Since we had more time at our hands than initially thought, we decided, to sleep another night at the Piscas Hotel, so we could spend one full day making new plans and figuring out, where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do in the next 8 weeks until our friends would arrive in Cape Town. We checked out “Work Away”-possibilities, a platform where you can find jobs around the world, mostly on a “work in return for food and accomodation”-basis. We thought it could be a nice change to work and have some kind of a daily routine and stay at one spot for a change (funny what you miss when traveling for so long). Another option could have been to take a longer route and drive through the Transfrontier National Park in Botswana and South Africa. Finally, I also digged into Yoga Teacher Trainings in southern Africa, something that has been on my bucketlist for a long time. Driving through Botswana soon fell of the list, due to the rainy season and terrible roads this route would have included - everyone we spoke to advised us against it at this time of the year. We did find a very cool place for a “Work Away Experience” on a wine farm and lodge owned by a Swiss/South African family. On a short phone call with the owners, we found out that they were just starting to produce wine for the first time and, therefore will have some experts on their farm, who teach them how to do it. They invited us to join them for that process, because we told them we would be very interested in learning how to produce wine. However, the wine-producing season will only start end of February/ beginning of March. So that was definitely something we were interested in doing, but for now, we needed to look for something else. Finally, I stumbled across a Yoga Teacher Training Course in Cape Town, starting at the beginning of December, and ending just a couple of days before our friends would arrive. After talking to the teacher, I had a really good feeling about the school. Tom and I discussed our options and he also looked up things he could do in Cape Town. He found a Jiu Jitsu school very close by, something he had been interested in doing for a while, so we decided to move out of the car for a little bit and sign ourselves in for the courses. After so many different places we had visited and being on the go all the time, it felt good to choose one place and settle down for a little bit. We were both very excited about our new plans, but we still had a couple of weeks left until we had to be in Cape Town, so we decided to drive into the Caprivi Belt, a region of Namibia, we hadn’t seen so far.
We heard many good things about a Lodge called Riverdance, which is run by a Swiss couple, and we, therefore definitely wanted to check it out. When we called to ask if they had space, unfortunately, they informed us that they were fully booked on the campsite until the next week. Also, their rooms were booked but they had one capacity a night before they had availability on the campsite again, so Chris, the very friendly owner, offered us a big discount on the room rate for one night and to reserve a campsite for some additional nights. We didn’t have to think twice and agreed to this amazing deal. We still had three nights to spend somewhere else before we could go to the Riverdance Lodge., so we checked our travel app “iOverlander” and found many nice places along the way, some people who left reviews at places were even overlanders we met along the road, so we decided to make the first stop at Taranga Safari Lodge. We weren’t disappointed, it was a very luxurious campsite with everything we could ask for and more. They also had a cool bar built on the river, where we enjoyed a beautiful sunset. The next day, we continued and checked out another promising place along our route, called Okacuito River Camp. On the way, we stopped in Rundu to get some groceries and were surprised by the big size of this town and all its shops and restaurants.
We arrived at Okacuito and were welcomed by the owner himself, who showed us where we could camp. All the campsites had a private veranda overlooking the river, and a kitchen with a huge fridge and freezer, it was almost like having a private house. We appreciated the shelter even more, when it shortly after started to rain like crazy. A big thunderstorm hit us and all we could do was wait and sit it out, but at least, we had a roof over our heads.
We spent two nights at Okacuito and on our second night, the owner walked up to our campsite and invited us to join him on a free sunset cruise with some other customers from the lodge. Tom also got to try his luck with fishing; unfortunately, he didn’t catch anything but a hangover for the next morning, after all the beers, wine and even rum we ended up drinking with the owner and his mother, who seemed very happy to have some nice company. Also their dog seemed to like us a lot, he was sticking around our campsite all day long.
