12: The Final Countdown!

We’re on the road home now but that doesn’t mean the adventure is over quite yet.

The first big event is Nick’s birthday……. and he’s twenty-one again!

As a surprise, Janette books a posh room at Palm Afrique Lodge. Knowing how much Nick loves a soak in the bath, Janette makes sure the room has a tub and by the time Nick has had a good, long soak and got rid of the last two months worth of ingrained dust he’s barely recognisable! 

This morning we need to prepare to cross back into Namibia; this involves Nick having to cover Rocky’s light bar as it’s not legal in Namibia. We didn’t do this when we were in Namibia before as we didn’t know it could be a problem - and it wasn’t, sometimes ignorance really is bliss!

We want to have a special barbecue tonight as it’s the last night we’ll be cooking for ourselves and sitting together round the campfire.

We stop off at Charles Hill, the town just before the border and are treated to the full Botswana cash & carry experience - very busy, all sorts of stuff on offer from gas cookers to ice creams and with loud music blasting out, we feel a little dance coming on as we shop!

The checkout is a complex business, you have to send your shopping off down a conveyor belt but you can’t follow it as there is no aisle. You pay and then you’re issued with an A4 document; you go round to where your shopping has been sent and meet a man there who checks each item off against the document - then and only then are you allowed to pack!

We’re all set… It’s a short hop to the Mamuno Border post. This is a much bigger border than any we’ve crossed so far and our hearts sink as we enter the building to discover that we are behind a coach-load of Chinese tourists; this means we have to queue behind them both to leave Botswana and to enter Namibia. It takes ages and there is much form filling but finally we’re through - minus our firewood which is confiscated by the customs officer!

Our stop tonight is a pitch at Kalahari Bush Breaks. It’s very much a stop-off campsite rather than a destination in itself but it’s fine. The lodge is further away from the road and that is lovely.

There’s a 4x4 driving route here which takes us past some fascinating ancient rock engravings carved by bushmen who roamed the area in centuries gone by.

We return to the lodge for a couple of rounds of very welcome G&Ts, they don't muck about with singles in Africa m, it’s all doubles and that's fine with us!

The evening is spent around the camp fire - everyone a little worse for wear after the G&T’s and further glasses of wine! Never mind, it’s time to cook up a feast with our earlier purchases from the cash and carry.

Nick cooks the steaks - which unfortunately turn out to be as tough as old boots and are quite inedible!

Chris produces a bag of marshmallows and Janet, some chocolate. Sadly, the packet of marshmallows have turned into one completely congealed lump - and the chocolate has turned white with age!

Nick and Chris discover that when burned, even for 20 minutes, marshmallows make an excellent fire retardant!

Slightly worse for wear the next day we journey onto Windhoek and stay at a great city centre place - Urban Camp. It’s a brilliantly thought out with a nice bar and restaurant, each pitch is very private and has two hammocks - what's not to like?

Joe’s Beerhouse has been recommended by our friend Mark. It’s apparently the place to be so we head there - the taxi fare comes to about 50p!

Joe’s is lively and quirky and serves interesting dishes, many of which include Game meat.

It’s also customary here to have a Jagermeister shot so Janette and Nick oblige while Chris and Janet take a more sensible approach!

This morning we need to get away first thing as we want to get Rocky looked at before we go home. His front suspension has taken quite a beating these last few weeks and there are garages here which specialise in off-road vehicles.

Janet and Chris are leaving us too. They’re heading to a lodge for a few days r&r before flying home.

We end up leaving Rocky overnight at the CV Joint Centre in the very capable hands of Steean the owner who really goes over and above to get Rocky back into prime condition. Steean is the man to see and CV is the garage to go to if your vehicle needs some TLC and you’re in the Windhoek area.

This enforced sojourn in Windhoek gives us the chance to do some sightseeing and get to know the city a little. Janette always loves visiting a church and Christuskirche (Christ Church) is a city centre landmark.

Disappointingly the church is closed today so we wander over to the Independence Memorial Museum which charts the journey of Namibia to independence and  focuses on the anti-colonial resistance and the national liberation movements of Namibia. 

Having been educated about Namibia’s experience of the South African-imposed apartheid system we decide to visit the township of Katatura.

Katatura is now considered a suburb of Windhoek but it has a troubled history and parts of it are still very poor with people living in tin shacks with no electricity or sanitation and having to collect water from standpipes in the street. 

Our guide, John, is a young resident of Katatura and his knowledge is invaluable to our understanding of the place and its history. John drives us around and shows us the varying quality of accommodation in the area. He explains to us how the area has grown - and it is massive.

Katutura is an Otjiherero name meaning 'the place where we do not want to live'. Black residents of a place in central Windhoek called the Old Location were required to move to the township of Katatura in the 1950s and their resistance to this resulted in protests which came to a head on 10th December 1959 with the police firing on the protesters, killing 11 people and wounding 44 others.

Despite the challenges of living here, its clearly a vibrant and lively part of the city with many small businesses providing all sorts of services from hairdressers to butchers to bars with very specific codes of entry!

Maybe the old people have proved just too much of a handful!

We pay a visit to the Penduka Trust, a not-for-profit organisation which seeks to empower local women through skills training, income generation, and community development programs.

Many of the women learn artisanal skills, producing exquisite embroidery and batik textiles. Janette feels another shopping opportunity coming on and Nick declines to have anything to do with this venture!

Next stop is a real highlight for us. Wherever we go in the world, we love to get into the thick of it, meet local people, eat local food and see how people live their lives.

Oshetu Community Market is just the place for us. It's really buzzing here but it isn't for the faint hearted. As soon as you enter the market you are faced with numerous stalls all cooking and selling the same thing - Kapana.

