3rd June 2013

Namibia

Please not that We had both been under the impression that we had already posted a blog of the first half of our time in Namibia  however we have just found that it has not been posted at all so I have had to cobble together a second attempt. No idea how this happened  Sorry!

We are now in Namibia and have just past our worst day yet.  Up to now I have been able without too much difficulty to be quite upbeat in what I write here.  Even where we have had some difficult times I have still been able.

However  having spoken in my last blog, that I started to lose a lot of confidence following the dramatic blowout of two brand new tyres. Sorry to be a misery but I guess as we have a lot of intending overland travellers reading our blog there is a duty to convey the scene, especially the bad days! We got that sorted out  and off we went to Namibia.

We had a pleasant though long drive to the border. The South African side was easy and really no hassle at all. Then as we approached the Namibian side I saw a sign which told us that, ‘all our officials will be helpful and courteous ‘. My heart sank as I just knew that meant we were in for a hard time!

Warm welcome indeed!

Immigration was easy so I knew it was just softening us up for what was to come.  Then we went to the road tax office where we met ‘Miss Congeniality’.
She said simply, ‘You have to pay $200 tax’ I protested saying, 'I have a Carnet de passage!’ 
‘Fill the form in' and she threw the form at me.
I again tried to explain that I didn’t think it applied to us. 
She said ‘I don’t care but you don’t leave here till you pay'.
I went to customs and explained my plight and they told us that 'South Africans are damaging our roads so you have to pay the tax'. Knowing it would be futile  I said but I am not South African.
‘It makes no difference you still have to pay’.
We went back to see Miss Congeniality. She once again threw the form at us this time without speaking at all. Ping duly filled it in and gave it back to her and she took it and demanded $200. We paid and she gave us a receipt. I have to say that I half expected her to give me a customer satisfaction survey to fill in, but sadly even here I was to be disappointed 

As we drove out to the gate we were stopped by a particularly aggressive policeman, who without wasting words told me ,’You are not wearing your seat belt’.
I told him that I wasn’t because I thought I would have to get out again at his gate. He told me that he was thinking of getting one of his junior colleagues to come out and fine me. He was so rude that I was getting pretty narked with him. 
Then he barked ‘put it on Now’. So I did and as I did so he demanded to see my driving licence! 
So I faced him out and said 'look do you want the belt on or do you want the licence?' 
He considered this matter for a nano second and concluded that he would go for the licence option. I took off the belt and found my licence and handed it to him. To my astonishment, he then apologised to me as he had accidentally unstuck the card from the counterpart. I was caught completely by surprise by the apology. Then he let me go  without the seat belt.
I have no idea whatsoever what the purpose of that meeting was. It was bloody annoying!

I love these drives

We had read about Namibia and we knew that we were in for some long drives . The country is mostly desert. It really has only 4 or 5 towns of any size and a population of less than 2 million. The roads are long and straight and the desert is really lovely , it is not boring at all.  We were going to drive to the Fish River Canyon. But for now we had to go to find somewhere to spend the night. Our friend, Ken had told us that we should go to a place called the Roadhouse. He would not elaborate but he said it is really special.

About 150km of the journey was smooth tarmac road and I have to say that with the new tyres the van was happy hopping along at around 110km /hr where on the old tyres it was really only happy up to about 90. Smooth straight open road, lovely! I only stopped to look at an old abandoned American pick up truck that must have been there for many many years. It was completely stripped  and was also  full of bullet holes some of which were of an alarmingly large calibre.

Who knows what brought this bullet riddled truck to a halt !

Then we continued  until we turned off and it was a further 60 or so km to the Roadhouse .  What surprised me was that although this was a gravely sandy track I was still able to march on quite fast all the way.

Welcome to The Roadhouse! a truly extraordinary place.

Eventually we arrived at The Roadhouse.  I am so glad that it was still daylight,just and we could see that we were greeted by an old truck advertising the way in . Then a 1930s car with a tree growing through  where the engine was. Quite soon I realised that every where you looked there was old cars or motor related works of art scattered around all over the place.

A celebration of abandoned cars

It was beautiful as well as exciting. This was not just a trip down memory lane but a whole farm that had been decorated with junk through the eye of a true artist. I just loved the place. 

