Wohni Is Finished
Howdy All,
Sorry for the long silence and thank you for your continued support and visits. We hope you had an enjoyable festive season and wish you and yours all the best for 2009.
As I said in the last post - way too long ago I know, but I promise I will make up for it, as there is loads to report about - there wasn’t really anything to blog about and all we did was waiting for the day to come where we can go and pick up Wohni. December 17 was the big day when we (Doris and I) hopped on a flight to J-Bay via Cape Town to see our new family member for the first time. All in all amzing and almost more than we bargained for. Almost, as some shortcomings were visible at first glance, with more to follow. More about this in a separate post.
Fill it up please!
Once Wohni was equipped with the basics, refulled and checked, we were off to Mossel Bay for a little sand and dune testing in Vleesbaai, joined by the Schroeders and their converted Hummer. We stayed over night in Plettenberg Bay with the CEOs of Africa Adventure who are also the organisers of the first women only Cape to Cape challenge, sponsored by Mitsubishi amongst others. Enya and Andrea will lead the crowd in their Ford Ranger also converted by Schroeder Motorhomes. More about this again in a separate post soon.
Vleesbaai
Pursuant to Wohni (obviously) sailing through the challenges at Vleesbaai, where some others had more or less troubles, two of them Schroeder Motorhomes mind you, we went for some more or less biggish shopping and errands in Mossel Bay. We organised drinks, food and water, some essential tools and spares, some should-have and nice-to-have items - plus - we did two quick stops to a) silence the exhaust a bit and b) to get the wheels aligned properly, both mediocre yet bothering issues caused by the conversion. Once sorted, we headed north - general direction Namibia - via the Swartberg Pass. More in a separate post
Swartberg Pass
The Schroeders, also on holiday by then, decided to join us for a while and see how far north the wind would blow them and/or their hair back. Not that far, as it would turn out. North that is - the hair was a different story. The Hummer, which had been giving electronic problems for quite a while by then, started loosing power at the worst of all times and places, about half way up the Swartberg Pass. There were plenty times when we thought we would have to part ways, for us to stay on schedule and for the Schroeders to wait for the recovery by GM, but every time the Hummer resuscitated itself miraculously and decided to crawl for a couple more kilometers. Just on the other side of the pass, in Prince Albert, both the Hummer and the Schroeders called it a day and decided to call the cavalry, the way home to J-Bay was spent in their Hummer albeit the same sitting on the back of a tow truck. More about this in a separate post.
Our main objective/plan was to meet the boys at the farm of Doris’ sister (close to Mariental) latest by the 23rd in order to have Christmas together, ideally at our home in Windhoek. Apart from that we were pretty flexible and with three days to spare, we continued north. Through a quite boring part of the Karoo, slanting slightly to the West in order to hit the coast somewhere - which happened to be Doornbaai of all places - we aimed for Sendelingsdrif, the boarder post of the Ai-Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park. Time permitting, we would have appreciated some time and a nice camp in the Richtersveld, unfortunately we had to give it a rain check and stayed over night in the rather unattractive camp site of Sendelingdrif to catch the ferry to Namibia early next morning. More about this in a separate post.
Das Boot
The following day, we checked out early as planned, loaded Wohni onto the boat - yes, it’s just a boat - checked into Namibia and headed for the farm. Reunited - eventually - the joy and hooray was obviously ginormous. About Wohni that is, the two of us weren’t even missed much by the two little buggers as we had to find out. Which was probably a good thing at their young age, especially as it was the first time ever that they were without mom and/or dad, for almost a week after all.
Back home and with Christmas out of the way I went off on a shopping spree for tools and materials and into a equipping/modifying/fixing/altering frenzy for 3 days flat out. Most of the things to do were obvious and I knew that I would be busy for a while, however, there were surprises and discoveries ranging from “was that really necessary?” to “do you believe that?” and anything in between.
Guess what, more about that, the “Schroeder Handicap” and also about our first trips, including short ones, more testing, picnics and the recent longish one, in other posts to follow.
So long
Tommy