Namibia Road Trip – Day #2: Windhoek to Namutoni (Etosha National Park)
Our Ride in Namibia
Against my will, we’d booked our Namibian trip through a travel agent at home. I say “against my will” because I prefer to research and book trips myself because a) I know what I want, and b) it’s gonna be cheaper. This simply isn’t possible for Namibia. One reason for this is because Namibia doesn’t have a smooth-functioning, fully-interconnected tourism industry that allows one inexperienced interlocutor to organize an entire itinerary single-handedly. The other reason is that as huge as Namibia is, demand outstrips supply, which means an inexperienced plebe will never come out on top.
My travel agent liaised with a South African based agency who did the legwork with another Namibian-based agency on the ground to book camp sites, B&Bs, etc. And what a lot of legwork it was. I’m glad I wasn’t the one who had to telephone back-and-forth with the various NWR offices (NWR = Namibia Wildlife Resorts- essentially their federal parks department) to reserve and pay for rooms at Etosha or a camping site for Sesriem. So whether or not you like it, a lot of people are gonna touch your itinerary, but it’s the only way.
There is also a limited number of trucks and cars to rent in Namibia. From what I learned, the supply of suitable rental vehicles won’t be growing anytime soon.You literally have to book a half-year in advance to secure a good 4×4. We went to pick up our vehicle at a local agency. What we’d rented was not just a 4×4, but a Nissan pick-up with a modified body. The flatbed had been replaced with a storage container with a 55 liter water tank, a refrigerator, supplies, and room for luggage. On the roof of the truck was a tent for two persons that folded out like an accordion. In addition, we were provided with all the camping supplies we needed, including a gas stove, sleeping bags, camp chairs, a flashlight, a 1 million candlepower spotlight, pump, shovel, and even dish ware. We literally had to show up with bug spray, sunblock, and a knife.
The rental office was manned by a no-nonsense woman that looked like Angelina Jolie’s raven-haired, tomboy cousin. Although she didn’t appear Indian, she was dressed in a shocking pink churidar with pink eye shadow to match. She also had no sense of humor. This was just as well, as we got into an argument about some charges that she added that hadn’t been mentioned in what we’d paid or should pay. It seems that I not only owed approx. $400 for the one-way fee (we were dropping off the car in Cape Town) which we’d have to pay her ASAP, but at the border we’d have to pay an additional fee to the SA police for transporting a rental car across the border costing an additional $400! I was pretty pissed to see my budget get shot to shit within 24 hours of arrival in-country. Why hadn’t the travel agent mentioned any of this?
I was so pissed in fact, that I turned down any additional insurance, leaving me liable for the first N$ 30,000 (approx. US $4,000).
“That’s very risky,” shocking pink warned. “I lost three vehicles last week alone.”
She may have been trying to earn an extra buck or two, but it’s actually true that the accident rate in Namibia among rental cars is phenomenally high. It’s not entirely due to the bad roads, but rather the bad drivers. Namibia has deceivingly easy stretches of road with decent surface that go on and on. And on and on and on. It’s tempting to hit the gas after 25 minutes of driving in a straight line – even on a gravel road. But it’s only after 25 minutes that the road drops into a washed out riverbed that is really a pothole the size of Minneapolis, or the road is swallowed up by sand from a recent storm, or you have to execute a hairpin turn on a high cliff, or there’s a springbok in the middle of the road. The results are never pretty. The brochure from the travel agent explained that “A very high number of accidents in Namibia involve drivers overturning their vehicles on the gravel, many of who end up dead.” Nice.
Above: German authorities, under pressure to reduce the accident rate of German tourists in Namibia, now forbid their citizens from having car crashes there…
“Two of the vehicles had to be pulled out of the sand at Sossusvlei. The clutches were completely burned out, too.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
It’s your ass, pal, she shrugged.
I didn’t care. The I went over the vehicle top-to-bottom with the Herero mechanic. His English was so-so, so we got by with my Dutch and his Afrikaans. He took me through every aspect of the vehicle, including how to repair the radiator, how to use the tow cable, how to set tire pressure for deep sand, and how to manually set the 4WD Low (i.e., step out of the car and engage the wheel locks, activate the diff lock, etc.). It was a lot to remember, and I was definitely intimidated.
A rep from the Namibian travel agent met up with us at the rental car office. She handed over a map with our route plan, and hash marks for the locations where we’d a campsite or a room booked. It was comprehensive to say the least (hey, she was ethnic German). Within 11 days we would cover Etosha, Twyfelfontein, Swakopmund, Sessriem (and Sosussvlei), Luderitz, Aus, and the Fish River Canyon – over 1,000 miles through all sorts of road conditions.
Our first stop was Namutoni, an old German outpost-turned-rest camp at the Eastern gate of Etosha National Park. It was 330 miles away.
“Let’s get this party started.”
