Wednesday we drove from Rundu to Tsumeb. It sounds very simple and in effect only 430km. But that is only the short of it. The sweet? My dear Dirk enjoyed driving on/in the road. Like he says; for the first time since we drive the Fortuner we really, REALLY needed the 4x4 function. This redeem us from so often you will hear the accusation: most of your city dwellers do not need a 4x4 vehicle, it’s just show off.
Firstly, this is a new road that they are busy building to the north of the country. A statistic; 70% of Namibia’s population stays in the northern part of the country. If you look on the map you will notice the B1 and B8 are tarred and a short road 300km (compared to rest) from Ondangwa to Ruacana. Therefore they need to upgrade and increase the roads to meet the needs of the people in the northern regions.
I was only hanging onto my seat for dear life. The real experience of driving the road was Dirk’s privilege. I will leave the description of the experience to him.
While I was hanging on to my seat, I had a lot of time to look around and perceive the environment. When we left the Cape, my friends encouraged me to journal as we are travelling – we realized I will have a lot of time to kill. Sitting in the passenger’s seat leaves you with a lot of “nothingness” to do. So what does this looking around entail?
The saying that jumps to my mind is, “window of opportunity”. Looking out of the vehicle’s windows is not much experience but an opportune time to take pictures and show the environment as it shoots past you. We have seen mountains with the most extraordinary rock formations, sand dunes of different structures and color, vegetation that varies from sparse ground coverings, to lush forest type of growth.
When we came close to Grootfontein on Tuesday, we drove over a hill and suddenly this vast, stretched out landscape of just trees enfold in front of us. From the West to the East the skyline is just one line drawn by trees of various heights and shapes but not a mountain of any sorts. For us Capetonians that was a sure first.
Dirk's version:
When you have to choose between a 550 km round trip on tar roads and a 110 km bash through unknown terrain on an unmapped road.... Not much of a choice, we go the unmapped road!!
On one map it was indicated as "Road under construction" but boy, was that an understatement, as we saw this road in all stages of being constructed, from just two fences indicating the outline of the road, through various stages of preparation all the way to eventually a tar surface. The best part of this for me was the fact that the access road, on which we drove, turned out to be a very challenging track through the sand. The road starts 25 km south of the Angolan border and runs perpendicular to a series of small dunes. That gives you a fairly solid hill followed by various grades of soft sand. Many places it was possible to travel in forth gear at about 80 km/h. Some places I had to shift back to lower gears, even first, but the Fortuner kept going.
Unfortunately all good things eventually come to an end. That night we camped in Kupfer Quelle Resort, a campsite in Tsumeb, on the road to the south. It must count as one of the best, if not the best, campsite I ever stayed in. Everything is of a very high quality and very well maintained.
On Thursday we headed east via Grootfontein and visited places like Tsumkwe, Gam and Eiseb. We finished in Eiseb,7 km from the Botswana border at 16:45. There was no camping facilities so we decided to head south west towards Harnas Lion Farm, about 100 km north of Gobabis. It was still about 200 km and we headed down a road that was not indicated on any of the maps or even on Google Earth. It turned out to be the best dirt road we traveled on this whole six weeks in Namibia. While it was still light enough I managed to drive over 120 km/h without ever feeling worried.
We reached Harnas at just after 19:00 and managed to get campsites for the night as well as dinner and breakfast. At night we were treated to a host of wildlife noises,such as a pride of lions roaring close to the campsite, albeit behind electrified fences, warthogs, baboons and various night birds.
It got so cold at night that Regina got a very bad cold which she is now nursing from our ample medicine chest.
Today we only had one official visit to do and in the process met a very friendly and generous Oom Johannes Jacobs, alias Boerbok, even though very few people will call him that to his face. Once again we had to travel a couple hundred kilometers to see one site but managed to reach the place where we stay in Windhoek at 16:40.
Next week we plan a short trip to Ai-Ais and vicinity but more about that later.
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