Back on the Road Again

Back on the Road Again

Sorry for the delay in posting – our last post was in July 2021. At that time we had rushed back to Zambia so that we could fly home for David to say good bye to his Dad. We returned to Lusaka in late November, just as the latest mutation of Covid, Omicron, surfaced and we decided to make a dash for Namibia, via Botswana, just in case the borders closed again.

We owe a big ‘thank you’ to Dylan once again for looking after Big Bertha whilst we were away. He has been a very good friend to us.

Nelly and Julie, fellow overlanders, kindly picked us up from Lusaka airport, which was very handy given we had bought 166kg of baggage back with us (some of it for them I should add). We travelled with Nelly and Julie to Namibia where we celebrated Christmas together at Tsumeb. From there we nipped into the nearby Etosha National Park for a few days.

We parted company before New Year and we travelled on to Spitzkoppe, a unique rock formation in the Namib desert, to celebrate the New Year. At this time Francine tested positive for Covid and, whilst self-isolating, we were careful to stay within driving distance to civilisation and medical facilities until she was 100% better.

Henties Bay is a coastal sports fishing town and over the Christmas holidays there is a second great migration – the South African tourist. There are bakkies (pick ups) and fishing rods everywhere; it’s an eat, drink and fish town. There are opportunities to do all three in good measure!

Swakopmund is the next town down the coast and has a German influence. It’s another holiday town, with good shopping and restaurants. We hadn’t really explored the town on our first visit, but as we stayed here a few days, we were able to see much more. A highlight was a tour into the nearby dunes. Although seemingly barren, our guide revealed to us a number of different plants and creatures which have adapted in different ways to cope with their harsh environment. In Swakop (as it’s affectionately known) we were also happy to see overlanding friends, Thierry and Christine, again. It’s very easy to stay for longer than you intend in Swakop, but we eventually headed further south to the more industrial town of Walvis Bay – Namibia’s only port and Bertha’s introduction to Sub Saharan Africa back in August 2019! Here we repeated our kayak tour of Pelican Point, visiting the seals that live there. Such good fun!

Retracing our (salty!) road north, David tried his hand at fishing at Henties Bay. The cold Benguela current and the deep waters provide excellent opportunities to hook big fish – cob, shark, etc from the shore. Dave caught nothing more than a suntan and a six inch rock fish! Slightly disappointed, we continued north to Cape Cross, where we would be certain to catch sight of a few (make that a few thousand!) Cape fur seals! After checking out seals in the surf, seals on the beach, seals on the rocks, seals on the walkway, seals on the road, seals in the parking – we were all sealed out! We left the coast to drive inland via the very lonely Messum Crater, Brandberg mountain and Vingerclip Rock to Kamanjab. We stayed at the overlander-friendly Oppikoppi camp in Kamanjab for a week, before heading up to Marienfluss, one of Africa’s last true wildernesses (more on that in another post).