A Rough Departure!

After a fabulous few days at Mount Etjo, Africat and the Otavi vineyard, we were heading for the large northern town of Grootfontein. We had been told by a few people that this could be a good base around which to settle but the further north we went the more populated and industrial Namibia seemed to be getting. The people that had suggested the south was better for peaceful living seemed to be right.

We arrived in the town on a Saturday morning and headed for Altes Fort, a German colonial fort now a museum. It was closed for the week-end so we decamped at the Purple Fig restaurant for a nice lunch then set off out of town again towards the Hoba Meteorite. The plan had been to camp up at the Meteorite Campsite but when we arrived it was full of noisy families – children playing on the grass, screaming and laughing, loud music playing. I got one leg out of Henry to go and pay at reception then stopped and turned to James. ´Do you still want to stay here?´ I asked…´Not really´ came the answer, so I hopped my leg back in and we sped off.

Such is the joy of being a nomad – if you don´t like the area, haul anchor and find somewhere new. We had no idea where we were actually going to end up but that´s half the fun isn´t it??

It was still early in the day and we were very close to the meteorite itself so rather than waste time going backwards and forwards we decided to do the meteorite straight away and worry about camping later.

When we arrived we were not surprised to find the entrance fee was the usual €25 and there was very little to see – Namibia, you may be getting a little predictable!

The Hoba Meteorite is the largest surviving meteorite known to have hit earth so it was worth seeing.

The authorities clearly have a sense of humour.

But if you`re not happy, you have a long way to go!

With the meteorite ticked off we headed back into town and found a new campsite just on the other side which was clean, quiet and spacious. It was also very green, as we were becoming used to, and rather cold which we were not! So far it seems that southern Africa in the hot, wet summer is far more unpredictable than the colder, drier winter – some days it´s scorching hot, some days quite cool, some days humid and, throughout it all, up north at least, a lot of rain….

The next day was Sunday and still nowhere was going to be open so we spent the day on camp. James tinkered with Henry whilst I made a start on plans for the next leg of our journey – Botswana. We must have been exhausted from all the recent excitement though because I for one was fast asleep by 8:30pm – rock and roll!

We were up early and raring to go the next day. We did a supermarket, fuel and pharmacy sweep before heading back out to the Altes Fort.

The manager was a lovely, friendly lady who told us all about the history of Grootfontein from the Germans to the English to the Dutch – all of whom wanted to either take the land or the resources from the original inhabitants but none of whom, thankfully, actually fought them for it.

There´s not much else to see in Grootfontein though so that afternoon we headed off for the long drive to Tsumkwe and the Nyae Nyae Conservancy on the very eastern edge of Namibia bordering Botswana.

This region is the middle of nowhere and famous for the remote Nyae Pans and the traditional San people who live on the conservancy. I had had my job cut out persuading James to agree to a tribal visit as his view is that all these tribal villages are just for show to take money from tourists and he has a very valid point. But everyone says out here the people and the villages are authentic so he eventually gave way.

Enroute we received a text from our friend in Windhoek who had given us all the good advice and contacts about buying land and getting residency. He had just been to visit the farm he was thinking of buying shares in and sent a video of the land along with details of what the deal was – he wanted to know whether we were interested in jumping in with him. The farm was in my perfect location, sandwiched between Helmeringhausen and Luderitz, neighbour to the Landsberg and Kanaan farms I had so fallen in love with. The deal on offer seemed perfect and the video of the land looked breathtaking

We wobbled. We wobbled a great deal! With this proposition we could continue to travel without worrying about security or maintenance of our property as two other people would be sharing it with us. This would need to be seriously thought about.

We arrived at the campsite in Nyae to find a surprisingly clean, comfortable and busy place considering how far away from anything it was. The owners of the campsite were very helpful. I chatted to the husband trying to work out how to make the most of our time at Nyae Nyae. He was brutally honest about the tribal villages – no-one lives a traditional life any more these days he said, they are all westernised. He was happy to put us in touch with a local village guide who would take us on a tour of a village where they would all change into costume before we arrived and play their part. I declined the offer with thanks, thinking to myself how relieved James would be to be let off the hook! We then chatted about the Nyae Pans, Baobab forest and Khaudum National Park and I formulated a new plan.

