Well… we’re still in Oshakati waiting for our visas to Angola. Will we get them? Who knows…
The consulate is just around the corner so we check everyday, but so far all we hear is “Check again tomorrow”. Argh!!! We’re being patient but everyone has their limits.
We’ve setup our ‘base camp’ at the back of a crumbling hotel. There are no campsites in Oshakati so this is the best we could do. At least there’s access to hot showers and cold beer! The town itself is nothing to write home about either. Like most African affairs it’s got plenty of bars and hair salons, coz the guys love their beer and the women love their hair

It’s our fifth week in Namibia. We’ve done around 5,000km and it’s pretty much all been on dirt roads. Namibia is one of the world’s least densily populated countries. It can be a wild and barren place where only the occasional, ostrich, impala, springbok or kudu crosses your path. The burning sun brings with it the threat of heatstroke, while the night brings out hungry lions! We always setup camp before sunset and once we’ve eaten, don’t come out of the tent until morning.

As we mentioned before, the track from Ruacanna to Epupa Falls (along the crocodile infested Kunene River) was one hell of a challenge. According to the Lonely Planet guide the 150km distance should be covered in around 12 hrs (that’s in the dry season). This being the wet season we completed it in just over two days! The views of Eupupa Falls were worth it though…

So too were the Himba people we met along the way…

From there we rode to Opuwo and then onto Orupembe via route D3707, where we spent a blisteringly hot Easter Sunday in front of the only shop in the village (beer in hand)…

Feeling rejuvinated it was onto Puros via a stretch of landscape that can only be described as riding across the moon. There were also severe and relentless corrugations. It’s a mystery that the bike (along with us) got through it in one piece! At Puros we were told by the locals that we’d just missed a herd of desert elephants that had passed through town. So we didn’t get any snaps of elephants this time, but we did see plenty of Herero women, wearing their traditional Victorian dresses with headgear that is meant to resemble cow horns. Apparently cows are a sign of wealth for the Herero tribe and they’re really fond of them. We suspect that a guy calling his wife a cow just wouldn’t have the same affect as in the west

A Herero woman in front of a traditional hut in which they live…

So, after five days spent in the bush (having scorpions for company) and without a proper shower, we rode back into the familiar surroundings of Oshakati. Iza must have picked up some bug while out on the road because she fell sick. She did a test for malaria but it showed up negative. Nevertheless, we’ve started taking anti-malaria pills again.

Hopefully our next post will be from Angola. Only time will tell…