First day on the road

Us with Rassie

Miracle of miracles. They let us take the trucks.  Despite all the misfortunes of clearing the trucks, all was not lost. We got to know the security folks at the docks very well. Rassie was a colorful guy who explained why we couldn’t all go into the area.  It was simple. The Americans.  Apparently they have to comply with US standards of who has access to ports and that means you cannot go down to the sea again, even if you have business, without a passport, a piece of paper and a stamp. The good news was that at about 4:10 we got a call saying that the ship had left the harbor and we were now free to clear the trucks. We raced over and Peter and I had our papers checked, and there waiting dockside were the two flaming beasts, sirens being tested to the chagrin of all the workers who were just finishing their shifts. Being the experienced truck driver that I am, I leapt into the seat and looked at the bewildering array of buttons and switches in front of me. As I was reading labels for sirens, lights, tools etc. Les, who was my co-driver, said casually that a freight train was approaching and it would be a good idea to move the truck. Only problem was that while I could put it into gear, I couldn’t release the hand brake. It worked perfectly. I just didn’t know how to work it. So he yelled and I toggled and switched but to no avail. We then decided that since the train was going to miss us by easily a few millimeters there was no problem after all. So we sat and watched it go by.

One we had figured out how all of the things worked we drove out of the port to say fond farewells to Rassie and his security crew. Both they and the ships agents had told us that for trucks transiting through Namibia, no passengers were allowed, so we had kept our mini-van to use until we got to Windhoek (at least) But boys being boys we had two people in each truck as we drove out of town, and lo and behold guess who was waiting for us. The local gendarmerie stopped us and after a long explanation of how we had to pay fines immediately, and in large quantity, we were able to negotiate a better deal, put the extra guys in our chase car and get on the road. This was now about six hours later than planned. We also decided to keep the minibus until we hit the Botswana border.The good part was that the sunset was spectacular 

We drove out of town very proudly and made reasonably good time to Windhoek but the damage had been done. It is a long drive and we got to the outskirts at about 1 a.m. Problem was we had no idea of where to go from there. I got grumpy because I had printed directions but was told to scrap them. Don’t worry they said. The GPS system will get us there they said. Nothing is better than electronic gadgetry they said. Well the street names had changed in the past week and nobody told Garmin. We eventually hired a taxi driver to show us where to go and got to the hotel ( a very small, very cool boutiquey kind of place) at about 2:30. The owners were up waiting for us and despite breaking their gate post while we were driving into a parking lot designed for 6 cars, they cooked up a great meal of grilled oryx and chips. In addition the good doctor Ossip had arranged for a couple of cases of Stellakaya to be delivered there for us, so that we didn’t run out of liquid nourishment.  What a way to spend a night!