The Last Hoorah

 I have decided to begin this blog with a dedication to the plucky little old Britt who hauled us over 20,000km through this challenging continent.

A reading from the Landrover Owners Manual, Page 2, verse 1: "It is better to have loved and lost a Landy than to never have had one"

To those who don't know, circumstances have forced our hand and our trip will be ending tomorrow. Tanya will be returning to Australia, and I will be staying on for another month....doing some stuff. With a very heavy heart, I have handed the key of Larry to his new owner, who will take him out to his game farm....where he can graze and grow older rolling over the friendly tracks on his farm...kind of like Landy heaven.

We have added some of pictures of our favourite moments, but truth be told, pictures can never capture what an adventure it was to work our way through this amazing continent. We have learnt many hard lessons, and had some experiences that still make me pause to think.... we really did it.

I am sure our lives will never be the same after this amazing journey, but there is one message we would like to share with anyone who will listen..... a trip like this is just not that hard to do, you just have to decide to go!!! Bring on the next adventure .... India in a VW???

Windhoek

Windhoek is a pretty captial, but there is just some thing 'not quite right' about it. The whole city has a confused feeling about it, a bizar mix of German and African culture. Everyone you meet, greets you in German then slips seemlessly into Afrikans and then English as a last resort. Tanya reckons it is a bit too much like Adelaide for her liking.

The good part (from my perspective)  is you can get a smoked sausage version of every animal we have seen in Africa, and chase it down with a nice German beer.

We drove out to a game park an hours drive out of the city, expecting a very sedate drive, however, the unseasonal rains have made most roads a bit of a challenge. The track into the park had what they called a 'hole' with a bit of water that warranted a warning sign....Keep left, use low range.

Half way across it became clear the water was about 1.5m deep....and we were regretting our decision to drive through....but Larry came good and chugged his way through.

We came across a lone zebra, standing by fence, he seemed very excited to see us, so we stopped, expecting him to run away like every other time we got close to zebra... but not this fellow. He was very keen to play with us (even though he did try to bite Tanya a few times). We thought he must have escaped from a zoo he was so tame, but when we drove back he was no where to be seen.

The park was very nice and we took our time to get real close and take some action shots, I was stunned to get so close to a leopard.... they are so solitary. Whilst the leopard was not happy to see us, he did hang around for some nice shots.



The desert Namibian style

We have just spent the last 3 days in the Namib desert - the one you see in all the postcards of Namibia but with a bit more green because they have had "heaps" of rain in Namibia. It is hard to believe that you can get that many colours in a desert although it was a little lacking on wildlife for my liking.

We "camped" just outside the Sesrim National Park - well it was technically a tent. Dave reckons I am a disgrace to overlanders.

We spent a couple of days climbing around the red dunes, thinking we were pretty fit running up and down the dunes (well the running was mostly down) until we ran into some ultra marathon runners who were 5 days into a series of daily marathons through the desert. Day 5 was an easy day just 50 odd kilometres through the dunes - yikes. The first placed guy was actually an Aussie who had been breaking all of the records. 

We are getting a little slack and just couldn't seem to make it for any of the sunrise photo shoots of the dunes - just imagine these pictures with a bit more red and I am sure that's what it would have looked like.  From the desert we are heading to cheetah country and then to Etosha National Park to see some more African animals before I head for home.