Fuel and grocery shopping in Grootfontein, but couldn't find my special milk or bread. Uneventful journey to Rundu, including crossing the vet fence and the police check. We saw that there had been many more bush fires up here, as a lot of the countryside was blackened, and in some places still smoking. Found rye bread but no "Easygest" milk in Rundu. While parked someone tried to nick one of the outside lights, but B was in the cab and scared them off with the air brakes. Stayed at Kaisosi again and enjoyed seeing Ronaldo once more. We had a drink in the bar with him and he discussed with us some ideas he has for the future. Hopefully we will stay in touch. Lovely frog or toad in the ablutions - shades of brown. Twister the campsite horse looked interested in our dinner and had to be shooed away. Frustrated to see birds that aren't in either of my books.
On the way out of Bush Baby we bumped into the owner, and found out that the vultures we had seen were there because a one-year-old giraffe had died somehow. Very sad!
Fuel and grocery shopping in Grootfontein, but couldn't find my special milk or bread. Uneventful journey to Rundu, including crossing the vet fence and the police check. We saw that there had been many more bush fires up here, as a lot of the countryside was blackened, and in some places still smoking. Found rye bread but no "Easygest" milk in Rundu. While parked someone tried to nick one of the outside lights, but B was in the cab and scared them off with the air brakes. Stayed at Kaisosi again and enjoyed seeing Ronaldo once more. We had a drink in the bar with him and he discussed with us some ideas he has for the future. Hopefully we will stay in touch. Lovely frog or toad in the ablutions - shades of brown. Twister the campsite horse looked interested in our dinner and had to be shooed away. Frustrated to see birds that aren't in either of my books.
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Shopping in Otjiwarongo. BIts and pieces for the truck and clothes/shoes for Barney. We were surprised how many shops there were and I wished we'd had more time as I could do with a few things myself. Obvious that there have beena lot more bush fires in the areaCamped at Bush Baby outside Grootfontein for the third time and were warmly greeted. We saw a lot of vultures circling not far from the entrance gate. Both very tired and had a quick supper, but didn't sleep well. We have to get used to being on the road again.
Left Oppi-Koppi a bit late. Bought meat, fuel and a few other bits in Kamanjab and set off at last. Camped at Sasa Safari Lodge outside Outjo. We were the only campers. It's situated at the base of the Ugab Terrace and we had an interesting walk along the top, with one of the lodge's dogs for company. Very nice. Saw some baboons. Huge and lovely gecko in the ablutions.
The new lock is modified,and fitted and the new additional security device is up and ready for the next time we need it.
We've spent an enjoyable afternoon with Eric and Anna who founded Oppi-Koppi and we think that we might just be ready to leave for Otjivarongo on our return trip to the Caprivi in the morning. We'll see..... The lock appeared late this morning! Hooray! I've got it modified and temporarily fitted while I "Rundu-proof" it - basically I'm adding a simple bracket that will allow a strong padlock to be locked in front of the key hole blocking any attempt to pick/break the main lock without spending time removing the padlock. As I've brought a small stock of strong Abloy padlocks, all I needed was some thick angle iron (kindly supplied by Vital the owner of Oppi-Koppi) and a bit of time to figure out how to fit it. This should be done tomorrow morning, then the main lock will be fitted and we're ready again..... It's REALLY nice to put the key in the new lock and just turn it - no fiddling, no struggling, no jamming, no chance of it sticking and not opening, we'd forgotten what it should have been like already!
