Today we leave Etosha National Park and we’re on our way to Windhoek, the capital city of Namibia.
And yay, no gravel roads today. What a treat. It is mostly cattle country and not a lot to see on the way, and we’d passed by some of the route already on our way up to Etosha. We did see some baboons at the side of the road, but we didn’t stop to get pictures. They were following along in an area where the road crew had just mowed the shoulder, eating insects that had been turned up.
We stopped for provisions early in the day in a town where we’d stopped once before, feeling like regulars and not so weird being the only white folks in town. We had just one more stop, in a small town just north of Windhoek, for our standard picnic before proceeding on the busy 4 lane divided highway into Windhoek.
We were given an hour to explore the centre of Windhoek and I took the opportunity to find an optician to see about getting my sunglasses fixed. Sigh. On the game drive in Etosha, when we had a double seat to ourselves, I set my sunglasses on the seat beside me, along with my ball cap when we happened upon some elephants so that I could more easily take pictures. I should have known better. We all moved around the truck while we were stopped to get different photo angles, and one of my fellow travellers sat or kneeled on my glasses. One of the stems was broken off at the hinge, and the hinge was destroyed, but the stem and the lens portion were fine. So Nanci and I headed off, to the core of the downtown area, with warnings to be careful of our purses, in search of an optician. A 10 minute walk found us in a medium size mall that included not only an optician but a money exchange. The optician was able to take a hinge from another pair of glasses in 20 minutes and for only Cdn $10 and they are good as new. And we were able to get some money exchanged. So 2 missions accomplished.
We took a quick look at the main church and took pictures of a monument to the first President of Namibia, Dr. Sam Nujoma. We noted with interest that there were major streets named after Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe. And then we were off to check in to our hotel. I didn’t take pictures of this hotel because it was in the process of having a new roof installed and so was a mess. Ironically it was called the Roof of Africa. We had some time to relax, swim or use the wickedly fast wifi. You can guess which I chose.
Our trip is made up of several components, and today is the completion of the first of two legs of the Cape Town to Victoria Falls Tour portion. Sadly this means that 6 of our travel companions will be leaving us here in Windhoek after 13 days on the road together. A couple and a single from Australia, two American friends travelling together, and a single woman from England all head on to other adventures or head for home. So tonight’s dinner is their farewell.
But happily we met our new companions at our orientation meeting this evening. They are all couples, one each from England, Australia and Ireland. They joined us for the farewell dinner so it was quite a large group. The restaurant was a quick 10 minute walk from the hotel, called Joe’s Beer House. It was huge and really hopping with activity and had a lovely ambiance. It was divided into various sections and most of them were open to the stars. Unfortunately the food, especially the lamb curry which many ordered, was not that great. We have been really lucky with our meals so I suppose one not-so-great one is to be expected.
I will miss the daily competitions between Dip and Charlie about who has more fitbit steps logged. We’ve travelled some pretty bad corrugated gravel roads and Fitbits register a step on some of the bumps. The highest number of steps in one day that I had was 24,000 and I’d been sitting on the bus all day. But I won’t miss poor Coral’s constant coughing. Colds have been going around since the early days and she picked up an ugly persistent cough that antibiotics weren’t going to budge. She is off for home in Australia so hopefully she can recover quickly there.
Tomorrow our new truckload of travellers heads east and crosses into a new country! This time it’s Botswana. The next week is going to fly by because we’re moving almost every day. Each day, Innocent lets us know what type of footwear is appropriate based on our activities for the following day so that if we need to wear closed toe shoes then we have then on hand. At our orientation meeting tonight Innocent let us know that any type of footwear was fine to wear for tomorrow, but that we should bring our other pair of shoes with us on the bus. We were a bit confused by that instruction until he explained that Botswana is cattle country and they have concern about cattle diseases carried on shoes and that we may have to walk through some sort of disinfectant and also dip our other pair of shoes in as well. If we don’t bring them with us on the bus, the inspectors may have all the luggage searched looking for shoes so we’re trying to avoid that.
Back at the hotel we stayed up late, despite our early start tomorrow, wanting to take advantage of the wifi, since it’s doubtful we’ll have good wifi for a few days.
Lois' Adventures 