What I love: New Zealand

Puhutekawa trees in flower, stinging red against shady green leaves, lining the streets and filling the parks. New Zealand's unlikely symbol of Christmas (yes, they're red like poinsettias, but where is the snow?)

Caravan (caramel/vanilla) milkshakes at Fidel's, a heady mix of indulgence and cool hipsterdom at the top of Cuba Street. Watching the trendy boys skateboarding down the street, the op-shop-dressed girls flaunting their tattoos and piercings.

Flat Whites at Felix, and any of the other cafes sprinkled liberally across a town where Starbucks thankfully can't get a grip. There always seems to be a fern leaf cocoa-ed onto the milk foam, and sometimes there is a chocolate fish (or fush).

Blue sky, blue water, the promise of penguins and dolphins in the bay, a stretch of sea put to good use: swimming, sailing, canoeing, and a matchless view to the far mountains thrown in. You can't beat Wellington on a good day.

Hobbit obsession taken to another level: an overused Gandalf welcoming visitors to the cinema, dwarves scrambling across the roof of the post office headquarters, hobbits plastered on placards, an invitation to orcs, trolls and wizards at the local bank.

Corn fritters, all hot and chewy, with sweet chilli sauce and a pile of fresh green salad. Only one amongst many superb New Zealand Sunday brunch choices, with pancakes, eggs Benedict, full English, burritos - the best breakfast ideas from around the world, handily collected in one menu.

The Tui - a bird with a song like a broken gramophone, a beautiful tune ending in a horrid screech.

Christmas in summer; I am a grinch, but Christmas on the beach, with barbies and sun, swimming and ice cream, that's a Christmas idea I can get behind.

Three degrees of separation - Everyone seems to know everyone else, or is friends with a mate of a cousin of a colleague of everyone else. It makes for easy connections, for mutual help, a common purpose. It makes for nosy neighbours, too, I expect.

Cairo

Dogs barking, car horns tooting, horses' hooves clip-clopping on tarmac, the whistle of the traffic police. 

Cairo is Cairo, ever noisy, ever hazy, ever warm. Underneath the easily distinguished high notes lies the bass line: the steady stream of car engines, the wailing of traditional music, the bumpy beat of Arab-pop from the brightly lit barges on the Nile below our hotel window. Cutting though the haze over the water the orange streetlights, decorative strings of fairy lights in blue, red, white, purple and green pulse with an inner rhythm. Reflections of hotel up-lighters shimmer on the rippled water surface below concrete facades topped by the names of hotel chains (Sofitel, Novotel, Four Seasons) and iconic penthouse restaurants. 

It is a pleasure to be stepping out of the air-conditioned airport arrivals hall into the sewage scented, heavy air, into my spiritual home - as Stuart calls it. "What is it about Arab countries that you like so much?" he asks me as the taxi weaves drunkenly between motorbikes, trucks and bashed-up cars through the dark streets. It's dark, yes, it's 9pm already, but wherever there is a flash of light there is colour: neon strips lighting fruit piled high on low tables, lurid packets of cheap goods teetering by the side of a tiny shop, car mechanic workshops, magazine and cold drink sellers. There are people talking by the side of the road, women walking arm in arm, some with and some without headscarves; there are broken down cars in the middle lane, some blokes gathered around peering into the engine bay, hazard lights flashing; there is washing hanging from rickety lines below high windows set into crumbling walls; heroic wall paintings depicting pharaohs marching with revolutionaries, a spray painted slogan: No to SCAF (the dictator-era military council); a medieval citadel rubs up next to a 60s brutalist housing development, ancient walls looming over water-stained wrecks. There is chaos and there is life. 

I have been feeling dull, leaving first Brighton yesterday and today London.  But then the plane descended into Cairo, the city laid out in orange lights under a misty night sky. Busy and calm at the same time, there is so far no indication of unrest, of demonstrations, of protest. I am suddenly gripped by a great interest in finding out how people here feel, how they think of what is going on in their country, how they see the future. 

Cork and water

One of my favourite summer event in London is the Serpentine pavilion. In its 12th year, the surprisingly permanent-looking structures are erected in the spring and dismantled in the autumn. They are variously strange and awe-inspiring. This year's is a reference to the pavilions that have come before. An archaeological dig of sorts, the 12 pillars represent the past structures, while geometric cork blocks wrap around the remnants: leftover cables, plinths, foundation pieces. All is covered by a flat metal disk collecting rain water, making visible the ground water that normally remains underground. How appropriate in this deluge of a summer!

Best of all, stools shaped as champagne corks. A hint?

 

Boris Bikes

Boris Bikes ready to go at Hyde Park

At last- a day without rain. For weeks it seemed as if spending the summer in London was a really bad idea for someone who eshews socks and umbrellas. I am not a fan of weather in general, preferring the bland simplicity of Dubai's perma-sunshine to the chopping and changing of London days, where rain is followed by blinding sun by lowering grey clouds by howling winds. It's July, and finally I am confident that I can go out and not catch a cold. A perfect day to take a Boris bike for a spin.

What is a Boris bike?

Barclay's Bikes, as they are properly called, are clunky upright bikes, built like tanks (23 kg, chain and mud guards, puncture-proof tyres, built-in dynamo, brakes and gears courtesy of Shimano) and liberally labelled with the blue and white logos of Barclay's sponsorship. Boris bikes are named after the London mayor who introduced them in 2010. They are niftily designed to withstand daily punishment by tourists as well as commuters and casual users, with hiring prices cleverly planned to encourage short trips over day-long tours. As an addition to the tube/train/bus network of central London it is to the designer's credit that they are so popular that on a sunny day they are impossible to come by.

Find a station

So how do you use one of these chunky bikes? Where do you pick one up? How do you pay for the ride? As with many activities lately, it all starts with an app. Barclays themselves have designed a very functional iPhone and Android app that looks for docking stations in the vicinity, tells me how many bikes and spaces are available, even lets me plan a ride. At a docking station I can pay for a bike, check the map and dock my bike when I'm finished with my trip.

Barely a bike left...

Card or key?

I am an annual member for £45 per year, so I have a key to quickly free a bike. Before I joined the scheme, I slipped a debit or credit card into the payment point to print out a 5 digit keycode to use on the bike rack's keypad. Having a key has made grabbing a bike so much faster, rather than having to click through the multiple choice screens, accepting terms and conditions, choosing the number of bikes, and receiving the I can be on the bike in seconds.

