Easter Sunday: a day I traditionally have to get up early and hide Easter eggs, I would have thought that teenage kids would have dismissed the tradition as childish but it was only last year the Gareth decided to sleep in and have his eggs ‘hidden’ on his bed side table. Robs has been hinting for months about how she hopes to go Easter egg hunting in the bush. I have carted these damn eggs all the way from home and can’t wait to get rid of them to make space in the food boxes. As luck would have it, Gray has the choc box packed at the bottom of the trailer and was not keen to do a trailer repack. Fortunately we woke up to drizzle so we are having an IOU on the egg hunt.
The road from Etosha to Rundu is 660km and on the map is a dead straight line. We pass through Otjiwarongo, Otavi and Grootfontein on our way up. The map did not lie, it’s like they have taken a long black mat and rolled it over a green carpet.
As we near Rundu, it is with a slight feeling of trepidation that we see civilization ebbing away. Every 10km there are rural villages, with huts made of mud and reeds and herds of cattle, goats and sheep being herded young boys. What has impressed me in Namibia is the number of schools; even in the rural areas we encounter numerous schools, all neat and tidy in permanently built classrooms.
We stopped at the garage shop at Rundu to buy ice, heaven forbid ‘we’ have warm beers. It was like a month end shop at Pick’n Pay – people were walking the isles with trolleys and the queue took forever.
Beers on ice, we headed to Shakara camp, about 100km out of Rundu. Shakara is a farm run by an Afrikaans couple with a few bungalows and camp sites. The honeymoon is over, Gray is now in camping mode. The camp sites are in a stunning garden with the most amazing trees. Unfortunately the campsites on the river are, guess what, under water, so in place of the looking over the kavanga River, we are looking at mielie fields.
We set up camp and Robs went swimming (no surprise there). I went for a short walk, then the winds blew in from over the river and the heavens opened. We tried sitting under the tent overhang but eventually the 3 of us retreated to the rooftop tent. During a break in the rain we managed a very wet braai and hit the sack with it raining again. One good thing – our tent has proved to be waterproof.
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