My own head was already a couple of days further down the road in Capetown but I still had one last pair of border crossings to do. However the riding was going to be easy so I just sat back and enjoyed it.
Once again the countryside was wide open but I noticed that it gradually became slightly less desert like as I traveled south.
It’s hard to understand twenty degrees as being cold in an Irish context but in this photo I had pulled over to put on a fleece and glove liners. And, as you can guess, I hadn’t found a tree to shelter under in days.
It was about three hundred kilometres to the border and I pulled in to a garage just before it to have a coffee to warm me up. The owner chatted with me for a while about my trip and offered to change whatever Namibian dollars I had in a straight swap. These small gestures are the ones that remind me that most people are good out there and that, in general, I kept meeting them.
I next went through Namibian Customs and Immigration and it was altogether a very sleepy sort of experience. There were very few people passing through and none of the mayhem at previous borders.
I then crossed the famous Orange River which borders the two countries. This is another of the great African rivers. It rises a couple of thousand kilometres away to the east in the mountains of Lesotho before flowing all the way across South Africa until it enters the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast.
The thought struck me that I had crossed a few of these great African rivers over the past few weeks – The Nile, The Zambezi, The Okavango and now Orange River, not to mention Lakes Victoria and Malawi.
Once across the bridge I pulled into the South African Customs and Immigration where I had a job persuading the guy in Customs to fill in and stamp my Carnet. He was insisting that it should be done in Capetown as Namibia and South Africa have a Customs Union. I pointed out that it had already been stamped out of Namibia by their Customs and that it had to now be stamped into South Africa. He eventually relented and I went on my way.
From here I just had a short run as far as Springbok where I had booked a guesthouse for the night.
More long straight roads but the quality was way superior to what I have covered over the past while (with the exception perhaps of Rwanda).
Another very striking feature was that there were beautiful wild plants on either side.
It was a pleasant run the rest of the way to Springbok.
This was my last stopover before I would finish up in Capetown the next day and it felt a bit strange to be going through the unpacking and locking up routine for the last time on this magnificent journey……
ZIGZAGGING AFRICA BY MOTORBIKE 