The Last Few Days

We arrived at the guesthouse that evening after a slow drive from Etosha National Park. We cooked an amazing Chicken Ala King that may have been better than the one we cooked in Joburg but as it was our only meal since breakfast and 6am anything would have tasted good.

We planned to leave Tsumeb that day and Jamie and Sean tooked the Landie to the mechanic for a quick check whilst I packed up the tent and things at the guesthouse. The bags and boxes were ready and waiting for the trip to the Botswana border when Jamie and Sean returned not looking to pleased. The mechanic had said it looked like quite a bit of work needed to be done as the oil pressure was low.


We packed everything into Kim and gave Kelvin a call for some advice and he told us to have a look under the landie to see if the sump had been dented from the diff and looking underneath we found a dent and took the car back to the garage hoping the oil pipe might have been squashed. We left the car there whilst they took the bottom of the engine off and sat in a park waiting for a phone call with the news. Finally the phone rang and the worst news was told to us and we went back to the garage to see the damage under the car.

We got towed to another garage who could make the repairs and he explained the crankshaft needed to be recut, bearings and seals replaced and showed us the oil pump which had previously been welded to repair it had cracked down the welding. We were told that the crank needed to be sent to Windhoek and parts needed to be send from South Africa if Windhoek hasn't got them. So we are in for a week or two in Tsumeb, which is a small town in the north. We walked around the whole place within an hour. We went back to the same guesthouse and put our tent back up in the garden. Our days have been consisting of getting up late (8am) and playing way too many games of Uno, Monopoly and Scrabble.

We didn't leave the guesthouse all weekend and Monday started off slow until a French guy living in London checked in and sat down with us. He asked how we were travelling around and told him about Kim being in the garage, it turned out that he had hired a plane in Joburg and was flying around Victoria Falls, Namibia and South Africa! We stocked up with plenty of Windhoek beers and spend the rest of the day outside chatting. Later in the night he mentioned he was flying to Swakopmund the next day (today) and said did we facing flying there with him!! We all were keen and here we are in Swakopmund again after having a flipping awesome flight with Lance. Sean was in the front of the plane and me and Jamie in the back. Sean took over controls for some of the flight which was cool. We flew lower to get better views of some of the mountains along the way.

We have checked into a backpackers lodge and will be travelling back to Tsumeb tomorrow. Lance has flown to Windhoek to pick up one of his friends and flying back here later so will be meeting up with him at one of the bars on the beach here this evening. It still doesn't seem real that this time yesterday we had only met Lance and now we are 300km away from Tsumeb and on the beach again!