Solitaire to Windhoek

In preparing for this self-drive portion of our trip, we read about being careful on the roads, trying to drive during daylight hours if possible, and most importantly - whenever you see a petrol station - fill up!! Even if you don't need the gas, because this is Africa and it is common for gas stations to simply run out of gasoline. You would have thought we would have taken all of these excellent recommendations. But you can already tell that we did not give this advice a lot of weight, since we already indicated that on our first day driving (from Swakopmund to the Naukluft mountains), we screwed around long enough that we drove the last hour in the dark. After enjoying our 2nd day in Sossusvlei-Sesriem, we decided it would be nice to start the drive and arrive at our hotel in mid-afternoon to enjoy a relaxing afternoon. We headed to the gas station convenience store in Sesriem for a cold drink before driving to Solitaire for the night, which is about 80km away. As we sat outside, looking at the gas pumps, we discussed buying petrol, but decided "nah, let's just wait until Solitaire", because we would be going to the gas station anyway when we go buy more apple pie from Moose. With that we hopped in the car, getting quite excited for our next bakery visit. We passed some beautiful scenery- we particularly liked this set of hills and nicknamed them the marble fudge cake mountains.


We received quite the reality check that we were clearly in Africa when we pulled into Solitaire and were told there was no petrol - they ran out. But maybe, the petrol truck would be in tomorrow morning, or maybe in the afternoon. Key word, maybe. This was not our proudest moment, as two people who like to consider themselves "smart" travelers. Waiting for the possibility of a petrol truck the next day was not an option for us, as we intended to leave very early in order to get our rental car back to Windhoek by noon. And it wasn't an option to get petrol on the way, because we would run out before the next petrol station, 200km away.


So, we got in the car and drove back to Sesreim, since we had enough petrol to get there, and it was the only petrol station within range. Of course we made sure we had enough energy for the drive by visiting Moose's bakery - chocolate brownies and blueberry cake today. We laughed at our dumb move and said oh well, more time in the car. But as we got closer to Sesreim, we started getting a bit nervous that maybe they didn't have fuel there either. After all, we had been at the station, but couldn't say we remembered actually seeing cars refueling. Luckily, they did have fuel. We filled up, drove back to Solitaire and arrived at our hotel about 2-1/2 hours later than planned. At that point, we were so happy to have a full tank and to be out of the car.


On a side note, we bought a CD in South Africa of African musicians and were hoping to listen to it in the car. Well, there was no CD player but surprisingly, it did have a USB jack which meant that we could use our iPod. The interface was unusual: we had to choose the music from the stereo and not from the iPod controls. However, it somehow reorganized the music into some playlists using a method that we were never able to decipher, except for one small commonality- 98% of the songs it chose were the worst songs on the iPod, and many of them I didn't even know I (Hugh) had. My iPod has a wide variety of music: a former roommate (Doug) combined all of his, mine and Rob E's music together and that is what is on my iPod. I squarely blame them for the abundance of poor tracks. Why this is relevant right now is because of the poor petrol decision, we now had over two extra hours to spend fast forwarding through the iPod. Our final night we stayed at the Solitaire Guest Farm, which Betsy chose for convenience, and we thought it was going to be a pretty non-descript place. As Hugh read the info booklet in our room, we learned that the guest farm is involved in wildlife conservation, and specifically cheetahs. Adjacent to the guest farm is a 500 hectare enclosure to rehabilitate cheetahs, preparing them for a return to the wild. We found out that they take guests into the enclosure to visit with the cheetahs. We quickly debated the importance and cost of getting back to Windhoek with the rental car in time vs. seeing cheetahs up close. So, the next morning we were driven into the cheetah pen. They tracked the cheetah using the radio collars until we got close. Then we got out of the car and walked on foot until we found them. First we found two females lying together under a bush. We were within 15' of them, which was really exciting. Then one of them stood up suddenly - we quickly got nervous until she started stretching and yawning. Later, we found a male but he was much deeper in the bushes. The fourth cheetah they had in the enclosure apparently does not let them get close and is always staying away and well hidden.


Now it was time to head towards Windhoek, which meant one last visit to see Moose; here with a fresh batch of apple pie. He actually was a happy gregarious person, Betsy just had bad timing with her photo.


This last portion of the drive was supposed to be easy. After traveling through desert (in the dry season) for the last few days, we were not expecting to have rivers to cross in our little car. Luckily, our little car made it safely, but not without a lot of apprehension and a bit of planning the best way to tackle the water.


We spent a day and a half in Windhoek and got ready to fly to the other coast for our next adventure: Mozambique. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Namibia