Welcome!

Welcome to the Kelly / Varcoe-Cocks world trip blog in July/August 2012. This year we head to Africa, (Namibia and Botswana) traveling solo by 4wd for a month. Assuming we survive charging elephants, roaring lions and vicious hippo's we head north to London for the Olympics. After watching Australia at the Basketball, Tae Kwon Do and visiting Legoland for Luke's 9th birthday we head to Ireland to visit our multitude of friendly relatives. Homeward bound with a stop in Tokyo to really get extreme cultural experiences we will be back on the 27th August. We hope you enjoy our trip with us!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Tweyfontein to Sesfontein 4th July

At Tweyfontein we were camped in a more touristy campsite by a dry river bed with other tourists around. It was colder that night but not close to the 0 expected. We found the local mechanics in the morning who although very enthusiastic, were not able to shed much luck on the car mechanical problems, although cleaning out the back wheel short term seemed to help. We continued on through spectacular rocky countryside to Palmwag passing tiny villages with donkeys and goats who you have to admire at their ability to survive in this terrain. We stopped at a lodge at Palmwag just as the electrics started to fail on the car. After cold drinks and perusing the car manual we decided we had no choice but to continue on, the next mechanic was 100km up the dirt road. 10k's on, the whole dashboard stopped working so we no longer had the audiobooks, we were enjoying, a/c or any speedometer etc. the driver window was stuck down as the electrics seemed to have stopped. Most Importantly we couldn't lock the car and the engine and ABS lights were on. That didn't stop us still enjoying the drive. We were in desert elephant country, which are an endangered species. We passed more himba and herero villages before reaching the village with a mechanic. No workshop was obvious but we picked up local who showed us where he lived. It was distinguishable by a few cars and an outside table of tools. Despite appearances, between the guy who had shown us where it was, the mechanic and interested others, 1 1/2 hours later by bypassing the main fuse we had electrics again. It was a great experience for the kids as all the local children gradually came to see what was happening. We gave them biscuits and a soccer ball, which they seemed to appreciate. When we left it was to a large number of waves and smiles. We camped at the local community campsite of Sesfontein, which was next to a hot spring, the local bathing pool. We were told not to use it, as they had just killed an oryx and washed bits in the water. It was a pretty spot and we were the only foreigners in town. On our other side was the primary school. 3 girls visited that night and sang some local songs which as Luke says " was very, very, good".



Drive to Sesfontein


The local mechanics





The onlookers
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sesfontein

No comments:

Post a Comment