Planning where to go

The iPhone app lets me plan my trip. I can choose from speedy, steady or quiet route types, and Google map will show me the way. A nifty built-in timer will tell me when my free 30 minutes are up. It would be nice to have turn-by-turn speech instructions, so that I wouldn't have to stop at junctions to check the map or try to memorise the route, and a phone holder in the handlebar would also stop me from getting lost, but built-in GPS units on each bike may be too much to ask for.

Set it up

The bike, for all it's clunkiness, can be adjusted to fit. I set the bike to my preferred height by the numbers on the saddle stalk. There is a holder for a bag welded to the handlebars. No back wheel rack means I can't carry heavy shopping or multiple bags, so I have started to travel light - and avoid wearing trailing scarves or bulky jackets lest I garrotte myself in transit. I check the brakes, pedals and bell and off I go.

The welded bag carrier

Join the Maelstrom

I am ready to join London's crazy traffic. Londoners are more competitive than most other city dwellers I have encountered. While in other countries road traffic can be a free-for-all, a mess of different driving styles like Dubai, hindered by a complete lack of signage like Addis Ababa or just a general flouting of the rules like Nairobi, London has an air of repressed anger funneled into intense competition between the different classes of travellers. Everyone uses and abuses the rules to their own benefit: taxis dash down bus lanes, cyclists run red lights to get the jump on motorised transport, buses squeeze their huge bulks into gaps in the traffic flow. Pedestrians are hyper-alert to any movement around them, as neither the cyclists nor the motorised faction take any prisoners. None of the dreamy jaywalkers of Joburg CBD, if you are walking in London you better have your wits about you.

Throwing a group of amateur cyclists into the mix has interesting results, specially since - unlike other first world cities - London has barely any dedicated bike lanes. Marking yourself out as a Boris biker means labelling yourself ignorant of the unwritten rules of London traffic: every second counts and there is always someone who is willing to overtake you. Don't hope for mercy, because getting there fast is serious business. Boris bikers often dawdle, they may be lost, or vague as to their direction, they are inexperienced cyclists. Their bikes are heavy and unwieldy, so they are slow to react. And the stigma of the Boris biker can not be hidden, it is a blue flag of shame.

The blue flag of shame

One thing I have learnt from the Boris bike scheme is that Londoners are desperate for a new, easier way to get around town. Taxis are expensive, buses slow and the Tube crowded and hot. Commuting by bike is not an option for most Londoners, the distance from their home to the office is just too great and traffic on the main trunk roads into town too dangerous. But for getting round the city you can't beat the bike. I would be reluctant to lock up my bike in public in London, lest it is stolen or removed, but the Boris bikes are designed to be placed in racks rather than used all day. The first thirty minutes of each trip are free, with prices rising steeply for longer journeys, thus discouraging bike hogging. No daytrips along the canal with this scheme, or leaving the bike outside while dashing into a shop, but definitely a quick dash from Oxford Street to Hyde Park for lunch. For casual travellers, or non-Londoners who just want to go for a spin, the system is perfect.

Problems

The bike scheme was intoduced in July 2010. To begin with the fully automated system of hiring and replacing bikes was flaky. The scheme is run by Transport for London, who control all local public transport aspects. But the actual operation of the scheme is outsourced to a private company, and the setup costs heavily sponsored by Barclays. The various layers of management initially resulted in an unreliable process, with people complaining of not being able to hire bikes and being charged random amounts if they did manage to get one. Two years later, and running 8.300 bikes and 15.000 docking stations with a recent expansion eastwards, most complaints relate to the incredible success of the scheme, which regularly results in bikes being unavailable, specially in the West End where pressure comes from Hyde Park tourers and West End party people heading out of Zone 1.

The logistics of the scheme are dazzling: broken bikes need to be identified and fixed (bikes get an inspection on average every two weeks, and numbers of destroyed or stolen bikes barely reach double-digits after two years); bikes need to be relocated to busy areas when a wave of customers have left them stranded in the wrong part of town (the company uses electric vehicles for this so as not to negate the carbon savings from all the cycling); vast numbers of payments have to be processed properly with custom hardware (keys, docking stations) and unreliable humans in the mix.

The future

London's bike scheme is not the first in the world. Many other cities have offered impromptu hire bikes to their population, from Amsterdam to Montreal, many with much superior biking infrastructure, prioritising human-powered traffic over cars. Such is the pressure on transport options in London that any new choice was going to be taken up enthusiastically, by commuters as well as casual users and visitors. The London scheme is simple and effective, now it just needs to bring about a shift in priority towards cycling versus driving. London has shown that this can be done with the success of the congestion charge, gently but firmly forcing car traffic out of the centre of London. If the next step is to pedestrianise the city and focus on good bike routes, London could amost become pleasant to navigate. I am certainly a fan, alreay regretting that I brought my own bike to London with me.

A Walk in the Forest

 

Meanwhile, back in Germany spring has sprung. Crossing continents and seasons, we get a chance to wander from autumn in the South African Karoo, with its freezing starry nights and clear still days, to the fresh green of suburban German parks, tame and organised for the enjoyment of dog walkers and weekend cyclists.

I take a walk through the strips of forest and fields bordering Recklinghausen, a medieval town turned mining centre in the industrial heartland of the Ruhrgebiet. Here slag heaps and steels mills rub up against horse paddocks and wheat fields, the old heavy industry threaded through with recovering wilderness and neat parks.

Mark, my walking companion, has lived here all his life, jogging, dog walking and mountain biking from Düsseldorf to Dortmund. When I ask how he knows where the nice walking is and how he doesn't end up in the grotty industrial estate by accident, he explains that there are regional hiking organisations ensuring the quality of the walking paths all across the country. A 'Wegwart' (path orderly) regularly hikes all the routes to check the signage, looks for fallen trees after rains or storms, controls the cleanliness of the path, marks unruly plant growth. This person is responsible for renewing the complex routing signs, which distinguishes between loops, A to B routes and long-distance tracks. They also record any maintenance work and damage for the local council to rectify.

Mark tells me that to become a Wegwart one as to attend seminars where one learns the correct way to attach a route sign to a lamp post, the appropriate paint to use for marking potholes, the minimum requirements for safe passage to avoid lawsuits from injured hikers. An up and coming Wegwart has to pass an exam or two to show their competence. It they conduct themselves properly they are eventually given expanded route networks and may even be allowed to train other wannabe Wegwarts. It strikes me that the German hiking groups have managed to turn a mildly enjoyable hobby - going for a walk - into an unpleasant chore, complete with studying for exams and the stress of having to work at what was once relaxation. How very German.

