After a little discussion we chose to throw caution to the winds and take the 650km route toLüderitz and embrace the adventure. The sat nav hilariously told us that taking the unpaved route would make our travel time over 35 hours, as it seems to always expect us to do 10kms per hour on dirt roads. After around 250kms we reached the turn off onto the dirt road, and I used the bathroom whilst Dan fuelled up and snacked up. And so began the dirt road adventure! Writing these last few days of the blog four months after our honeymoon ended, it is always today's drive I think back to most folding when I remember our journey. It turned out to be the best decision we made, taking the road less travelled.
The quality of the road was actually quite good, being that we were entering the desert part of Namibia, it was quite compact and easy to drive on albeit bumpy at times! We stopped a few times to get out of Snolly and marvel at how we were literally in the middle of nowhere. We picked up one hitchhiker along the way, a very dusty looking man who spoke very little English but managed to convey to us that he was "going to get horses" ? We hoped they were ones that already belonged to him and that he wasn't planning on stealing someone else's, something we later learned happens a lot in the Namibian dessert as the farms are so vast and because of this have very little security. We passed very few cars on the way, and each and every one waved jovially to us, I suppose as we all shared some sort of comradery, being insane enough to venture off into the Namib desert!
Our journey progressed uneventfully until we entered into a particular landscape that we both agreed strongly resembled a part of the video game 'Red Dead Redemption' that Dan and JD used to play. Around 80kms from Aus, the next, and last town on the way to Lüderitz, we blew the back right tire. We were driving round a particularly rocky corner that made it basically impossible to distinguish between a blown tire and the bumpy as hell road, but something just made me open Dan's window and get him to look out and low and behold we had blown the back right tire. I'm unsure as to weather it was as shredded as it was because we had been driving on it for a while or because of the condition of the road, but I'd put my money on the rocky road.
We pulled up immediately on the side of the road and while Dan busied himself with jacking up the Landy and loosening the wheel nuts, I took loads of photos. It was such a beautiful place to have broken down, the scenery had become more and more red as we got closer towards Lüderitz. Once Dan had replaced the tire and we had put the mangled one onto the back, we set off towards Aus again. We drove much slower and more cautiously than before as our final lifeline was now on the car! We reached a T-junction and mercifully turned right onto a tarred road. Instead of continuing straight on to Luderitz we stop off in Aus at a tiny little shop with a petrol pump outside.
By some amazing stroke of luck the little shop actually had the exact tire that we needed! The replacement cost is R2850, a cost we were most happy to bear under the current circumstances, it had felt like one of our arms were missing the entire time we were without a spare tire. I needed to draw the cash off the American card from the little machine in their shop and halfway through the money being counted the machine stopped as it had run out of money! Whilst I started panicking quietly about the fact that we would now not have any money to pay for the tire we so desperately needed, the shop owner arrived with a bundle of cash from the back. It turned out that he replaced the cash for the bank that owned the ATM as they were so far away, thank goodness! After he had fiddled around in the extremely complicated internal workings of the ATM I was able to draw the remainder of the cash we needed, and pay for the tire.
Outside Dan had turned Snolly back round and had taken the busted spare off the back and it was currently being attacked with a chisel and mallet by the workers in the station. Our new tire didn't actually come with a wheel, just the rubber part, so the men had to take off the busted part of our tire and replace it. Dan meanwhile took of the spare we had used on the back right side of the car so we could put the new wheel there instead. Our spare was a little worse for wear than the rest of the tires and we preferred to keep it as a spare and have the four tires on the car as similar in age and tread depth as possible. We set off for the remaining 120kms to Lüderitz feeling much happier. The road from Aus to Lüderitz was a brilliant road in perfect condition, and the view of desert as far as the eye could see was stunning.
We also passed through a set of gates with an ominous sign informing us that we had now entered the Sperrgebeit, the protected diamond area, and we were not to leave our cars nor were we to leave the stretch of tarred road we were on or we would be prosecuted and possibly shot and killed on sight. Obviously we completely ignored the sign and stopped at a cool looking abandoned building right next to an old railway line and had a look around. We think it used to be inhabited by someone who tended to that particular section of railway line, but all that is left are the walls and roof, the rest of the house has been reclaimed by the desert. We arrived at the guest house in Lüderitz and I sent Dan in to make sure we were still booked in and that it was the price I was quoted online. Thankfully everything checked out ok and we were put into a cute little room with a gorgeous view of the water, our own small kitchenette and bathroom. The owner of the guest house recommended that we go and eat at Ocean View, a new pizza restaurant that had opened recently in town. We agreed that would be a great idea, and she phoned ahead to book us a table at 8:00pm.
Even though we left with plenty of time and armed with a map to the place, we were quite late! The name she had given us, Ocean View, was not the name of the restaurant at all and so when we couldn't figure out where the map was taking us and asked directions, no one had heard of it before! It turns out it is called Pizzeria, and it tucked away down a couple of little streets. We eventually got there and were greeted warmly by Betha, the chefs wife, who showed us to the table. Dan ordered a Windhoek beer and I ordered a bottle of wine for us to share once he was done his beer. The pizzas are all made to order, and she recommended that we order two but then share them as they would come to the table one at a time, which was what we were planning to do anyway.
Dan ordered a spinach, olive and feta pizza, whilst I ordered a chicken and feta one. They were by far the best pizzas either one of us have ever eaten! The base was thin and crunchy, and all of the ingredients were just bursting with flavour. I was very interested by the dessert pizza on the menu so, after coercing Dan to help me eat it, I ordered one. The base was covered in mashed bananas and sprinkled with honey, sliced almonds and a touch of cinnamon, pure genius! It was absolutely gorgeous and very light to eat which I had not been expecting. Once we had worked our way through the dessert pizza and wine we asked for the bill and were astounded when the total came to just R319! After thoroughly enjoying that delicious meal we were convinced they were undercharging for the pizzas and so we left them with a big tip and a promise to return tomorrow evening.