Yesterday a couple of overland trucks arrived - a German couple who've been on the road for 7 years travelling the world along with their Dutch friends who travel for 6 months, store the truck, work for 6 months and so on. They've given us lots of encouragement and useful information - they're bravely heading off up the West coast. Tonight Sue came back from the shower saying "there's another truck just pulled in, it looks a lot like ours"..... another Mog! We'll have a chat with the owner tomorrow, a German who seems to store it in Namibia and come down to use it for holidays. Interesting. We've started saying our goodbyes to some of the nice staff here who have been looking after us for the last 3 weeks as some of them will have their days off from tomorrow and we hope that we may be able to depart on Thursday. We've been in contact with Felix and Sandra who were here 3 weeks ago and have been touring the north with their Toyota - they've managed to get some reservations in Moremi in Botswana (like hen's teeth) and have kindly asked if we would like to join them. We're planning to do just this, and hopefully we'll be able to travel together for a little while - they are keen on going to Zimbabwe to Vic Falls and Hwangwe and maybe then into Zambia? Sue took me down to the ladies tonight - to see a scorpion that has been hanging about in there - a small pale job, but not at all aggressive (I tried provoking it, but all it would do was run and hide). With the recent rise in temperatures has come a significant increase in the numbers of lizards around the campsite - some with blue bodies and orange heads and tails, others brown with yellow heads, others just "plain". There has been a large gecko frequenting the ladies of late - not sure what it's waiting for. The hot weather has also brought out the mopane flies - a type of bee that is attracted to animals (including humans) to seek water from sweat and eye fluids etc. These are the flies you see crawling all over people whenever there's a drought/famine - you don't need either of these to get the flies - just mopane trees - and there are lots of them round here. They appear after about 2pm, flying around in front of your face trying to get in your eyes, ears, nose or anywhere else.... Not nice, particularly when the temperature in the shade is now reaching 35 degrees - the truck is staying cool until mid-afternoon when it's time to get out, get down the bar for a cool drink, some shade and a dip in the pool. Interestingly I've noticed that the truck seems to be heating up through the floor, talking to Ric tonight in the bar he suggested that it's probably heat re-radiated back up from the ground coming through the floor as it's quite likely that the ground temperature in full sun is in the 60s or even 70s (centigrade.). The lock arrived in Windhoek on the 17th. It's the 25th and it still isn't in our hands.
Windhoek is 300 miles from here (on good main roads). It seems that DHL have given the parcel to "a 3rd party courrier" for delivery. I'm now trying to find out who that "3rd party" is to contact them directly because it doesn't seem that DHL are doing anything. Thanks to Angus for the explanation of what DHL really stands for! Thanks to Claudia and Andre who are now in Windhoek and have volunteered to help out at that end if needed. So life at Oppi-Koppi continues. This morning we have been for a little walk, been into the village to get supplies, then done some domestic chores. That more or less sums up an average start to the day - not dissimilar to my life in Weston! We did hit rather a low patch yesterday when we realised that it will now be getting too late in the season for us to cope with weather conditions as we travel further north (heavy rain but also serious heat, especially in Sudan). We have a few options to consider but at this stage don't know if any of them are really viable. Trying to figure that out will probably be one of the things we do this weekend. The other scare has been the cost of travel in the Okavango Delta. This is one area that we are both very keen to visit and we have realised that we now have to either pay a fortune even to do some quite limited activities there, or really cut down on what we do, which will not be very satisfying after all the effort to get here. Prices are 2 - 3 times those listed in our book, which is only 3 years old!
Luckily there was an interesting diversion yesterday in the form of some gem-hunters who stayed on the campsite: 6 chaps from Scandinavia and Cape Town, having a ball on their 5-week expedition. They were totally charming, very knowledgeable, and we really enjoyed spending time with them. Most of their finds were carefully wrapped up but they showed us some fascinating stones, including some dioptase, a beautiful aquamarine and a truly awesome quartz crystal weighing at least 50kg and taking up the whole of one passenger footwell in their car. They even found stones of interest knocking about the campsite. You just never know who you are going to meet next. The wildlife at the campsite continues to be interesting. We have seen both yellow mongoose and slender mongoose coming to the feeding station near the swimming pool on quiet days, and I have finally figured out what the Monteiro's hornbills are hunting and eating - huge locusts. S. It's Friday afternoon and the lock still hasn't arrived - it got to Windhoek on the 17th and DHL have been unable to get it the 300 miles to Kamanjab since. By my reckoning it could have been walked here in that time! The post title comes from DHL's homepage - Oh dear! To top it all, after a lot of pressure from me, DHL in Windhoek rang me this morning - AND ASKED IF THEY HAD DELIVERED THE PARCEL TO ME YET! It's clear that they don't have a clue what they're doing - and I'm now starting to worry that they've lost the parcel......
