I'm backdating this blogpost to the 31 July 2023 as I've been having issues with either bad internet or HUBB-server problems. I'll post the text now to get it off my chest and will some videos (and hopefully pictures) once everything works!

Guten Abend allerseits!

First things first: Happy Birthday to my sister Fränzi – you’re awesome!

On Tuesday, 25 July 2023 I was up at 6.50 am to make the 7 am tour into Etosha with our guide Engelbrecht (yup, that’s his name :)). The campsite at Onguma is so nice, it has it’s own private shower and toilet. If you ask me, it’s a bungalow :). It takes me over an hour every morning to pack away my tent and baggage and stow it on Diddy Kong (No matter what I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to get this number down). So although I like my tent it saves me a lot of time in the morning if I don’t have to pitch it. What can I say – I slept in the washroom instead. Our tour was fantastic. We watched a young lion walk toward us from very far away and saw hyenas, kudus, zebras, giraffes, springbok, wildebeest and Kori bustards. Back at the campsite I decided to stay another night at Onguma because it was so nice. Immanuel from the reception gifted me a book in German and I spent the afternoon lazing at the pool in Palm Springs style pool weather reading “der Apfelbaum” (very good so far).

On the rides since Luanda I have been (besides singing Queen out loud and attempts at off the top freestyle rapping) pondering about my route and what to do with Diddy Kong at the end of the trip. I thought I’d see how I get along. I gave myself till Windhuk to buy a flight home. My original plan was to leave Diddy with Steven in Pretoria and ride him home to Switzerland at some point in my life. However, I’m not sure when I would get the next chance for a trip like this (likely retirement). Also as good a bike Diddy is, on these excellent roads of Southern Africa so far, I really feel the power limitations of a 125cc. For the jungle trails of Liberia, 125cc was a very good choice. From what I’ve heard, the roads in East Africa are good and I feel, if I’m ever lucky enough to do that ride, I would enjoy the comfort of a CRF 300 or an even bigger Honda brother (because obviously it would be a Honda :)). Great excuse to buy a new motorcycle I know. Further if I’m not going to store Diddy in Pretoria, I have more freedom regarding my route. My mental must-reach is Capetown. Pretoria is another 1000km Northeast from there on a straight road, which doesn’t sound very appealing. Then there’s the fact that I couldn’t import Diddy into Switzerland if rode up the East coast because of his emission values. For all these reasons I have a new game plan: I’m heading East to Botswana and will cross into Southafrica from there and visit Steven in Pretoria. Then I’d like to visit Suasua in Eswatini and ride the garden route down to Capetwon (possibly with a stop in Lesotho). I would then fly home from Capetown and release Diddy into the wild there in one way or another.

I think this plan became clear at the pool in Onguma :). In the evening I enjoyed an Oryx burger and the company of Silvan and Anna from Basel while watching the giraffes come up to the watering hole (Onguma is definitely a highlight so far).

The next morning Wednesday, 26 July 2023 I hadn’t had enough of Etosha yet (mainly because I still wanted to see Rhinos :)) and decided to hit up the the Anderson gate 300km around the park on tarmack roads. I was getting along well and stopped in Tsumeb to finally buy a SIM card. Tsumeb seemed like a small town in California with a mall, wide straight roads, sunny weather and retired ladies selling pancakes for the old folk’s home. To me it was very interesting to see this in Africa. Somewhere between Otavi and Otjiwarongo Diddy started losing power at high revs. My diagnosis was that the piston rattling had finally caught up to me and I was on its last kms. In Otjiwarongo Mike the police officer (who rides as well) told me my best bet for a mechanic was Windhuk. I decided not to go North to Etosha and instead sleep at Waterberg 90 km Southeast of Otjiwarongo where I had heard from the Silvan and Anna that there were Rhinos. After Otjiwarongo Diddy was only cruising at about 40-50 km/h (I don’t know because my speedometer is still broken) and I couldn’t make it to Waterberg in time for nightfall at that speed. I checked the map and there was the Eagles nest lodge about 30 km South of Otjiwarongo. I was in luck. This turned out to be another beautiful glamping site and they even offered rhino walking tours! I signed up for dinner (10 Euro), a campsite (16 Euro) and the rhino trek (40 Euro) and met a bunch of people at the lodge who had passed me on the road – everybody loves Diddy, what can I say :). I think this is one of my favorite things about Namibia: it seems you can drive anywhere and there will be a lodge with good food and game viewing where you can pitch your tent.

