To Botswana

24 august 2010

The wheel perspective
I came to the "Cardboard box" hostel in Windhoek in the early afternoon. (I remembered I wrote "cardboard box" as a residential address in Namibia on the immigration form - but it didn't seem to have impressed the officials). Mathias - the guy motorcycling around the world for 3 years now - was still there, still pondering whether he should move on to his last leg to Cairo or stay for few more days and continue his evening discussions over a couple of beers. Early afternoon is a good time to be in a hostel - the bathrooms are empty and clean in between morning and evening shower rush hours, the internet is not occupied and you have same peace to do minor bicycle maintenance. And there will be still time left to go shopping and to make yourself a meal before the kitchen becomes occupied by Japanese backpackers making a four-course, haute-cuisine dinner. I haven't eaten much in the last four days and that was probably the reason for a strange ticking in my ears. I bough half a kilo of pasta, cooked it and ate half of it in the evening. The other half I cooked at 6:30 the next morning, even before the hostel woman came to wash the dishes and to clean the junk from the sink that the "oh-so-cool" hostel guests left laying there last night. Really, I don't think there is much hope for the planet if the people can't be bothered to clean the shit they leave behind them.
The trans-kalahary road.
I made it to Botswana border in two days. The first day was a relaxing ride, carried by the tailwind all the way to Witvlei. In Witvlei the hotel that was supposed to be there had gone out of business, but there was a nice man who invited me to camp in his courtyard for that night. In the morning I shared coffee and cookies with his family and got some information about the road ahead. He didn't want to take money.
At the Namibian family's house in Witwlei
The tailwind lasted until Gobabis, then the wind turned and I had to put in some effort to came to Botswana border before the dark. I had some Namibian dollars left, so I treated myself with a huge T-bone steak, a couple of beers and two bags full of food, which was supposed to last three days, but didn't last much longer then next day's morning. It was an early start of the "hungry cyclist" stage.
The cockpit with crocs panorama
And other sort of panorama
Good bye Namibia
Another country ahead
Day 8: 158 km. Day 9: 160 km. Total: 1134 km.

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