On Sunday we left Windhoek and stopped over in Keetmanshoop. En route we heard that a cold front has swept over South Africa and was on it's way to us. Fortunately we managed to find reasonable accommodation in the At Home B&B. The cold front hit us that night with a fury. Temperatures plummeted and we needed extra layers of cloths when we got up for breakfast on Monday morning.
We had to wait for a local representative to accompany us on our journey and walked around Keetmanshoop to get breakfast and managed to find a beany to protect my head against the cold at night.
We left Keetmanshoop around 11:00 and headed towards the canyon. We had three stops before we got to Ai-Ais around 17:00. Because of the project we are busy with, we managed to get a room for much less than the regular rates.
The last time we visited Ai-Ais was in the mid 1990's. Marthinus and Cecilia were just in their teens and we were reasonably impressed with the facilities offered at the resort.
Apparently the whole place was upgraded last year and the improvement from last time is obvious. The furnishings from the bedrooms to the indoor pools are stunning and the restaurant is very tastefully furnished. We treated ourselves to Eland steaks and a glass of Tall Horse Shiraz each. Afterwards we managed to expel some of the cold with two lazy hours in the indoor pool. Regina managed a couple of laps in the short space available while I just soaked up the heat.
After breakfast and the official part of the visit were completed, we headed east and north on the dirt roads for our next stop at Aroab.
Now please allow me to digress again for a little while.
We have a couple of dear friends from the time we stayed in Hermanus. Zoon and Stella Snyman both grew up in the Upington area and still love the Kalahari. Zoon always used a specific expression to describe a very busy place: "Dis soos nagmaal op Aroab" (eng.: "It is like communion in Aroab") Ever since the first time I heard Zoon say that, I had visions of what Aroab would look like; usually something to do with a bunch of ox wagon camped on the town square next to an old white-washed church building.
Yesterday those visions could make way for reality when we eventually reached Aroab for the first time. While I was doing the official part of our visit Regina took some photos.
The church is everything but old and white-washed.
And I saw no ox wagons, just Toyota bakkies of all ages. This one was taken at one of the other sites we visited. It is of a 1973 Toyota Hilux bakkie in excellent condition and Simon, its proud owner.
We did not get "nagmaal" (direct translation: "evening meal") because it was not Sunday; we did not even get an afternoon meal because, like many towns in Namibia, the whole place shuts down between one and two for a lunch siesta.
At about 13:30, after filling the Fortuner up with Diesel, we left for Windhoek via the shortest route (read: dirt roads) and reached our temporary home in Windhoek just before 20:00 on Tuesday night. We covered a total of just more than 950 km of which only the last 260 km were on tarred roads.
During the past 6 weeks since we left Cape Town we have driven a total of 9,500 km of which about 5,500 km were on dirt roads. The red lines on the map on the left gives an indication of the roads we have covered. We are now back in Windhoek for a couple of days admin and some training for the implementation part of the project.
I will soon try to put together a page about some of the beautiful landscapes and rock formations we have seen on our travels.
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