"Further" with Thelma & Louise ...
Trip Start
Nov 02, 2007
1
11
14
Trip End
May 31, 2008
Windhoek, Windhoek, Namibia
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
After a late sending off evening, Bruce drove us to Cape Town airport for the 9am departure ... all a bit fuzzy after little sleep, planning or prior knowledge of what to expect. As we flew over Namibia it looked incredible, unbelievable and unknowable in the variation of terrain and estimation of scale. The sun was warm and the sky clear as we got through passport control and walked towards the car hire counters ready for a relaxing week away from the hectic-ness of rock video direction.
'Sorry, no cars available. It's peak season now and without a booking you'll be lucky to get anything.' Bugger, actually my expletives were a little stronger at the 2nd counter. Maybe that's what prompted the man from Budget Cars to phone another company in Windhoek (the capital) to source a vehicle - get this ragged looking couple away from the counter as quietly and quickly as possible (in hindsight i think it was probably more a case of genuine Namibian hospitality).
As they say 'the car in front is a toyota', and in our case a very handsome toyota corolla, King Corolla as we later christened it. Not quite the 4x4 off-road vehicle with roof-top tent accomodation we might have hoped for, but the very economical 1.4 litre engine did get us around, about and even over the Boshua Pass ...
Our first destination was Spitzkopp a mining town about 3 or 4 hours from Windhoek. That first drive through the Namibian landscape is marked in my memory by a multitude of photo-stops (for trees smothered in weaver birds nests, huge black cricket-type insects, comedy termite mounds) and Martin's sighting of "the largest lizard I've ever seen ... oh, bugger I've just run it over. It just ran across the road ...". A little later we stopped to stretch our legs and take a look around a local crafts centre. There didn't actually seem to be much for sale, however, as we were heading back to the car a man approached and unlocked 'the shop'. Still not much to see, mostly dusty minerals and carved wart hog tusk pendants, but Martin managed to purchase, a zebra skin pouch before we headed off (he turned out to be an excellent shopper). The strangest moment was hearing the mans accent ... he turned out to be Russian (probably a left-over from the Angolan war).
My driving license hadn't arrived in Cape Town before we left, so i was grateful that Martin didn't mind driving and tried to be a good navigator (not so easy when the merest mention of map-reading gets my travel-sickness going). It has to said that the roads weren't overwhelmed with traffic, even the main highway, and handing-out travel sweets, adjusting the air-con or supplying water were all within the realm of my capabilities ...