Their campsite was very nice and well appointed  the people that worked there  happy and funny and helpful. Once we had parked up for the night we went to register and found to our amazement that the reception, restaurant and bar were in a huge barn of a place. That was given over to a glorious celebration of the motor car. 

This was for many years the ambulance for the nearby town of Ai Ais what a beauty!

However this was no museum It was decorated with humour and inspiration in equal measure. Number plates and signs in their thousands from all over the world.  The reception desk was built into the back of a huge  truck that, I was proudly told had been driven in there but because it had been turned in to a desk it had no petrol tank so someone had to sit beside the engine dropping petrol into the carburetor.

A great reception

In the morning I stroll around and found that under every bush and round every corner was some car or piece of art celebrating the world of abandoned vehicles.

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One thing that I particularly liked was when we were speaking to one of the managers she told us that they were concerned that the staff showed no real understanding of what the travelling customers were doing there . So they arrange bus trips for them to the canyon and other noteworthy places and show them why people travel thousands of miles to visit their country. What is so nice is that it is always a revelation for them. What terrific place I would love to work there myself!

Even filling up was part of the show

We went to visit the Fish River canyon, which is stunning! We spent a good while there soaking up the view until I hit my head again on a roof beam!

While at the canyon we saw a display of a very interesting potted history   of Namibia and its culture.

Fish River Canyon What beauty!

A photographic record of my esteemed life partner. Lovely!

We stayed one more night at the Roadhouse while I once again tended my wounds. Then off to the town of Luderitz  we were tempted to take a route thtat required 4 wheel drive to Luderitz even though it  was not too challenging But our  confidence was tainted by our experience  with the tyres and we decided to whimp out on it. We took the easy road  another long smooth straight road. It was our third day driving of driving in Namibia  and we were about as far as you can imagine being from any other life.  The roads here are really long straight and empty. I guess we were about 60 km or so from any place when we had another blowout! Oh how my heart sank! 

However working well with my esteemed life partner we changed the wheel jumped back in and drove off, less than ten minutes  later the spare punctured. I had for a second time to remove the tyre and change the tube. This really is a very physical task. 

Completely knackered we carried on  to the town of Luderitz which is a truly delightful town But we were so dispirited that we were really unable to appreciate it until we had tyre sorted out.

Next day we went to the only tyre company in the region . They  removed the tyre and found that the tyre was  spoiled and the tube was again completely split all around.   They were prepared to order it but having picked up that we might be in dispute with the original suppliers, they insisted that we are clear that we are paying for everything. 

There was not a trace of human kindness or sympathy for our situation they just kept making sure that we would pay.  We had really difficult phone calls with the tyre suppliers in  Cape Town  Now being in a different country makes it hard  to negotiate effectively. We were again dealing with Gavin who despite getting a lot of flack has remained helpful and professional 

I'd believe that he is doing all he can  but will still have to travel about a 1000 km to Windhoek to meet the agent for the manufacturers it all remains to be seen But we simply cant afford the level of expenditure  for all these minor disasters. 

Now Namibia is a really interesting country it has a rich history beautiful deserts and Town that portray their German heritage in a thoroughly beautiful way.There is another ‘but’ and that is that too many people, officials and the like  have been rude and openly contemptuous  which leaves a bad taste. There appears to be a policy of squeezing as much money as possible out of tourists in all the government run places  it does not feel too pleasant.

So we got our tyre  handed over a very significant sum of money and off we went.

Just one of the many lovely churches of Luderitz

We did take time to enjoy the town of Luderitz which is often described as a small Bavarian town  with a fairly lareg number of churches , many of which are quite lovely architecture.

The town is quite small and situated on a rocky out crop on the Atlantic coast  and far from  another town.

The camp where we stayed is on a bleak bit of rock on the outer reaches of the Harbour and disturbingly was originally a concentration camp for the Namibian native tribes who had dared to mount an uprising against the German  colonial powers. There are a number of memorials to those who died in the camp, mostly from disease and starvation. Their bodies disposed of in the most gruesome manner. I will spare you the details. Many prisoners ,I believe were used for slave labour to build the railway which is so important to the local diamond mining industry. It is said that they had to stop using the Prisoners as they were too weak to work! Over 1000 died there.

Shark Island , now a campsite .  More than 1000 Nam rebels died here. so bleak!     Lest we forget.