 

Since it's Mayday I have discovered another strange German tradition: troops of friends (mostly youngsters) drag a wheeled trolley around with them while drinking beer and listening to the loud music blaring from the stereo on the trolley. Apparently it's entertaining to walk around the neighbourhood and parks all day while drinking.

And last but not least we shop at the local farm store for freshly cut asparagus and new potatoes for our dinner. Asparagus season is taken very seriously here, with recipes traded as treasures, asparagus festivals and wines that match the most popular recipe of asparagus, new potatoes, slices of ham and Hollandaise sauce. A perfect combination, I think. And asparagus season is over far too soon, so we stuff ourselves at dinner time.

 

My home from the air

We went flying today, now that Stuart has his license current again. This is first time I have seen the Ruhrgebiet from the air. It's hard to describe how I felt, privileged and awed, surprised at the shape this conurbation takes from the air. Travelling around it on the ground, despite the frequent fields and parks, the Ruhrgebiet feels like a big city, Bottrop joined to Oberhausen which is inseparable from Essen, which is invisibly connected to Bochum, which slowly seeps into Dortmund and so on. From the air there really is no join at all, our navigation takes place along the grid of motorways and canals: the A2 to the North, the Rhine to the West, Ruhr to the South, and Dortmund airspace preventing us from going too far to the East. In between we discover a mass of surprises: The vast swathe cut by the Rhine-Herne canal which is mostly invisible from the road, a fat waterway filled with barges and edged by industrial sites, and the occasional marina;





Canal lock near Gelsenkirchen

I had no idea that they were still working mines, or related coal industry, and there they are, mine shaft elevators, smoking chimneys, black coal heaps. And right next to the filth vast fields are being shorn of their wheat, as if we weren't in the middle of an industrial belt. The local mountain scenery of slag heaps, those monuments to the local past consisting of steel making waste and toxic left overs of the coke industry are not as visible as I expected, as overwhelming as they are when driving along a road only to have a sudden hill rearing up off the plains. I guess landscape flattens out from this high angle. Those slag heaps that have been crowned by a post modern artifice like a wind turbine or Recklinghausen's horizon observatory stick out, the rest melt into the general park/forest/nature area, covered as they are in mature trees and other old vegetation.





Horizon observatory in Recklinghausen

 There were surprises like the extensive prison site right near the A42 motorway that no one has ever noticed before, or the strange industrial shapes of water towers, gas containers, coal trains and water clearance ponds. And bridges. There are many, across train lines, canals, rivers and roads, and many are architectural fancies with colourful lines and abstract swirls. Or naturalistic ones, like the dragon bridge in Recklinghausen.





Of course we spend some time house spotting, looking for my mum's house, my brother's. Our own is unfortunately directly below us as we approach finals on the airfield, therefore invisible. We missed many other places of interest, so there will be another flight soon.

And suddenly I am realising that this may, after all my professing that I am a European, a World nomad, that I don't belong to a place, after all that this may be my home. Although I am not sure yet.

The rest of the photos are here:

Location:Zeppelinstraße,Mulheim,Germany

From Norway to the Red Sea

Yet another ferry, I thought, oh great! Just what I need after the traumatic trip from Sudan to Egypt. But we had to cross the Red Sea to get from Egypt to Jordan, as the alternative (crossing through the tip of Israel at Eilat) would prevent us from going on to Syria: some Arab nations are not happy to see an Israeli stamp in your passport. So the ferry it had to be: if it meant getting out of Egypt asap, that was OK with me.

So we battled our way through yet another tangle of Egyptian border bureaucracy, taking 4 hours just to get clearance to leave - the process interrupted by prayer sessions, being given the runaround by officials with nothing better to do than sit around drinking tea and held up by yet another stamp requiring baksheesh. So when we were finally allowed to drive up to the ferry we were starving. As it looked like we were only three or four cars from getting on board, Stuart and Alex wandered up to find a good lunch spot while I waited as cars and lorries were backed into the mouth of the ro-ro ferry. As it turned out I had two hours to contemplate not only the mystery of having to reverse cars into a ferry expressly designed for cars to roll on at one end and off at their destination but also the strange sight of a Norwegian ferry in this hot and dusty Red Sea port.

Yes, this used to be the Kristiansand, later the Skagen, which, after being superseded in the Baltic by fancier models, has found a home here in Nuweiba, shuttling passengers back and forth between Egypt and Jordan. When I finally got to drive on to the car deck and wandered up to the passenger levels, it was slightly surreal to see the original names scratched out from the signage to be replaced with the boat’s new name of “M/S Shehrazade”, although there were still signs advising customers that due to Danish customs regulations, the restaurant would be closed until the ship left the port. Emergency evacuation signs in English and German were overlaid with photocopies in Arabic, and there were other printed signs exhorting us to “show your opinion to get your rights”. Not sure that would go down so well with Egyptian customs. We never did work out what those were about.

After spending some time in the overfilled cafe, loud with Arabic television and heaving with smoking Jordanian truckers (all other passengers apart from us whiteys were kept up on deck), we managed to score a ghostly empty restaurant room, decorated with Skandiwegian summer scenes, where we holed up with our laptops for the duration.

  

Another milestone

We have boarded the Wadi Halfa ferry from Sudan to Egypt. The fact that it's a few days before an Eid holiday is good and bad. Good, because the ferry is quiet and we are avoiding the crazy rush of people and goods being loaded that everyone warned us about before. Bad because we had to leave Sally behind since she goes on a separate barge and that only runs when there is cargo coming from Aswan. Because of the holiday all trading has stopped so no barge. It's all very frustrating having to leave her parked in the customs compound, but Magdi has promised to look after her and drive her onto the barge when it finally comes.

The view from our cabin

As it turns out the ferry isn't so bad. The cabin has air con and is cleaner than some hotel rooms we've slept in, there is power and we are in the right side of the boat for Abu Simbel, which we should pass this evening. There's space on the deck to walk around, and we brought food and water to keep ourselves in good spirits. Now all we have to do is get to Aswan and wait for normalcy to return so we can get our car/home back.

