gps nor compass! (Well, I might have wound up my very old gps to give some useful information as a last resort). But we did have our walkie talkie communication with Ian who, by this time, was getting rather broken because of the increasing divergence of our tracks! The bush looked all [View Full Entry]

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Having left the Kalahari we hit the tarmac road which runs northwards up the western side of Botswana, destined for the Okavango Delta. Because of our changed plans we had not come into Botswana via Zambia and consequently we have had to retrace ground to visit all the places we wanted. So instead of the actual Delta itself we now intended to visit the main inlet river area. We had been told of a campsite, on a lagoon close to the main river, which we could approach from the tarmac road, down a sandy track for about 10 kms. We eventually [View Full Entry]

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