We went to visit a well known place of interest, which is the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop. Really fascinating and very well run contrary to some of my earlier remarks.  For a modest fee we given a conducted tour of the ‘Ghost town  and then left to just mooch around and take photos. 

This is a house abandoned in the desert for more than 50 years

Kolmanskop.  The one time home of  diamonds in Namibia

Ghost town!

This train carried a ration of 40 liters of water and a block of ice daily to every house in the town.

After we left Luderitz we traveled on,  on the way we visited Duwisib Castle.

A young German officer Baron captain Hans-Heinrich Von Wolf spent some time here, I think farming mostly and having fallen in love with Namibia (not hard to understand),

German South West Africa as it was then. He built his home in the style of a baronial castle, designed by a well known German architect of the time. He went to live in it with his American wife and  here they bred fine horses.  They lived there only for a short time as he was required to return to Europe to fight in the first world war. In 1917 he was killed.  His wife returned to America. and so neither ever returned to Namibia.  The castle had been left in the hands of a  ‘friend’ though it was abandoned not so long after Von Wolfs death.  Though little is written about the matter, but the castle, may or may not have played a part in history for modern Namibia. In this region there are a large established herd of wild horses. No one knows for sure where they come from but one credible idea is that when the castle was abandoned the horses somehow left and ran wild.

The castle is a fine and rather quirky house  and that is about all it is.

The government tourist organisation (bless their cotton socks!) has put a really random quantity of furniture some of which is genuinely antique, and some simply post dates  Poor old captain Von Wolf. There is for example a not very remarkable 1930s dressing table and a gramophone circa 1935 even though he died in 1917.  There are 20 rooms of which 4 are completely empty or have one or two bits of furniture. No less than 3 rooms are devoted to admin offices. There is no reference  in the museum to the Von Wolfs  instead as you enter you are handed a badly written and badly typed  sheet giving the most superficial account of Von Wolfs adventure.  For the privilege of looking round this depository  of seriously uninteresting items , they charge you about £8.

People travel across the desert for miles for this it is nothing less than a con! The government now owns the castle and has opened it as possibly the worst and most pointless museums in the world!

Castle in the desert......don't go there!

So we have then traveled down to a place called Sossusvlei which is where the famous and quite beautiful sand dunes are. It is quite an undertaking to get the best from them as it involves getting up at dawn  to travel 60 km through the dunes  and then a load of hiking in the desert, I was not inclined to do the hiking  had a bit of difficult 4 wheel drive stuff where the differential lock got stuck again!.

Sossusvlei Dunes.............Beautiful, nuff said!

Getting stuck .........Again!

But staying on here for 3 days as it is such a beautiful place to stop to sort out some minor bits and pieces on the van. We met up with  fellow travellers from earlier in our trip Oyvind and Sheila  as well as Alison and Toby who are cycling , yes cycling  from London to Cape Town!

Dinner with Sheelah, Oyvind, Alison and Toby

We found a really good camp, probably the best yet. Each camping place has its own toilet and bathroom , lots of hot water a shelter and mains power. Really well done  it has really turned our camper van into a normal home for a little while. Magnificent!!

The camp site is owned by The Oasis Lodge, a posh hotel across the road. This hotel is such a good place. Initially we went there to get the diff lock on the van , as they have a resident mechanic. He was so helpful. It was a Saturday morning and all the other people in the workshop evidently did not have enough to do as they were constantly clowning around. It  was a really nice atmosphere. Ping was made very welcome in the lobby even though she is not a guest. 

The Pilot was distressed to say goodbye to this wonderful craft. hardly surprising.

Such a thing of beauty

The next day I saw a very interesting old aeroplane flying over and around all day I was told that it belonged to the hotel and that it had been grounded for about a year with a seized engine. Being too expensive to repair  it was sold to a South African who has repaired it and is taking it away. It was so interesting that I wanted some photos and I went over to the hotel. I was told that they did not want me to drive into their private airfield on my own. ‘But hang around for half an hour and I will drive you over and bring you back’.  ‘But I am not a guest’ I protested. She told me that she was really happy to do that. Such is the atmosphere in what I guess is a very expensive hotel with no airs and graces. Almost certainly the best hotel that I have not stayed in.  One day when I can afford it I will return. By the way the plane a Beechcraft model 18 was just lovely! And the hotels pilot was openly distressed at parting with it.