Ethiopia Roundup

Arriving in Ethiopia, after the Marsabit road ordeal, was like returning to the real world from a wild and (potentially) dangerous frontier. On the Ethiopian side of the border there were hotels and tarred roads, and the metropolis of Addis Ababa beckoned. We had not made it to Lake Turkana - another time - but we had got as far as the remote and mysterious land of Abyssinia. And it defied all our expectations. We had heard conflicting views from fellow travellers coming south: it's amazing, beautiful, exotic, with friendly people and delicious food. Or: Ethiopians are horrid, they hate foreigners, stone throwing and pushy begging is the norm. Ok, so everyone either loved or hated Ethiopia, everyone had a strong opinion. What was it going to be for us? From Moyale with its dreary hotel we drove straight up north, not looking left (Omo valley) or right (Bale mountains), and finally stopped at Awassa, a workaday town on the edge of a Rift valley lake. Another few hours hop took us to Lake Langano (there is a sting of lakes following the Rift Valley south), where we finally found a place we wanted to stay for a few days. After getting the car fixed up in Addis Ababa and procuring more cash in preparation for ATM-less Sudan (http://rabbitproductions.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-money-lessons.html) we left for our version of the historic northern loop, and the mystical rock-hewn churches of Lalibela (http://rabbitproductions.blogspot.com/2009/11/lalibela.html). Leaving the Rift Valley behind us for the last time we scaled the highlands to Gonder and a few quiet days at Lake Tana with Tim and Kim (www.timandkimvillage.com).

And that was Ethiopia. We spent almost three weeks, but it felt like days. As it turned out the people were stunningly helpful once we got to talk to them, but if we just stopped by the road to look at the view or dive into a shop, we would be crowded, people staring with no sense of allowing for personal space, and once we did have a stone thrown at us from nowhere, and good shots that the Ethiopians are (they use slingshots to keep the birds out of the fields) they hit one of our new solar panels. So there is a weird disconnect between people who couldn't do enough for us (hello, Global Hotel), people who gave us their insight into Ethiopia (Thanks, Tim and Kim, Getaye, Alex, Zabene, Zegaye, Daniel) and the anonymous stone thrower together with the never-ending phalanx of children shouting "Gimme Money!" Like many other things in Ethiopia, it remains a mystery.

Ethiopia was surprising vistas of mountains, endless hills and valleys covered with fields and grazing; it was eroded volcanic plugs sitting in the midst of fertile lands like squatting giants; it was another beginning for the Nile (the Blue Nile this time) from Lake Tana, which carries 90% of the water that keeps Egypt alive; it was tea coloured lakes languishing placidly in the valley of the Northern Rift, surrounded by nothing much more than silence. Ethiopia was the last we saw of the Rift Valley, a geographical feature we had followed north ever since we arrived at the slice of water that is Lake Malawi, and what a goodbye it was: twisting Italian-built roads took us up and up and up to the cool and windswept highlands, looming mountainsides tamed by the need for farm land with terraces and small irrigation projects, coffee farms with their drying frames, and endless villages along the road, houses fenced by cactus or acacia hedges, herders with goats, donkeys, humpbacked cows, camel caravans and the ever present women carrying water containers from the pump to their homes.


Ethiopia was also surprisingly developed. The road infrastructure was new and well-maintained and where the road was unfinished we saw constant work: graders preparing surfaces for new tar; men and women tightly wrapped against the wind and dust carrying large rocks to the side of the road; diggers far below chomping holes for drainage and culverts - a strange mix of high and low tech. Most of the country seemed electrified, judging by the ever present cables running alongside the roads and into the hills. In fact, when we were in Lalibela, it was a surprise to see the outline of the village by the lamps shining in the windows, a sight we had forgotten since the long-ago days of Namibia. The mobile network is so-so, but considering the remoteness of many places it's amazing it exists at all. Since the internet relies on mobile networks, we were cut off from our web fix for ten days, giving us a nicely disinterested view of the world for a while. We saw school children in uniforms every day (although we found out that schools teach in two shifts, which can't be good for the quality of teaching). As opposed to most of Africa we found that pretty much anywhere had running water, but in keeping with most of Africa, hot water was erratic and water pressure, well let's just say it was not all that.

Ethiopia is unique in Africa: a script with 200 characters that looks like something JRR Tolkien might have invented; octagonal churches topped by elaborate crosses and filled with fantastical frescoes like involved comic book stories; very varied building styles, from huge rondavels to two storey Tukuls, from groups of neat square huts surrounded by high walls with elaborately painted front gates to peaked reed domes topping the central house in a compound, as well as faded Italianate rows of flats and glass fronted skyscrapers in Addis Ababa. Its people, half African, half Arabic with a different look altogether: lighter skinned with angular features, tall and handsome in a new way; a long long history (dating all the way back to King Solomon) intersecting with the empires of Egypt, the rise of Christianity, with Portuguese as well as Indian influences, mentioned by the Greeks and Romans as the faraway land of Punt or Abyssinia. Ethiopia has a palpable identity we have missed in previous countries with their indelible impression of colonialism and not much remembered history before that. Here there is a church that has been keeping records for a thousand years, there are artefacts from former glorious times, there was a royalty until recently that counted its (imaginary, but nevertheless respected) roots from the mystical love affair of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Like Egypt, Iraq and China, there is a pride in having been one of the first great civilisations, and in this case we had the added pleasure in finding a culture that has not been turned into clichés (it's hard to look at Pharaonic culture and not see The Mummy).

People We Meet Part 3: The Overland Tourists

We call their tents pimples. They usually show up late and leave very early, and they make such noise that they wake every honest sleeping camper. They travel from Nairobi to Cape Town in 6 weeks and stop to take group photos at the equator. Their big trucks are orange, but manly with huge wheels and customised storage for kitchen equipment and tents. They are the overland trucks, carting the gap year youth of the Western world through the wilds of Africa. In the evenings the girls congregate in the toilets for make up sessions and the boys strut their stuff in their low hanging boxers, just like preparations at home for the Friday night clubbing experience. I wonder what these people carry in their luggage, because we certainly don’t have space for more than one decent outfit per person. At Guma lagoon they used all the hot water, and in the Mara we found ourselves listening to complaints about the shortness of the toilet breaks during the trip. At Track and Trail camp in Zambia a catastrophe was narrowly averted when a group of American youths cornered a passing elephant to take photos and refused to take the mock-charging and flapping ears seriously. A local ranger told them they could stay and eventually be trampled or slowly back away and show some more respect for the wild life.

Occasionally we meet groups of more mature travellers, a sign that overland trucking has become a more acceptable form of holiday travel. In Botswana we encountered the Rolling Hotel (above) which was novel in that the tourists didn’t have to put up their own tents, but slipped into a Japanese hotel style cubicle in the truck itself, a claustrophobic experience, I imagine, but it does keep you away from mosquitos and creepy crawlies.