Whole cows are chopped up - their heads and other bits of body are on the floor around the stalls - the meat is chopped up into small pieces and flame grilled.

You choose which stall you like the look of and try before you buy. The meat is served with powdered spices that you dip each piece into before you eat it. Having got your meat, you go to another stall to collect the tomato and onion salsa that goes with it and to yet another stall to buy fat cakes - a deep fried dough ball.

John seems a bit surprised that we are so taken with this place but we feel that more than at any other time on the whole of this trip we are getting to the heart of how life is lived here, the essence of the place. We will treasure this experience always, thank you John.

The market also sells an interesting array of fresh and dried fruit and veg as well as mealie worms which are not worms at all but the larva of the Yellow Mealworn Beetle,; they are a good source of protein, fat and fibre. To eat the worms you need to cook them, either by boiling or frying. There isn't anywhere here selling the cooked version otherwise we would try them - never mind there's always next time.

We are so glad we have had the opportunity to get to know Windhoek a little, there's so much more to this city than meets the eye which we've found is so often the case. The lesson we're learning is don't dismiss a place out of hand, take some time to look beneath the surface and nine times out of ten you'll be rewarded with rich experiences.

It's now time to get Rocky to Walvis Bay ready to board the ship bound for home. Once again, the Hofert family leave us feeling humbled by their generosity - Mark insists that we take his Amarok and drive it to Walvis Bay in convoy with Rocky so that we have a vehicle to return to Windhoek in (we have to return there to fly home).

This is no small thing as it's a 395 km journey and we'll be away for several days leaving the family one car down. Mark won't take no for an answer and so we very gratefully, head off.

Our plan is to spend a couple of days in the rather genteel and very German seaside town of Swakopmund. We were here towards the beginning of our journey but only briefly and we want to explore further.

When we arrive, the weather is glorious, the sun is shining and the might of the Atlantic rollers as they crash onto the shore is a thing to behold. Of all the magnificent and awe inspiring landscapes this planet has to offer, Janette's first and greatest love is the sea. We both stand breathing in the fresh sea air and feel a calm descending on us.

We then move onto the serious matter of cocktails and as they are only the equivalent of £3 a pop we have several! We then totter off to the end of the pier and to a VERY nice restaurant where the seafood is to die for.

Today we expect to be nipping quickly down to our shipping agents to see Denise and Martin who own and run DDE in Walvis Bay to entrust Rocky into their capable hands but it doesn't quite work out like that - when does it ever with the Webbers!

Denise has a flash of inspiration and suggests that rather than paying to ship Rocky back to the UK, she'd be prepared to buy Rocky for one of DDE's employees, Kai. Kai and his family love camping and she thinks this vehicle will be just the job.

Nick is a bit hesitant at first, but the deal is done and we empty our personal possessions out of Rocky and bid him farewell, not without a tear in our eyes.

Next morning we receive a call from Denise to say that the import duties are so high that it means it's not economically viable for them to proceed with the purchase; she's upset, Kai's upset and we're secretly a little but relieved.

We know Rocky will be in safe hands until he's loaded onto the ship and so we now turn for Widhoek in Mark's car.

Mark and Mel have recommended that we take the desert road back to Windhoek and visit a place called Moon Valley. We are delighted by this find.

Not far off the main road is a landscape that truly looks like the surface of the moon - utterly extraordinary.

We stay the night in Moon Valley and go out this morning for a last drive. We visit the ruins of an old Ostrich farm that was washed away in the early 1900's when the river rose and flooded the whole area.

Mark has told us that out in the desert are some rocks and caves known as the Flinstones. The drive is initially along a dry riverbed and then out into the desert where the rock formations are spectacular.

The silence is total, we are the only people here and apart from a few lizards we see no other life. We stand and listen to the silence and drink in the vastness of the landscape, this is truly wonderful.

We find the Flinstone Cave and discover that it's possible to wilderness camp here; that would be magical and as we're pretty well decided on coming back, we put this at the top of our list.

Today it's the long journey back once more to Windhoek. The desert road is gravel and we laugh to see a 'no overtaking sign' at a narrow and winding stretch of road - what kind of lunatics are they expecting here?!

This is the C28, it is said to be one of the least travelled roads in the world with fewer than ten cars using it every day. It will take us over the Boshua Pass and at 315 km it is the shortest route between Swakopmund and Windhoek - though by no means the fastest. It's also one of the steepest roads in Namibia with a gradient in places of 1 in 5.

We stop at the viewpoint and fortunately there is a toilet..........

.....this toilet gives a whole new meaning to the term 'long drop' but needs must and Janette says the facilities are actually pretty good!

This road is gruelling, it's heavily corrugated in places and progress is frustratingly slow. It then gets even slower when we have a puncture - typical that this should happen when we're driving someone else's car.

After lots of scrabbling around in the dirt for Nick and a lot of supervising by Janette, we're back on the road and although this drive has been really beautiful and we wouldn't have missed it for the world, we're relieved when the tar road takes over from the gravel.

We're back in Windhoek and saying our goodbyes to Mel, Mark and Oliver, truly special people who we very much hope will take us up on our invitation to visit us back in Blighty.

Two and a half months on and Mark kindly takes us back where we started - Hosea Kutako airport with two long flights ahead of us.

What an adventure this has been. We've travelled over 5,000 miles through eight border crossings exploring three different countries. To be truthful our heads are reeling as we try to recall all the things we've done and seen. We'll need time to process all the experiences we've had. We've met so many wonderful people and seen such an incredible variety of landscapes and wildlife - and yet there's so much more we didn't get to see.

We both definitely want to come back to Namibia... so watch this space!