It was a cold, overcast and damp day. Khaudum National Park is so remote that it officially has more elephants in it than visitors and the sand roads are notoriously bad – in some cases non-existent. There are no maps and little infrastructure. An intrepid German couple we had met the night before had plans to drive from the south gate all the way to the north gate in their rented Hilux and were expecting trouble along the way. They tried to persuade us to travel in convoy with them to help them through the sandy, boggy roads but we were not heading that far north so had to leave them to their own devices.

My new plan had us trying out the southern half of the Park and maybe staying overnight. So we checked out of our friendly campsite and headed out, really quite unsure what to expect. When we arrived the barriers were down and no-one was around. I searched around for a while and eventually we beeped Henry´s horn a couple of times and a woman finally arrived, breathless and apologetic. The gatekeeper was away in town and there was some confusion as to whether we could actually enter the park but eventually the head warden was called and he allowed us in without paying the fee on the basis that there was no-one there who was qualified to take the fee from us!

This all added to the mystery and atmosphere of the Park, tourists arriving appeared to be completely unexpected and special arrangements had to be made!

And it seemed we would be sharing any stay there with some interesting neighbours.

We drove in and followed the sign that said the campsite was 7 km away. When we arrived it was pretty much as we expected – crumbling, old, desolate. We decided to stay anyway and after finding someone to help sign us in I filled in all the forms and was about to pay when she told me the price – double what we had been told to expect and three times the cost of our lovely campsite from the previous night. I just couldn´t bring myself to do it so I made a firm enemy by tearing up the completed forms and running away – albeit with an apology but that didn´t seem to help!

We spent only a couple of hours in the Park. It was certainly wild and untamed but it was also covered in very dense vegetation and today it was raining – a combination which meant there were no animals to be seen anywhere.

We found one, lone elephant at a waterhole

The roads were muddy and wet and the distances between waterholes was huge. I also think that we were in the wrong frame of mind for it that day, sometimes that just happens. When I read a sign at a waterhole that told us this Park was for intrepid, adventurous types who wanted to get off the beaten track, I couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone who genuinely was an intrepid traveller needed a tourist sign telling them they were in the right place!

So after visiting only three waterholes we gave up and drove back out to the campsite we had just come from.

Ironically, on the road back, a few miles out of the Park, we were stopped in our tracks twice by huge herds of elephants wandering along the road.

That evening we didn´t have any motivation to cook so ate at the campsite restaurant and afterwards hid inside Henry from swarms of mosquitoes and watched the laptop until bedtime, hoping tomorrow would be a better day.

It´s all about perspective and the next morning the weather was brighter and with it our moods. We set off down the 4×4 Baobab Trail to see what we could find. We found a very tough trail and no Baobabs! We did, however, pick up a rather large passenger…

Who didn´t seem to want to let go!

It took us half an hour to do around 7km and at the end of it didn´t even find the pans we were expecting to see. So we consulted the map and decided to give it up for a bad job and head back to the main road and onwards to the main Nyae Pans. The trail from the main road to the Nyae Pans was over 20km and we kept our fingers crossed that it would be easier than the Baobab route.

It wasn´t!

But it was fun.

At first James said he didn´t fancy it, Henry was getting a bit scratched with the trees and bushes being so close in and we weren´t at all hopeful that the Nyae Pans would be any more interesting than the pans we had just failed to find. We pressed on regardless – as I said at the time, we had driven all this way to see the Tribes and the Pans, we had to at least try and find one of them!

After an hour of very tough driving, our first sighting of the Pans was less than exciting – large flat grasslands with a few antelope on them. We were happy though, we´d found what we´d come for. Fortunately the sat nav had a viewpoint marked on it so, having driven 20 long, difficult kilometers to get there we decided to keep going another 4km to get to the viewpoint.

And we were so glad we did! As we rounded a corner just before our stop, the main Nyae Pan came into view and it was spectacular.

The heat shimmered off the salt, a few wildebeest, jackal and impala glistened in the sunlight. It was lovely.

James put his drone up and explored the area from above.

