philcia
Member
Part 1.
This is my first post so I hope it works! After lurking on the forum for several years, and being inspired by so many great travel reports, I thought I should do my bit and post about our recent trip to Namibia.
Our story started 28 years ago when my wife and I met in southern Spain. I had just started working for an overland company called Guerba Expeditions (The Staff knew Guerba by the acronym of "Grubby Uncomfortable Expeditions 'Round Bloody Africa" ) as a co-driver and was lucky enough to drive a new truck out from the UK to do a Trans Africa trip from Morocco to Nairobi, as my very first trip! After six months together on a trip like that, we figured we could survive anything! 28 years later we are still happily together.
26 years later we decided to go through some of our old slides and I had about 800 scanned. Shortly after we started dreaming of going back to Africa.
Ngorongoro crater 1991
Zaire 1990
Zaire 1990 Stuck for 3 days.
We started looking at the Republic of South Africa first but it looked too tame. Zimbabwe was one of my favourite memories but looked a little too unsettled. Botswana was on the list and then we started looking at Namibia, and Andrew St. Pierre White's videos sealed the deal for me.
Originally it was just going to be the two of us but then my sister and her family decided to join us. In all we had two vehicles for 5 adults and 2 children. My sister was as happy as a kid at Christmas. My brother in-law, however who had never (yes I said never) camped or driven much on gravel, was less enthusiastic. He survived to tell the tale and was one of the most excited throughout the entire 3-1/2 week trip.
We wanted to self drive, so started looking around the interweb and came across Bushlore. They seamed to get great reviews and have good vehicles and equipment. I contacted them and two other companies. They were well priced and offered to book all our campsites for us. We rented 79 Series Landcruisers with roof top tents and all the camping gear you could need.
I bought a Tracks 4 Africa paper map to start. Then bought the digital GPS version. I can't say enough good things about T4A maps. Other than in the north west, the distance and timings were spot on. Unfortunately for us, this year saw heavy rains that made the roads much rougher than before. As an example one section marked as 20km and taking 1hr 30mins took us 4hrs. In general though the roads were in amazingly good condition. 98% gravel but comfortable to cruise at 80 to 100kph. The one thing the maps don't show is how bloody big Namibia is! We drove a total of 3500km and had some very long days. For the actual route we took, Google was our friend. Between that and the maps we booked all campsites ahead of time, except for 5 nights for our travels in the north west Koakaland.
For communications we rented SAT phones from Bushlore. Cell phone coverage was pretty good around larger towns and at the resorts in Etosha.
Part 2 to follow. Want to see if this actually works when I hit Post ?
This is my first post so I hope it works! After lurking on the forum for several years, and being inspired by so many great travel reports, I thought I should do my bit and post about our recent trip to Namibia.
Our story started 28 years ago when my wife and I met in southern Spain. I had just started working for an overland company called Guerba Expeditions (The Staff knew Guerba by the acronym of "Grubby Uncomfortable Expeditions 'Round Bloody Africa" ) as a co-driver and was lucky enough to drive a new truck out from the UK to do a Trans Africa trip from Morocco to Nairobi, as my very first trip! After six months together on a trip like that, we figured we could survive anything! 28 years later we are still happily together.
26 years later we decided to go through some of our old slides and I had about 800 scanned. Shortly after we started dreaming of going back to Africa.
Ngorongoro crater 1991
Zaire 1990
Zaire 1990 Stuck for 3 days.
We started looking at the Republic of South Africa first but it looked too tame. Zimbabwe was one of my favourite memories but looked a little too unsettled. Botswana was on the list and then we started looking at Namibia, and Andrew St. Pierre White's videos sealed the deal for me.
Originally it was just going to be the two of us but then my sister and her family decided to join us. In all we had two vehicles for 5 adults and 2 children. My sister was as happy as a kid at Christmas. My brother in-law, however who had never (yes I said never) camped or driven much on gravel, was less enthusiastic. He survived to tell the tale and was one of the most excited throughout the entire 3-1/2 week trip.
We wanted to self drive, so started looking around the interweb and came across Bushlore. They seamed to get great reviews and have good vehicles and equipment. I contacted them and two other companies. They were well priced and offered to book all our campsites for us. We rented 79 Series Landcruisers with roof top tents and all the camping gear you could need.
I bought a Tracks 4 Africa paper map to start. Then bought the digital GPS version. I can't say enough good things about T4A maps. Other than in the north west, the distance and timings were spot on. Unfortunately for us, this year saw heavy rains that made the roads much rougher than before. As an example one section marked as 20km and taking 1hr 30mins took us 4hrs. In general though the roads were in amazingly good condition. 98% gravel but comfortable to cruise at 80 to 100kph. The one thing the maps don't show is how bloody big Namibia is! We drove a total of 3500km and had some very long days. For the actual route we took, Google was our friend. Between that and the maps we booked all campsites ahead of time, except for 5 nights for our travels in the north west Koakaland.
For communications we rented SAT phones from Bushlore. Cell phone coverage was pretty good around larger towns and at the resorts in Etosha.
Part 2 to follow. Want to see if this actually works when I hit Post ?