Luckily they move on fast, so when they descend on us at a camp site or resort, we just have to stay put and they will be gone again. Now that we have reached the countries considered more volatile we have left these types of organised tours behind.

More power from the sun

Supplementing the power supplied by our second battery (to prevent the primary battery from being accidentally run down while charging laptops and such) has been an aim for a while now. We were constantly running into limitations of our admittedly large electricity needs, specially when we were parking up for a few days, so the engine couldn't recharge the additional battery. Our workaround consisted of a combination of incessant searching for mains power (not always easy in countries where even the power supply for locals isn't constant), always charging when on the move, and occasionally running the engine for a half hour when the inverter started beeping. It didn't help that the deep cycle battery was of lower capacity than we would have liked, and, as we later found out, wasn't a sealed unit, so at one point had actually run dry.

Ever since Maun in Botswana we were looking for solar panels to fit to the roof. Finding solar panels is not a problem in Africa per se, as there is a slow and steady development towards self sufficiency with electricity in the face of governments' inability to provide its citizens with a reliable power infrastructure. The problem is getting the right size and capacity to fit a car roof, where most panels are built to supply a household and be propped up on the ground. So we looked again in Lusaka, and in Dar es Salaam, but kind of gave up eventually.

At last, in the unlikely location of an upmarket shopping mall in the embassy district of Nairobi, while looking for a rechargeable torch, we came across a system just small enough and light enough in size and sturdy enough to withstand the bumpy roads, and now we are kitted out with a full 36 W set of three small panels screwed to the lid of one of our roof boxes, plugging into a controller and then into the new deep cycle battery we acquired in Marsabit.

Unfortunately the Ethiopian habit of throwing stones at passing cars meant that two days after finalising the wiring and making the setup work we got hit and cracked the glass cover on one of the panels, reducing our capacity. It's fixable, though, and luckily was the only stone throw we received.

People We Meet, Part 1: The Independent Travellers

So I promised that I would write about the people we meet on our travels, and now that we have been on the road for slightly over 100 days (yay!) I feel that we have met a good collection of different types of people, so I am going to write a little mini-series.

Let's start with the non-locals. There are a few varieties of those, one of which is the independent traveller (as opposed to the overland tourists, who require a separate post with their big trucks). We meet them at designated traveller hangouts like Fat Monkeys at Lake Malawi, Jungle Junction in Kenya and Eureka Camp near Lusaka. It’s usually a couple between 30ish and 50ish, who have put their jobs on hold to spend a year or more travelling. They drive a robust 4 wheel drive, or a huge MAN truck, or a bashed up old Defender, and they can spend hours discussing car fitouts, routes and favourite camp sites in a range of countries and continents. Some are driving the classic Cape to Cairo (or Cairo to Cape) route, while others loop down through West Africa and up the other side, while we have also met a few open-ended trips, where the plan really just consists of “a year in Africa, a year in Asia and then who knows.” Example:

Jan and Trevor - they left London in their kitted out Landrover for a gap year, driving through Europe, to Turkey and round the Med into the Middle East. We met them in Uganda where they were heading to Rwanda to finally arrive in South Africa at the end of the year. Trevor is a twitcher, so Stuart got on famously with him, as Jan and I were busy sharing movies and audiobooks from their terabyte drives. Entertainment is important on a long journey like this.

Poomba, aka Mandy and Jacques, had been on the road for 14 months when we met them at Fat Monkeys on Lake Malawi. They were heading back home to South Africa from Australia, having shipped the car to Novosibirsk to cross Asia and Europe. Their Land Cruiser was home made, and after such a long trip everything most definitely had its place.

The first big truck we encountered made quite an impression on us. Two German guys had dissolved their company to pay for a brand new truck to be fitted out so that they could go on a World tour. When we met them in Lusaka they had already spent a year dawdling their way down from Europe, planned to spend another year in Southern Africa before shipping the monster truck to South America and carrying on. They were so self sufficient, they looked like they may never return to stationery life.

The Black Hole and how I fell into it - and returned

It all started in Uganda. We had planned on going from Tanzania through the Serengeti to Rwanda and round Lake Victoria to Uganda. Instead, because our suspension broke, we had to go to Nairobi to get it fixed. This meant that our visit to Uganda (we scrapped Rwanda in the end) was a detour rather than another place on the route. Returning to Nairobi to meet up with Mark and Martina for their two week holiday we had another detour, going to the beach. Added to this the fact that we are half-way through the journey, and somehow I lost track of the spirit of travelling to a destination.

The messy route (see the blue line for the planned route)

Yes, we were moving from place to place; yes,we were seeing new things, but we kept looping round as if we had lost our way. A week of totally flopping out on the beach was just the last straw. With the ocean in front of us and a country we had spent the best part of 5 weeks in behind us it felt like we had become mired. From the start we had been all about the forward movement, the going North, the putting miles under our belt, the getting there. Now we were meandering around the fixed centre of Jungle Junction and we seemed to be unable to extract ourselves from its pull.

Long story short, we are off to Ethiopia via Lake Turkana tomorrow, a great big new adventure as we leave behind the relative civilisation of Kenya for the unknown North.

Uganda Roundup

When we worked out our route we had planned to travel from Tanzania North to Rwanda and Uganda, looping round Lake Victoria to enter Kenya from the west, but problems with the suspension prevented us from doing this. Instead we spent a few days in Kenya, heading up to the Lake and Uganda for a slow meandering arc returning us back to Nairobi after a couple of weeks. The result was that travelling in Uganda felt a bit aimless, being without a northward goal. The place still managed to get into my new top 3 country list (with Malawi and Namibia), for the amazing rain forest, the chilled people and the very funky monkeys (red-tailed, blue-tailed and black and white Colobus). We had no trouble to speak of, despite ongoing problems in the DRC next door and recent riots in Kampala related to changes in government.

Uganda also provided us with two new top ten campsites, a fab birthday treat for me and the fulfillment of one of Stuart's life ambitions, to see the mountain gorillas. We started to call Uganda the land of surprises, as it was so different from our expectations, and just when we thought we had worked out what kind of place it was, a new and unexpected vista opened in front of us.

Uganda was hills after hills after hills of green fertile farms, growing bananas, coffee, plantain and potatoes all mixed up together; it was riding our horses through the sugar cane fields and saying Jambo to every single child along the way, including stopping business at the local primary school; it was the perfect camp site and the wettest, a fabulous lake location where we got stuck due to the beauty and great company for far too long; it was also the frustration with badly-maintained sites that had so much going for them if someone just bloody well fixed the plumbing!; it was our first encounter with real rain forest, a green and dense mass of leaves, mushrooms and monkeys, being chased by the most evil mosquitos, struggling for air in the damp, cloying, hot, wet air; it was intense downpours which broke our awning and my patience, giving us clammy clothes and shoes for days and a great excuse for watching movies for a few days.

