When we left Sossus we started travelling into the direction of Windhoek, as we had a camera problem to sort out. We made a compulsory stop at Solitaire to have enjoy their renowned apple strudel and coffee. Although there is a funky feel about the place with the now familiar collection of old petrol pump, car carcasses and other knick-knacks, the apple strudel was unfortunately nothing special… more like a South African apple crumble and very average at that.
We continued through the grassy and rocky desert landscape with long, straight roads ribboning over the endless succession of hills.
We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn: another special photo op for Trokkie!
As by then it was late afternoon, we started looking for a place to sleep and found the perfect spot somewhere on the Gaub pass. Spectacular setting!
Next morning was a repeat of the landscape towards the Gamsberg Pass with weird rock formations sitting at the edge of rock strewn desert plains. We even saw another ‘table mountain’.
On this beautiful and quiet morning we stopped for a coffee break somewhere in a dry riverbed along the road. I love grasses, so yes,… I took the opportunity to take some pics… of grass!
Soon we hit the Gamsberg Pass with its beautiful mountain ranges and rocky valleys. Shortly after we passed over the Pass, we saw the HESS telescope from afar: an array of imaging atmospheric telescopes. (sorry bad pic – we were far to far away). As you can only visit this with prior permission, we only could look at it from a distance.
The last stretch towards Windhoek was through a yellow hilly landscape that looked as if someone had stuck feather dusters upside down across the hills!
At one stage we saw another expedition vehicle stopped a distance away and when we tried to figure out why they had stopped, we saw a few gemsbok on the road side of the fence. We’ve seen it often before: various kind of buck that have found a gap in the fence, find themselves on the road side and when a car comes, the animals get into a panic trying to get back to safety behind the fence. This situation was no different. Although we only focused on the one gemsbok fighting it out with the fence, we presume that the other gemsbok also eventually found a way in (or away).
That was our last excitement before we hit Windhoek.
Click on the photo to watch the clip on instagram
Seeing we had to tackle our camera issue (dust from the Fish River hike), we had looked up where we could find a camera shop in Windhoek and let Miss GPS brings us to the right spot. The shop was situated in a small shopping centre and we decided to park there for the night.
As we have the habit by now… we went to have a beer at the local sports bar, Benchwarmers, and arrange with the manager that we would stay put in their parking lot: no drinking and driving! They were very happy to see us… they had only opened 2 nights before! As the Belgian Grand Prix was showing on TV, we decided to have a beer and watch the race. Unfortunately, due to bad weather the race was eventually stopped after many delays and only two rounds.
By then we had met Quinten and Vera and between another drink or two they invited us for a braai and meet up with a friend who’s very good in film making. They seem to run the Feel Good Namibia channel on Youtube.
On Monday morning we quickly got the camera stuff sorted by Mike and Michael of MicamNamibia and stayed put in the parking lot for the rest of the day to work on website and other stuff, hoping to get word from Vera and Quinten soon.
The following morning we got on the road to see the sights of Windhoek.
Although we were able to visit the Independence museum, with great views from the restaurant on the top floor, various other places (like the Kristus Kirche and the Alte Fest (Old Fort)) were closed due to covid. It seems the Old Fort might have been closed for much longer, because it looked a bit in a state of disrepair.
Seeing we had just recently travelled through diamond (and other mining) country, we popped in at the National Earth Sciences museum.
We learned some more about Namdeb, the Sperrgebiet and other minerals and gemstones of Namibia. One exhibit (pic left) showed a helicopter with something that looked very much like the “thing” we had seen dangling from a helicopter while we camped in Springbok. We were wondering if it might have been the same. It seems to be geophysical survey equipment.
Later in the day we received a message from Vera and we figured they actually had a very full agenda and it seemed difficult to pinpoint a date.
We decided to get stuck in town for just a few more days (the idea to possibly get a free video shoot was appealing) and found a camping ground- with internet- right in the middle of town: Urbancamp. That was a spoil and a half without the pricetag! It was a very cool and funky camping ground with beautiful facilities. We celebrated our First anniversary on the road with Trokkie with a glass of bubbly!
The following day we got another message from Vera that they would be busy all the way up to Sunday. That would mean for us to stick around another three to four days in Windhoek… and we hadn’t really planned for that. So we thanked them for their generous offer but we couldn’t really stick around for that long. Eventually we decided to move on, the next day.
We visited the National Gallery on our way to the shops and although there were a few art works that were nice and to our taste, most didn’t appeal as they had heavy socio-political undertones.
We did some last shopping and, on recommendation of son-in-law Patrick and friend Marius, went for lunch at Joe’s Beerhouse.
So happy we did that, because this place is just epic!
After another hour or so driving around for diesel and finding the right air time, we eventually left Windhoek in the afternoon, meandering again through the yellow rolling hills dotted with the ‘feather duster’ trees
By then it was about 3pm and we decided to take the C28 to the start of the Bosua pass some 70-80 km’s outside of town and park there. The first 30-40 km’s are tar road so that went fast enough, but then the road changed again to gravel/ dirt road. I kinda want to rather call them dust roads, because you see cars coming from miles away. You see the dust plume before you ever see the car! Luckily this road didn’t seem too busy: maybe 5 cars on the 2 hours we travelled out of Windhoek.
Then we pulled of the road just past a cattle grid, in view of a farm house deeper in the fields, but obviously they were not too worried about this big thing parking on the road.
We had something easy to eat and went to bed!
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Windhoek