On the basis that it won't be here till Monday now, we won't be leaving until Tuesday at the earliest. We're trying to work out how this is going to impact our plans - but it's now looking unlikely that we'll be able to make Sudan before the hot season starts. We're still at Oppi-Koppi waiting for the lock - it should arrive today or tomorrow......
Claudia, André and kids left this morning for Palmwag - their injector pipe finally arrived yesterday afternoon and was soon fitted and tested by André. These guys are incredible - not only are they travelling with their young children, but they have camping down to an art-form: last night they treated us to home-made pizzas cooked on the fire, they cook fresh bread every day and still have time to take the kids to the pool! Having them here has made passing the time a real pleasure - Sue in particular got very fond of the kids - and I think it was reciprocated. The campsite seems very empty after their departure, but it's good that they've got going again. So "Gute Reise!" Hopefully we'll meet again in Europe. A very large dark male babbon sat in the tree on the koppie visible from the bar for a while this afternoon. We are getting into something of a routine here at Oppi-Koppi. It’s quite cold in the morning, so it can be difficult to get out of bed. This morning I got up at 7.20. Just outside the kitchen window is a tree with fluffy pale yellow blossom, and below it an aloe whose orange flowers are opening to yellow, so I try to see which birds are feeding there before I start clattering around making coffee. Today there were a lot of red-eyed bulbuls and some little finches with red beaks. After coffee B gets up and we have breakfast, or sometimes a walk first. In the morning we do jobs: continuing with the spring-cleaning, working on the truck, laundry, shopping in the village, or anything else that might be hot work. Yesterday's cleaning job was a bit epic. We wanted to clean all the road dust from under the under-bed storage and then seal the gaps as best we could. This involved Barney perching on the bed frame supporting the mattress Atlas-like on his back, while I clambered into the gap under the bed where the storage drawers usually are to do the cleaning and sealing with tape. All very hard work even with the air-con on, but will hopefully only have to be done once!
There are plenty of birds to enjoy during the day. My favourite sightings from yesterday were a scarlet-chested sunbird feeding from aloe flowers, and two gabar goshawk hunting small birds at a drinking pool. We try to keep going until 12.30 or so, otherwise we don’t get much achieved, then we go down to the bar. We are happy to eat there once on most days as it’s a pleasant and shady place to go and the food is nicely prepared. While there we can do bits on the internet, read, plan our forward travel, watch the birds and lizards in the garden, or chat to other people. At the moment we are very lucky as the Swiss family (Claudia, Andre, Jael and Moris) are also still here waiting for a part for their vehicle, so we have some very nice company on the campsite, as well as the friendly Oppi-Koppi people. But it has to be said that both of us would really rather be on our way by now. We stay at the bar until about 4.30, when it hasn’t really cooled down but we are tired of sitting, and finish off the jobs from the morning. The flies come out around this time, which can be quite annoying if they are buzzing in front of your face while you are trying to do something fiddly. Later on we usually have a light supper as we have had a meal earlier and also we find it a bit of a pain trying to cook in the half-light outside and going up and down into the truck to get stuff while trying not to let any insects in. In the early evening the security men come by on their way to fetch firewood, which they really must need overnight. Our day generally also includes some socialising either with the Swiss family or someone up at the bar. We were thinking of taking a game drive for a change, but not sure if this is going to be possible. Well, B has finished his coffee and the sun is starting to warm up, so I guess it’s time to get on with the day and see what it brings. S. |
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July 2013
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