And then, after we decided that Uganda was pretty much a big lake and a lot of forest, we arrived at Queen Elizabeth National Park and discovered the Western Rift Valley, with its volcanos and crater lakes, great big hollows where we could watch elephants crossing the high grass way below us, where herds of Topi grazed among Uganda Kob, where water buffalo wallowed in grey damp patches until the layer of mud cracked off their hide, where pools of blue water shimmered against the salty edge separating wet from green, where we could see the next rain storm coming from an hour away across the acacia plains, a grey mass swallowing up the ground and the horizon.

Either we are getting more sociable or Uganda just has more interesting people, but we made some real cool new friends: a particularly good source was the Rwenzori guesthouse in Fort Portal, where we chatted with Donna the gorilla marketing lady from VSO, an auditor working on anti-corruption campaigns for USAid, some chimp researchers, an Israeli couple on holiday who entertained us with their horror story of getting Malaria on the second day of their trip, and the host himself, an opinionated Brit with fourteen years in Uganda and he was not holding back. We learnt a lot. Mustn't forget to mention the other overlanders, Trev and Jan, Anja and Jörg and Ben and Kate, fantastic company and deep wells of information, GPS tracks and ripped DVDs.

Border Crossings

Crossing into Kenya from Uganda, at Busia, was the usual mayhem. Goods trucks were parked in long rows down the main street waiting for their paperwork to clear. Young guys run up to the car to offer their services as middle men to handle our customs and visas for a fee. We learnt very early on, at Kazangula in Zambia, where the signs at immigration insist that no brokers are allowed to deal with the officials, that we didn't need or want someone helping us. As it turns out, at every single border crossing there is a very simple process: get the visa, sort out the car through customs, pay any taxes or fees, done - move on to immigration on the other side and repeat with other taxes to pay and other forms to fill in. That sounds easy, but of course is attended by uncertainty and chaos. Still, we wouldn't trust someone with our passports, our dollars, our car papers. Instead we found a place to park in the midst of trucks, soldiers, vendors selling cold drinks and snacks and officious looking men, and wandered off to find immigration to get our exit papers.

One thing that has been singularly lacking at the borders has been decent signage. There are any number of huts and containers serving as offices, forex shacks and barracks, but nowhere a clear sign who does what and where to go next. The best option for us in the beginning was to follow the overlanders in front of us and hope they knew what they are doing. Eventually we worked out to look for the distribution point of immigration forms, although those are sometimes just photocopied sheets, so that is not so easy either.

Once we have located immigration, we fill in forms that are never looked at again by another human being - first name, last name, passport details (which I know by heart by now), length of stay, mode of transport, contact details. Then we get scrutinised to make sure we match our passport photo and sometimes have to fill in a big ledger, too, and that's usually it. We haven't overstayed our visa anywhere yet, so I don't know what would happen in that case. I suspect a small dollar amount would take care of it.  

After immigration, customs. Stuart usually does that part. It means getting the carnet stamped to leave the country, and sometimes the payment of exit taxes. When we left Kenya, we had spent two days over our seven day transit limit and had to pay US$40 for road tax. No big deal as we hadn't spent anything coming into Kenya. Getting the car out of a country is usually also a pretty easy affair. No-one has so far even wanted to look at the car in case we were smuggling something, or even checked our insurance.

Before we started I thought that the border crossings would be day-long events, where our car gets taken apart Cold War style, our intentions are scrutinised and we might be sent back for lack of the right paperwork. As it turns out we are through much faster than the backpackers travelling by matatu or the overland trucks with their crowds of youths. May it stay like this for the rest of the journey.

Did I mention...

...that we had an accident? Yup, our first day driving in Nairobi, and we run into another car on a roundabout. I have in the past experienced some crazy drivers, I spent 2.5 years in the maelstrom of Dubai's motorways, mixing it up with multiple different driving cultures, and even drove a minibus in India once, but never have I experienced drivers with such nerves of steel. Normally one look at our bull bars and people tend to back off, so slowly but surely elbowing your way across a junction tends to work (they even managed to intimidate Joburg minibus drivers, a notoriously rude lot), but here everyone plays chicken and we blinked too late. The result was a huge dent and scratch down the other car and a little bit of paint to be scraped off our bull bar. Shame (as they say with a smirk in South Africa)!

Since we are mzungu the traffic warden who didn't witness the accident took one look at us and decided it was our fault, not the guy who pushed his Nissan (not so) Hardbody into us in his desire to cut across in front of us. This meant sorting out a replacement for his damaged door. There followed 4 hours of tense negotiations (thanks, Fred!) in a backyard smelling of rotten fish (fertiliser factory) until we managed to negotiate the cost of a replacement door for an already dented, fertiliser-smelling wreck of a Nissan ute down from US$1000 to $70, which was a bit more realistic. We have been more respectful of African drivers since, mainly because we suspect that any damage will always be our fault, and as the t-shirt says: "This mzungu's ATM is out of order."

How cool...

Is this pillow case. We're staying in a hotel tonight (I know, again, but it's not a patch on the Serena, and this still is a camping trip, mostly) and they are obviously a bit worried about bedding going missing, so the sheets are tagged. I want to steal my pillow case, but Stuart said I'm not allowed. So I took a picture instead. Cool, not?

The perfect campsite

The perfect campsite

We are in Uganda, country number 9, and staying at the Haven, a lodge near the source of the White Nile. It's raining for the first time on this trip, but this place is so fabulous, so comfortable that it could stand as the epitome of the perfect camp site. So here are the ingredients, which I have determined to be necessary for a great camp site after exhaustive research in 9 African countries, encountering the best and the worst that the tourist industry can come up with:

First the basics, the foundation if you will. There should be a lawn, green and fresh, covering the tent pitches, and we should be able to drive our car onto it as we have a roof tent and it's really annoying to have to look at the grass rather than be on it. The pitch should be nice and big, so that we can spread out with our other tent, our table and chairs and general kitchen acroutements (sp?). It helps if the ground is flat so we don't have to navigate back and forth for ages to find a good spot to park the car. It's nice to have a little border to separate us from the other campers, but not too high so we can't meet new friends. This lawn should be dotted with shade giving trees, just big enough to fit the car and the tent under, but without gooey fruit that drop on the tent and make a mess, or worse, without being a monkey sleeping tree as they tend to pee from a great height during the night. If the camp site looks out over an amazing valley, or a lake with gently lapping waves, or a similar view of great stunningness, that is an extra bonus. If we can see fish eagles hunting or elephants crossing the dried up riverbed or hippos grunting the day away, our life is complete.

