Southern Road Trip - Part I

Facebook message Mum: "Hi, I need to skype with you, I need to ask you something"

Me: "ok is everything alright?"

Mum: "yes fine"

Me (in my head) - its either a family disaster, or she is coming to visit...

Skype call: Mum (with big grin) what are you doing in a few weeks? can I come and visit at the end of June?

Me: yay

"If it were not for guests all houses would be graves" -  Kahlil Gibran

Cue hectic work period of expos, agents and crazy times, followed by hectic last minute planning and an awesome road trip...

“We can’t know what’s going to happen. We can just try to figure it out as we go along."- Roger Sullivan”

After a hectic last day at work (as always) we got an early transfer to town, only to find out the that we had not booked the car until tomorrow. Thankfully they found us a car and cleaned it, but that meant starting out a little later than planned. Luckily after realising we had been a bit over  ambitious with our travel plans [we suspected we could end up just driving and sleeping with no time for the actual sight seeing!] we had curbed our enthusiasm and decided not to drive 750km on day one, only about 200km and stayed just the far side of Windhoek (luckily with the car muck up).

Afer a short drive we landed at Lake Oanob - which is a huge lake / reservoir where the river has been dammed in order to supply the town with its water. After such a bad rainy season this is the largest amount of water I have seen in a long time!

By day

At sundown

We took a walk around the lake and found a family of Nyala, a mum and two young (male and female) who were really tame and let me get surprisingly close for some piccies.

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

Mama Nyala

Mama and baba nyala

Slightly protective young male nyala

Our accommodation was a nice chalet style and would have been really peaceful if there weren't a group of staff hanging out in the next chalet chatting all afternoon instead of working - grrrr! 

"Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbours noisy party other than being there"- anon

We also enlisted the company of two small and VERY hungry cats. As we had picked up some lunch in the cool box for the next day or so got our meat rations to feed their little bellies. I wanted to take them both home!

"Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something." - Mitch Hedberg 

The next day was going to be a long drive and therefore an early start as we needed to cover around 400kms. On our way further south we unexpectedly crossed the Tropic of Capricorn - compulsory piccies below!

After a brief rest we were off on the road again to see the Quiver Trees and some dinosaur fossils....
[part II to follow]

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

“We travel initially to lose ourselves; and we travel next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe where riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and to fall in love once more.” – Pico Iyer

“Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life” ― Michael Palin