Catching up…!

Right. Where did we get to? I believe we were in Maun, looking forward to a mokoro trip into the Okavango Delta! A very… touristy experience, but nice nontheless, and with views of elephants, zebras, wilderbeast, and various antelopes. At the Old Bridge Backpackers we made friends with a group of South African mine workers; a great bunch! One evening they invited us to a braai by their tent, with boarworst and pap; absolutely delicious! The next evening we joined again for dinner and beers and good company 🙂

The following days were flat, straight cycling and lots of bush camping! Lots of broken spokes on Stuart’s bike, exploded tyre beading and a ripped innertube made up one day’s worth of technical problems, but we made good headway having several mornings with the wind in our backs. August 11th I had the luxury og deciding on a sleep-in and a calm morning to celebrate my birthday! Those days we cycled into bushman territory, where people and towns were strikingly different to the other Botswanan towns we’d come across. One afternoon we got properly annoyed with a group of kids and their intrusive curiosity/harassment; a completely different behaviour to curious kids (and adults for that matter) previously encountered! The greatest excitement of these long flat days were the turning after Ghanzi; you could not imagine the excited exclamations from the whole team over this “best turning EVER”!! The traffic sign with an arrow pointing to “Namibia” gave the impression that this was sort of the last significant turning, the right-turn towards the final destination; a weird feeling of getting seriously close to the end!

That night’s bush camp was, if possible, even more thorny than any of the others — and generally, the bush was dominated by thorn trees throughout the area. This specific spot encouraged some drastic gardening, as I got out my side cutters to do away with the most evil twigs and branches. All the bush camping of Botswana and Namibia have certainly given us impressive “summer legs” (i.e. full of cuts and scratches); several showers later us long-haired girls still washed thorns out of our hair, where they’d stuck as we frustratedly yanked heads out of bushes… The ongoing joke about wearing protection at all times (i.e. helmets), was actually rather useful when diving into thorn-tree territory; wearing the helmet to go pee behind a bush can save you from a lot of hassle as you stand back up and knock your head on the thorny branches stretched out above…! 😉

After a freezing night — yes, freezing, literally; water bottles frozen solid, ice on the tents! — Stuart’s creative solution to missing-spokes-problem (stretching gear- and brake cables in the place of a couple spokes) didn’t work as well as he’d hoped, and after a morning spent moving spokes from the front wheel to the rear, he eventually had to give up and catch a ride across the border, while the rest of us battled on through the uncompromising wind of the flat lands between Botswana and Namibia.

We passed the 3000 km mark, crossed into Namibia at the Trans-Kalahari border post, and rode West on the Trans-Kalahari Highway. Namibia, strikingly German inspired, was characterized by desert landscape, ostriches and wart hogs. We kept up the bush camping, camped at a hostel in Windhoek, continued through the Namib desert towards the coast and had a wonderful last few days in Swakopmund!

Now back North we have a week or two to sort through all the impressions and let it all sink in, before studies start again mid September; it’s been an amazing journey!