Next come the facilities, and this is where many camp sites do badly. Toilets, to get the gross item out of the way first, don't have to be flushing, long drops are fine as long as the smell is under control, they are clean and airy and there is toilet paper. I have to praise Mushroom Farm (Malawi) here, where not only is the long drop nice smelling, but the product is composted and used on the organic vegetable garden. Showers don't need to be hot, although I would not have wanted cold showers in South Africa or Namibia in mid-winter. And most places could manage hot water if they took the Haven as an example, where the owner has installed solar panels for water heating, and even though we are in the rainy season now, there is always enough sun to have lovely hot showers. The thing that is essential with a shower, and often taken for granted, though, is water pressure. You can have as much water as you like, if it dribbles out of the shower head you are not going to get clean. And we have had many a shower lacking sufficient pressure, from Sesriem in Namibia to Aruba in the Maasai Mara. Personally I find good water pressure trumps fresh water, as I was happy to have a slightly salty shower (at Makadi Beach in Tanzania) or one that is a bit rusty (Green View Lodge, Mbeya), but when I am standing naked in the shower and turn the water on I like to see more than just a trickle. The shower room should be a decent size to facilitate getting dressed, although it doesn't have to be a private cubicle for the pitch (as we had in Swakopmund and El Toro, Botswana). It's nice but unnecessary. More important is that there is a good lock on the door and a bit of privacy. There should be no dusty corners where dead flies congregate, nor grubby edges making it impossible to put down my soap, and while on the subject of putting things down, a few hooks, a ledge and a bench outside to keep my clothes dry and my towel in reach are surprisingly often afterthoughts. Also, if there is a tap, it's good to be able to open it, and if the shower head doesn't fall on my head that also helps my cleaning enjoyment. German run camp sites like the Haven are remarkably consistent in providing good quality showers. Maybe it's our history of heavy engineering?

Next come the non-essential niceties. That includes water taps dotted round the tent sites, a sink for washing up, a washing line, and - for us most important - a power supply so we can sit and tap away at our laptops to our heart's content. Tables and benches, sometimes under cover, have been a specially useful addition, so we don't have to get our own tables and chairs out. Where there is a bar or restaurant there is often a nice view to sit and compute or capture footage while drinking a cold Savanna, and the bar staff is usually happy to provide us with electricity in exchange for us running up a bar tab.

Last but not least on our travels we have found security to be most important. It's a sad fact that we have had thefts from our car in two places, and both were not Nairobi car parks, which we have been warned about at great length, but camp sites. A fence and a security guy who walks around at night are pretty standard, although that didn't help on those two occasions. Just being in the centre of the site rather than at the edges seems to make a difference, or just makes us feel safer. Security from wild animals also becomes an issue, as we have had jackals chewing straps off our bags, elephants charging Stuart into the toilet, baboon attacks on our food and nocturnal visits from village dogs.

My top list of camp sites so far, in no particular order:

Mahangu Lodge, Namibia

Guma Lagoon, Botswana

The Haven, Uganda

Jungle Junction, Kenya

Makadi Beach, Tanzania

Naukluft, Namibia

Track and Trail, Zambia

Mushroom Farm, Malawi

Fat Monkeys, Malawi

Abiqua, Namibia

From Stuart's Journal - Days 6 to 12

Trip Day 6 - Cape Town

Up early for a run - ran for half an hour to Company's Gardens and back. The Gardens were pleasant but the run to and from was not so good on major roads - good job it was Sunday. Then back to prepare our kit (and the new underwater housing for the video camera) for the diving today. Got it all together and then set off by cab to the the Two Oceans Marina on the Waterfront. Got there very early but as we were the only people diving today we met up with the guide (Matt) and went and got ready. We booked two dives - one in the large Predator tank which had Ragged Tooth Sharks, Yellow Tails, Turtles and Rays, and one in the Kelp Forest tank, which had smaller sharks and other fish.We kitted up and I borrowed a 'chicken suit' - covering the chest with a built in hood, as we were told that the predator tank is kept at 18 degrees and the kelp forest at a chilly 14 degrees. We got into the predator tank and sank to the bottom. Immediately Merryl started filming with the video camera and Fiver started taking photos and small videos with the Sony stills camera. We spent around 30 minutes in the predator tank, looking at all the fish and at the humans the other side of the 27cm thick plastic walls. I was getting chilly towards the end of the dive and, after we got out, we had to clean the water from our kit and ourselves so had hot showers while still in our wetsuits. For the second dive the other two also got a chicken suit to keep warm. The kelp forest tank was much smaller and cramped and very cold. We fed the fish in this tank with cut up smaller fish (seems wrong somehow). That was fun but after that I was pretty cold and we all agreed (except Fiver) to get our after 20 minutes. Hot showers revived us and we then left our kit to dry in the sun as we went to have lunch in the aquarium cafe. We picked up the kit and took it back to the cafe where Fiver stayed and looked at the footage and write her diary while Merryl and I went off. She went to look round the shops while I got money out of the ATM to convert to USD for the remainder of the trip. Once all done we returned to the hotel by cab and hung up all our gear around the car and in the room. Then Fiver captured the footage while I had a short nap. After that we went out again to the Waterfront and had a pleasant dinner at a restaurant called 'Wang Thai'.

Trip Day 7 - Cape Town, Clanwilliam Up early to pack up the room and all the drying dive gear which had been hanging around since yesterday (Fiver and Merryl) and for me to catch up on emails and finances. We had planned to then go on the cable car to Table Mountain but it was raining with low cloud this morning so we did not bother. Did all this before 9:00 and headed to the Waterfront again for breakfast and find an Internet Cafe for Fiver to continue improving the website and blogs. Went to Mugg & Bean who have wifi in all their cafes. Fiver made good progress with her tasks but I failed miserably with mine. Yesterday I got out moneyto change into USD so we had some when we went to Zimbabwe and beyond. However, no one would change it as I could not prove how I came by it (seems you should keep your ATM receipts). Very frustrating.When we had done all our tasks we drove away from the Waterfront for the last time and headed onto the N7 and drove north. We had hoped to stay in the Cedeberg Wilderness Area but the campsite had been damaged by weather and was closed. Instead we found a site near Clanwilliam which had vacancies. The weather improved as we got away from Johannesburg and the sky was clear by the time we got to Clanwilliam. We found the site, on the edge of the river, and set up camp and had an early dinner. Place is pretty basic and the owner does not seem to be onsite to pay!

