After restocking the fridge and enjoying Oppi-Koppi restcamp for a couple of nights it was time to get back to the desert. We wanted to spend some time in southern Damaraland around the Brandberg area. We heard again from Jeroen and Sonja who were on their way back from Botswana and decided to join us for one more week before heading to South Africa.
We met up in Khorixas on Saturday and planned to leave on Sunday morning. However on Sunday Marc noticed that the exhaust was broken. Apparently the rough roads of the last few months finally took its toll on the unimog, the exhaust was coming lose and needed a good welding job. Sunday in Namibia means that most places are closed but usually when you let word out that you have a problem with your car there is always someone who wants to make some money.
We ended up in a small open air workshop that had something that could be used to weld. If it had been any other part of the unimog that would have required welding we would have left the place right away but we thought what can be done wrong on welding the exhaust.
We stayed on top of the guy as he was planning to weld with the complete exhaust still under the car while the battery was still on. We made him take off the whole exhaust and do the welding away from the car. After about an hour he was done and he actually did a good job (we are now 5 weeks further and the exhaust is still hanging strong emitting an overdose of co2 in the air.
So we left Khorixas late afternoon and we spent a week driving around and wild camping in Damaraland. Below are some of the pictures of this incredible week.
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| Full Moon camping |
On the last day in Damaraland we noticed that one of the brake fluid reservoirs started to leak. A quick call to our off-shore mechanic Koen got us less worried as we can continue driving with only one brake fluid reservoir, especially if you don’t need to brake a lot.
And driving in the desert or anywhere in Namibia does not require a lot of braking. But again something that we needed to take care off. We were planning to go to Khaudum national park and before going there we needed to stop in Tsumeb to pick up our new credit cards and books that were sent to us from the States. Now we also had to get the brake reservoirs replaced.
We ended up at Hohenfells garage in Otjiwarongo where a very nice German guy named Rudi helped us out. Besides replacing the brake fluid reservoirs and doing an oil and diesel filter change he also entertained us with giving us some insight on the “life of a white men in Namibia”. At night his garage turned into a “whites only” bar where every night Rudi and his friends would have a couple of drinks. Difficult to describe this place but let us say it is the “Cheers” version of a bar but then in Namibia. A place of character, full of characters. In the end we had two fun nights in the bar with Rudi and his friends.
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| Rudi's bar |
After the car was repaired we also had the air-conditioning checked again, no leak could be found so they filled up the ac with new gas. It seems that the air-conditioning problems keep following us through the whole of Africa and so far we only had about 4 weeks during this trip when it really would have been nice to have a working AC.
We stayed near Otjiwarongo for another 5 days before we headed into the Khaudum game reserve. We again met up with Jeroen and Sonja who changed their plans after they heard that we were going into Khaudum. According to the website you can only get in if you are with two cars and if you are carrying at least 100 liters of water per car. Also no trailers are allowed. When we arrived in the park we found out that none of these rules were enforced. Khaudum is a really nice park, the camping facilities are basic but you can get water. The nice thing about the park is that it is so remote and just gets a few visitors each year. In the end we spent almost half a month in the park (had to drive out once to fill up the unimog). We got to know some of the lions at the different waterholes and we saw cheetahs, which was very special. We believe the animals got to know us as well as the first few days they seemed nervous with the unimog sound but in the end they would just look up with that look "Ah, the blue unimog again...."
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| Elephants in Khaudum, many elephants!! |
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| "What's on the menu bro?" |
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| If the rangers don't do their job, we turn on the pump at the waterhole... |
Right now we are in Rundu stocking up again and planning to drive further into the Caprivi. This time we plan visiting the Mahango National Park.