The next day, we left and continued to the Riverdance Lodge, which was actually very close. Of course, after hearing so many great things about this lodge, we expected something nice, but what we found was beyond all our expectations. Especially the room we checked into, since we “couldn’t” spend our first night on the campsite, was very luxurious and just beautifully built into trees with huge windows overlooking the river. Dinner and breakfast were also included in our discounted rate and this as well exceeded all our expectations. We were in (food)heaven and really enjoyed this treat a lot. But also the remaining three days that we spent on the campsite were great. The four campsites all have their private ablutions and overlook the river. We joined a Yoga class and also booked a massage and pampered ourselves at this lovely lodge for a few days.
From the Riverdance Lodge, we started our long drive towards Cape Town, of course, with a few stops in between. Our first night along the way we spent at Otavi Wine Estate, one of the few vineyards in Namibia, also run by a Swiss-Namibian family. Of course, we needed to taste their wine, but we were in great company. We met Caro and Wolfgang from Germany on the campsite, who also quit their jobs back home but only had started their travels in Africa. We got along super well and it was nice to talk about our future travel plans. We cooked a nice dinner all together that went well with a few bottles of the Nambian wine called “Katholischer”, which they produce at Otavi :)
From Otavi we directly drove to Windhoek, back to the Urban Camp, where we started our Nambian adventure together with my parents a few weeks ago. It was strange to be back at the same place and thinking about all the things we experienced in the meantime… Soo many amazing and a few bad memories, it all felt like at least half a year must have passed since we started our Namibian road trip. These are the moments when we sometime can’t wrap our heads around how much is happening in our lives every day, all the places we see and people we meet, it is truly amazing. This time, we only spent one day in Windhoek but we were very efficient. We went back to Paco Engineering, where they made us an adapter for our gas bottle, so we would not have to run around the next time to get our gas for cooking. Tom also went to the barber shop, we got some groceries and went to the customs office to stamp our new Carnet de Passage, the customs paper for the car, which my parents had brought with them. We were a bit worried if this would work, since we heard many different stories about whether it was necessary to leave the South African Customs Union to “activate” a new Carnet, but it was a super easy and straight forward process, the customs officer only wanted to see our car and check the chassis number and then stamped our new Carnet. As a last stop, we went to a weapon shop where we got ourselves a couple of pepper sprays, just in case… When we had everything we needed, we left Windhoek again, but it was already around 3 pm, so we decided to drive to a campsite in the Kalahari, close to Marienthal. We slept at the Bagatelle Kalahari Lodge, where we spent a windy but beautiful night. In the morning, their horses came to greet us. Also, a peacock was casually walking around on their premises.
We continued towards the border and just shortly after we had left the Bagatelle Lodge, there was a Toyota on the side of the road that obviously had broken down. The driver waived at us and we stopped to see what happened. He asked us if we could pull him to the next town. We agreed but we were very suspicious. After what happened in Angola and also hearing some stories about people who got robbed or even worse by people faking car breakdowns, this didn’t feel comfortable at all. The guy and his son tied their car to ours and we started driving and, our minds going a bit crazy, we became more and more worried if we did the right thing by stopping and helping them, which felt terrible as well because of course, we wanted to help people who needed it. Still, we were just worried if we were helping the right people here. But the car was attached already, and there was nothing we could do. When we finally arrived at the tarmac road, from where the guy could get help again, we stopped the car. We decided that Tom stayed in the Defender behind the steering wheel, ready to drive, while I took one of the pepper sprays into my pockets and went out to help the guys untie their car. They were very thankful and probably thought that we were acting very strange, with Tom staying in the car and me keeping my distance from them. But in the end, after we left and they thanked us several times, we were happy that we could help them, and it was also nice to gain some trust back into humanity. At the same time, we also agreed never to stop in a situation like this once we entered South Africa. The stories we heard from there were just terrible sometimes.
We arrived at the White House Lodge just before sunset. It was another windy night, but we enjoyed the last views of the amazing Nambian landscapes a lot.