Trip Day 8 - Clanwilliam, Noordoewer (Namibia) Up at 7:00. Everything very wet from the heavy dew. Packed up and had breakfast slowly and did not get away very early. I was keen to get on as usual as wanted to get across the border today and to Fish River, which is over 100km beyond the border. The road (N7) was good and traffic light so we made good progress. We stopped for refuelling and comfort breaks, having a longer stop in the town of Springbok to use the Internet cafe, add more fuel (I also filled one of the jerry cans now we are in Namibia). We stopped for lunch a little outside the town on the roadside, next to an attractive rock outcrop. While there, we also dried out our towels and fly sheets, which dried very quickly in the hot sun. We arrived at the border post at Vioolsdrif at the same time as an overlander truck/bus, so it took a little time to get through. On the South African side we had to visit immigration, customs and police in that order. Once our passports were stamped by immigration, the rest was just the stamping of a form we were given but no checks of any sort. On the Namibian side (Noordower), there was passport control and a room for owners of vehicles. Once my passport was stamped I went in there, filled in a form and got a permit for ZAR180 which I have to give up when I leave the country.As it was getting late I did not want to drive on to Fish River as planned, but looked in the guide book and found a delightful place on the Orange River called Abiqua River Camp. We were given a lovely spot by the river and we had glorious colours on the rocks on the other side of the river as the sun was setting.

Merryl cooked a stir fry and we got drinks from the bar to have with desert. We have already decided to stay a second day rather than moving on to Fish River tomorrow. Spent rest of evening looking at stars and photographing night shots. Pleased with the results Trip Day 9 - Noordoewer Not travelling today after all the efforts of the last week. Merryl and I got up early and went for a nice run at dawn (half an hour - around 5km). Rest of day spent in camp, taking it easy, not doing much at all. Photographed some birds during breakfast time.

In the late afternoon, Fiver and I took a rubber boat out on the Orange River to take some photos. We could not paddle together for toffee so Fiver took over and I took photographs. Got pretty wet. Trip Day 10 - Noordoewer, Canon's Roadhouse, Fish River Canyon Again up early for a morning run - did same as yesterday but met Fiver on way back who was doing a walk. After cleaning up and breakfast we set off for the relatively short drive to Fish River Canyon. It was a pleasant drive on empty dirt roads, including one graded on the bed of the Gamkab River. We stopped at Ai-Ais to have a look at the resort but, as advised by the manager of Abiqua River Camp yesterday, it is currently being upgraded (by some New Zealanders - perhaps they know more about volcanic hot springs resorts than other people!). There were many fit but exhausted people about who had just finished the 5 day walk along the Fish River Canyon (Ai-Ais is where the walk finishes). We drove on and stopped for a pleasant lunch beside the road, before arriving at Canon's mid afternoon (our earliest stop yet). We set up camp (including us putting up the ground tent for a change) and then had rather early sundowners (G and T - we bought tonic from the bar of Abiqua River Camp.

Trip Day 11 - Canon's Roadhouse, Fish River Canyon

Up very early for our visit to the Fish River Canyon view point past Hobas Camp. We wanted to capture the place at dawn so left in the dark and arrived before the sun got up. There was already a party of French people there before us and more arrived later. It is impossible to capture in words the grandeur of the the sight of the 2nd largest canyon in Africa (the Blue Nile Canyon in Ethiopia is supposed to be larger - we will try to comparelater in the journey). However, we took many lovely photos.

Fiver cooked breakfast at the lookout (which was most welcome as it was very cold this morning). We then walked to a second look out a few km away (this replaced our morning run today!).

We returned for coffee at the Road House. We took the opportunity to have a planning session as we are getting rather confused and stressed (me from worrying about getting through the trip on time and Fiver not wanting to rush). Fiver pointed out that we had planned for a couple of weeks in Botswana and we probably do not need all of this time so we will take some of it to add a day or two to Namibia so we do not have to miss the main attractions of this glorious country.

Due to the early morning we then all had a rest before lunch, after which, Fiver and Merryl went off horse riding at Canon Lodge, which they had booked yesterday. I stayed around the camp and amused myself attempting to take photos of flying birds and identifying ones we had seen already. I was very pleased with the results I got, despite the fading light which meant I had to use a very high ISO number (but all in all a good revision of the relationship between ISO number, focal length and shutter speed}.

Fiver and Merryl had booked to go riding at 3:00pm for an hour, so I was expecting them back by 5:00 at the latest. They eventually turned up at 6:15 and I had been getting very agitated. Seems that we did not realise that Namibia was one hour behind South Africa and we had not adjusted our clocks! Also, the ride took longer than planned due to them being given rather wild horses and needing to change them a few times to get ones they were happy with. As it was Fiver had a fall and has a nasty graze on her side and bruise on her leg (in the shape of her camera which, surprisingly, still works!). We cleaned up the graze and put a dressing on it but it is going to be sore.

Merryl cooked dinner on an open fire we made on the braai and we spent some time tidying up so we could have a quick getaway tomorrow morning for the drive to Lüderitz.

Trip Day 12 - Canon's Roadhouse, Fish River Canyon, Lüderitz

Up at 5:00 (Namibian time). It surprisingly rained a bit in the night and the top of the car and tent were damp. We got away efficiently and had excellent dirt roads on which it was possible to drive at 110kph (once the light was better). Stopped on side of the road for a brew before we hit the B4 main road to Lüderitz. Fiver took over the driving from me then as a way of taking her mind off the pain from yesterday's fall. Long empty tarmac road.

We stopped at Aus. A very small place that had a tourist information centre that had a cafe but was very cold. We left after having a pee and went into town to the Banhof Hotel which had been recently renovated. We had a cooked breakfast there. Whilst there, Fiver called a couple of hotels and we got a room for Fiver and I, and a room in the owner's house for Merryl.

Continued on to Lüderitz, where we arrived at 11:30. Checked into the Haus Sandrose hotel which is beautifully built around a sunny courtyard. Walked around this strange town with its odd German colonial architecture and bought local Namibia SIM cards. Place was dead after 1:00pm on this Saturday afternoon (just like Germany). Merryl quipped that she thought we were visiting the ghost town tomorrow, not today!