On Thursday, 27 July 2023 me and a very nice Dutch family went on the rhino trek and got lucky (although it’s supposed to be pretty much guaranteed to see them, as it’s a private game reserve and they mostly know where the animals are). At about 11 am I was ready to hit the road to Windhuk. Ideally, I would have gone to the beach town Swakopmund where there is supposed to be a large German speaking community. But with the state of Diddy, Windhuk was the clear goal. It took me all day and I rocked up to the Honda dealership at around 4 pm. Leonhard the bike mechanic was very nice and said he didn’t think it was the piston, because I couldn’t have made it this far in that case. He said he could look at the bike the next day (at 7 am) and give me a quote on the problem and price. I opted for the Paradise Garden guesthouse because it was 1.8 km from the Honda dealership and was allowed to put up my tent in the yard. In the evening I enjoyed a nice dinner at Joe’s beerhouse (the must for tourists) and had Zebra, Springbock and Kudu steak all on one plate (I’m quite glad I’m gave up vegetarianism before Namibia) with Kevin from Connecticut who quit his job in finance after 11 years and has been traveling for 1.5 years. He shared stories about the Pacific Crest Trail – I think that hike has reached bucket list status for me now. Back at the house I was already laying in my tent, when I realized my motorbike would have to be out earliest and I needed to bring it to the front of the line of vehicles parked inside the gate (I was at the back). So I had to bother all the people with cars at the guesthouse. They didn’t mind and Rainer form Austria, living in Namibia said that we would have to drink a beer together now – which I felt I couldn’t say no to :). Rainer was an architect in Austria for 20 years and now works for the German GIZ in urban planning in the North of Namibia. Very interesting conversations!

On Friday, 28 July 2023 I was at the Honda dealership at 6.59 am (it is at times like these when I realize my Swissness is deeply ingrained) and waited for Leonhard to show up at 7.20 am – oh well. I wasn’t allowed to watch him work on my bike (the garage’s policy – I guess they don’t want the Honda magic spilling) and was chauffeured home to my tent where I had a nap until the sun warmed my tent. I set out to see Windhuk on foot and found the Vernhill mall with an excellent Auto/outdoor/hardware store called Cymot. I had pizza at the mall, did some fabulous people watching (as I have now learned, Namibia has 14 ethnicities) and managed to buy the spanner keys I was still missing. I visited the independence museum which had a great view of Windhuk and took a nap on the sofa of the restaurant  I then texted Leonhard about the state of Diddy. He said he was about done and sent a car over to pick me up. At COB on Friday night, Diddy was fixed, and I was a happy camper once again. All Leonhard did was clean and adjust the carburetor. Apparently, it was very dirty. I’m not exactly sure how that could have happened, as I’ve been on tarmac mostly. I suppose there is a lot of sand around though. Back at the guesthouse Adrian from Germany invited me (and Regie from New York, Julius from Germany and Ash from London) to have some of his pasta. Afterwards we had a great time going out to the Chicago bar (hail Zug ) and the brewer’s market for dancing. It is no stereotype that everyone can move here - you could definitely spot us tourists on the dance floor XD.