Whilst I mused once again how green and lush the landscape was

The drive back was great fun, knowing the trail didn´t do anything too horrible made it a much less stressful drive.

We checked back into our usual campsite – who were now getting used to our habit of saying goodbye then turning up again! Various new friends came to visit

And we managed a much nicer evening with pork steaks on the braai and an outside film night with most of the mosquitoes gone in the warmer, drier evening.

Although Henry was now looking rather mucky after his Khaudum excursions!

We had spent four wonderful months in Namibia travelling from south to north, west to east – but, for now at least, we had finally reached the end of our time in this remarkable country and, with no little sadness, had to prepare to bid her farewell.

With heavy hearts we packed Henry up and left the campsite for the last time. We had a very long drive south to cross the border and the campsite owners kindly gave us their card to ensure we had someone to call if we had any problems.

The fuel station in the town was a one-man-pump affair and we thought it was unlikely that the quality of the fuel would be great so set off on our long trek without filling up. We had around 250km in the main tank and, we estimated, 20L in the side tank, enough for an additional 150km. So, in total, roughly 400km. Our journey was nearly 500km.

In what can only be considered as ´famous last words´ I agreed with James that the chances of us not finding a fuel station in Namibia in 400km had to be next to zero….

We didn´t check. We are worse than schoolchildren playing at overlanding!

We drove 100km and passed a small town. It was very clear that there was no fuel here – no anything really. It made us stop and think. We checked Google, the sat nav and IOverlander. No matter how many times we checked nor how many different apps or devices we used, everyone said the same thing – the closest fuel was 100km back where we had started from. The next fuel was at our destination. Between here and there was a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

We sat and looked at each other. What now? Retrace our steps, fill up back at the town we had just left and check back into our old campsite yet again? Or take a risk and see if we could make it. We really, really didn´t want to go backwards but the consequences of running out of fuel out here could be severe.

We never know exactly how much fuel we have in the side tank as there´s no gauge on it, it´s just a matter of keeping track of what we put in and what we pump out. What we do know, however, is at exactly what rate it pumps out into the main tank. So we parked Henry up on the side of the road, slightly raised up at the front to ensure the fuel in the side tank sloshed downwards, and started the pump. We also started a timer

Assuming a pump rate of 2.2L every minute and an average fuel consumption of 8km per litre, given we knew from the gauge that the main tank was a quarter full, we needed the side tank to keep pumping for at least 9 minutes to make sure we had just enough fuel to make it to the next fuel station at the border. 10 minutes would be better and I wanted it to go to 12 minutes just to be sure – to cater for detours or, more likely, difficult road conditions reducing our fuel consumption.

We pumped. We timed. We waited.

James undid the fuel cap and listened to make sure he could hear the fuel pumping through – the pump doesn´t stop when the side tank is empty, it keeps running dry then breaks! There was a comforting rushing, gurgling sound coming from the main tank.

We paced. We hummed to ourselves. We watched the timer.

1 minute gone, 2 minutes….5 minutes, 8 minutes….9 minutes! Too close for comfort but still going.

10 minutes…we looked at each other….11 minutes….12 minutes….I started to breath again.

14 minutes….15 minutes….18 minutes….then the gurgling slowed, the rushing sound stopped and we hit the off button. Then we cheered!

18 minutes gave us nearly 40 litres, twice as much as we thought we had been carrying. That gave us a total of 65 litres including what had been left in the main tank which, assuming the roads were decent all the way, should give us just over 500km and we had just under 400km to go.

We jumped back in with grins on our faces and headed for the border.

The road was long and straight but fairly easy going. Our view hardly changed for 3 hours

But after the recent rains we had a bit of fun padding in some deep puddles!

We had seen more of Namibia that most Namibians….

From vast rolling plains

To towering mountains

Windswept deserts

To remote beaches

Breathtaking waterfalls

And even some vineyards

Getting up close and personal with more animals than most people see in a life time

Including some amazing cats

And meeting some of the warmest, friendliest people in the world

We had felt completely at home and reinforced our hope to come back and settle here one day. But our nomad journey was still only just beginning and we had butterflies in our stomachs as we raced towards our future and into Botswana….