Moving on from there we have driven to the capital Windhoek. Namibia is radically different from any other country I have known. Almost entirely desert and extraordinarily beautiful desert in the main. The few towns  are relatively small and are linked by long, long straight often gravel roads. I was speaking to a man In Luderitz  when I asked is Luderitz the kind of town where you know everyone ? His reply surprised me , ‘I suppose I know most people in Southern Namibia!’  

Don't fence me in!

I love these drives despite the discomfort of driving on unmade roads and the dreadful dust that we have to cope with.  However, Ping, I think finds these journeys more difficult and is genuinely distressed by the dust. The last stretch was something in the region of 500 km  and it was quite a haul.

We are now in Windhoek our main purpose at the moment is to see if we can get some kind of satisfaction from either the supplier or the manufacturer of the new tyres. We feel dreadfully let down by the failure of the tyres .Once we have sorted this out  we will go to the National park in Etosha which promises to be very good

Yesterday we had a nice dinner in a well known place here in Windhoek. It was an opportunity for me to sample the great array of Game meat as one of  the menus choices was a skewer of  pieces of meat from  crocodile, Zebra  - - - - - it was a vey interesting experience it seems that there is a small industry here farming game animals so we are not talking about any endangered species.

During the day we had what almost amounted to a chance meeting with a senior manager for Dunlop tyres who also has charge of both the supplier of our tyre as well as representing the manufacturers. He has spoken with the company in Cape Town  and has arranged to have the damaged tyre and the tubes examined . This was a real coincidence  and is the best chance we have of resolving the matter. This episode has been so frustrating and will take quite a lot for us to fully regain our confidence. When  should find out in the next day or so the result of the examination.

As I am writing Ping is having her feet licked by a 3 legged boxer dog! Just thought I would mention it.

We are in a backackers lodge with the unlikely name of The Cardboard Box it is a really lovely and not very expensive place which is also home to a number of disabled dogs.

While here we have been joined by some extra ordinary fellow travelers.

A group of English travelers who have come through Egypt and East Africa in an old and somewhat dilapidated Land Rover. They are extraordinary for a number of reasons .  They have daily problems with their truck and they don’t complain like I do.  They are three doctors and a dentist who  worked in a Ugandan Hospital for a month as they were  critically short of medical staff. Their truck is stuffed to the gunwales with all manner of gear and they seem to pick up large numbers of other travelers  so their numbers often swell to as many as 8 in this overloaded Land rover. 

3 doctors and a rather comely dentist

The Land Rover was so decrepit that several doors had to be replaced en route . The police sign has to be covered

We also met with Gareth and his partner Claire who have come to South Africa bought an ancient VW camper and have got as far as Windhoek and the engine has decided that it is now time to retire. They do not seem at all daunted by this and are busy enjoying the country while they try to raise the funds to buy a new engine. Now that in my view is overland travelling the adventurous way. 

The Vee dub of Gareth and Claire sdly in the garage without an engine  for now

As I am taking all this in, Tony Rocks up !  Tony is a New Yorker  who came to England to buy and prepare his Land Rover  which I have to say is a pretty nice rig! He has just driven alone!  All the way down the West Coast of Africa and succeeded in getting visas which we could not. And he had just emerged from Angola.  His truck is caked in mud and salt and he is exhausted and emotional. All this and he travels alone!  I thought we were pretty clever doing our trip but we both take our hats off to these guys.  On top of all this they are all such nice people. Rock on guys!!!

The whole gang of  special travelers we will be glad to keep up our acquaintance with these guys

Now we have moved on and are spending the night on a private game reserve where we are told there are a lot of game including  leopards and cheetahs. What is particularly interesting is that Ping calmly says, and with great authority, as we sit down in the night air for our dinner. ' I don’t really think any leopards will come here or they wouldn’t let us camp here'. 

Now what is surprising about this apparent calmness is, that I would only have to  mention anything to do with snakes and she will quite happily spend the night on the roof of the van! Life is funny like that isn’t it.

As ever we do ask that our friends keep in touch with us we really love to hear from you.  Don't forget us , drop us a line!

noelbow51@gmail.com

pingbow54@gmail.com

Lots of love!

Noel and Ping