Highlights from Namibia 7 – 14 September 2011

Namibia is one of the most exciting and beautiful countries to travel through by motorcycle. The roads are good, the scenery stunning and with the exception of the Caprivi very quiet in terms of traffic and people. Here we also camped at some of the most beautiful campsites during our journey from Cape to Cairo.

Here is our route through Namibia:

To see our blogposts during this time please click here.

Here are our highlights and lowlights in Namibia.

Frannie’s highlight: The highlight for me was when we met Charley Boorman in Divundu. We struggled the whole morning to find 3G reception and ended up in Divundu, exhausted after battling the deep sand tracks to Ngepi Lodge. When we rode into the garage to fill our tanks I saw this lone bikes on a BMW1200GS. When he turned around I recognised Charley and we had a great chat and took some photos with him. Later his group of bikers he was leading from Vic Falls to Cape Town arrived. What a nice bunch of chaps.

I also enjoyed sleeping under the stars at Bagatelle Lodge near Mariental and I loved the bushveld surroundings of Roy’s Restcamp near Grootfontein.

Frannie’s lowlight: Our stay in Otjiwarongo was spoilt by a run in with diamond smugglers. I started chatting to three friendly chaps and they asked whether I’d like to do business with them and offered me some diamonds to take on the trip. They said I can send the money to them and asked for my number. Then they asked me to go out with them to look for ladies. I politely declined and we left as early as we could the following morning.

Another disappointment was when we didn’t make it to Kwando River Camp before sunset and had to stay at Bum Hill. It was already dark when we got there and the camp was pretty deserted.

Francois’s favourite photo was this one taken with Charley Boorman in Divindu:

Tania’s highlight: I absolutely fell in love with the campsite at Bagatelle close to Marienthal in Namibia. We slept under the stars and woke up between red sand dunes and bushveld. The spoor all over our campsite that morning showed that we had a few four-legged friends visiting us during the night.

Another highlight was spotting an elephant roaming freely around next to the road in the Caprivi. The sun was setting and the sighting incredible.

Tania’s lowlight: Namibia’s sandy roads really got to me and a number of times I ended up face down in the sand. Die Burger even published our article with the heading “Tania val vas in die kalaharisand”. Somehow the sand proved to be the most difficult off-road terrain for me, but later I got the hang of it. And yes, I agree with Francois, the experience at Otjiwarongo was very very interesting!

It is difficult to choose my favourite photo in Namibia as there were so many, but I really liked this photo of the bikes in Namibia.

Namibia Trip Stats:

Distance: 2 331 km

Time: 7 day, 2 hours, 12 minutes, 55 seconds

Highest point: 1 927.1 m

Lowest point: +-135 m

Maximum speed: 98 km/h

Fuel consumption (Francois): 29.3 km/l

Fuel consumption (Tania): 35.3 km/l

During our time in Namibia we took some video footage with our GoPro camera. I have selected some interesting frames from some of the videos and it is presented below in a slideshow format – enjoy!