On Saturday, 29 July 2023 I was awake at 7am with the sunrise but decided to stay in my sleeping bag until the warmth got through to my tent. That never happened, it was around 0 degrees Celsius with a cold front hitting town. So I got out in the cold and wanted to get a move on, but could not decide on a direction. Either I would explore the West of Namibia towards Swakopmund or head to Botswana already, so as to have more time there and maybe make it up to the Okavango delta. I felt like I wasn’t ready to leave Namibia just yet and headed for Swakop. Up in the hills outside of Windhuk it was however so freaking cold on my bike with the windchill. I also felt like I was going in the opposite direction of my general travel, which felt inefficient. I decided to turn around and a good gut feeling was back instantly. I rode East towards Gobabis and made it to the Xain Quaz Campsite at around 4 pm. It was a nice campsite with a private shower and bathroom house that I already knew how to utilize from the Onguma glampsite. With minus temperatures predicted for the night I was definitely not going to put up a tent and opted for a sleeping bag in the bathroom. I went into the dining hall to warm up at the fire they had going and happened upon the 60th birthday party of Friedrich. At first, I thought this was a group of German tourists. They were very friendly, Brita struck up a conversation with me and Günther poured me red wine. It turns out that they are a group of mostly German speaking Namibians. It was surreal to speak German with locals in Africa. I had heard about the German speaking community in Namibia stemming from German colonial times but hadn’t met any German speakers up until then. Friedrich invited me to join the party and I enjoyed a very pleasant evening learning lots about Namibia (thank you everyone, especially Friedrich!).

The next morning, Sunday, 30 July 2023 I had breakfast in the dining hall and said goodbye to the gang. Karin reiterated her invitation from the previous evening to visit her farm about 100 km East. I was really interested to see a real Namiban farm, and it was on the way to Botswana, so I gratefully accepted. I headed out before Karin as Diddy is slower than a car and had the coldest ride so far. By now I’m wearing every layer of clothing I brought along: odlo thermal underwear, a t-shirt, mom’s knitted blue sweater, a thick motorcycle jacket and my raincoat. This was all fine, but my hands were freezing. While riding I would put my left hand on the air-cooled cylinder to warm it up – for the right throttle hand however I had to stop to warm it up. I found the crossing leading to the farm and fell when the gravel road had a sandy patch. I was fine, the sand was soft :). As I was trying to kick start Diddy when Karin pulled up in her pickup behind me. She took my luggage and gave me support vehicle backing for the next 24 km to the farm. With this peace of mind, I was able to thoroughly enjoy the gravel and even the sandy parts of the road. Karin and her husband Mario’s farm is what I imagined a ranch in the wild west to look like as a boy. They have 10’000 hectars of Namibian Kalahari savannah with 900 free roaming cows for meat production. They are self-sufficient with the solar power they generate form the panels. Mario is also a hunter and the meat they eat is exclusively hunted game (the cattle is only for business). I can only imagine how cool it must be to grow up in a place like this! Karin took me on a small tour of the farm on Sunday afternoon in the pickup (I got to ride standing up in the back :)). Mario came home from a hunting trip with tourists he was leading in the evening and Karin made minced Oryx with glass noodles and Mangold salad for supper. It was absolutely delicious. Karin and Mario invited me to stay as long as I wanted, and I couldn’t resist taking them up on their offer and spending another day and night in this special place.

Today, Monday, July 31, 2023 I felt the sun go up at 7 am and was supposed to have breakfast with Karin and Mario at 7.30 am – but slept on until 9 am. I think after a week of camping my body appreciated the warm bed in the guest house, I had all to myself. In the morning I went out with Mario and the workers on the pickup to go fix a windmill out on the property. The only help I provided was with finishing the delicious lunch Karin cooked for us back at the house though^^. In the afternoon I wrote most of this blogpost on the porch of the farm overlooking the land. Karin came to find me for a “sundowner” with Mario. The sunset is my favorite time of day here. The sky turns partly pink where the sun goes down (my photos do not do it justice) and navy blue on the opposite. We’ve just finished eating Karin’s delicious Kudu steak with rice and broccoli. I feel incredibly grateful to Karin and Mario for their hospitality and to have been able to meet them and see this place (Vielen herzlichen Dank Karin und Mario!).

I’m going to try and cross into Botswana tomorrow (if the comfortable bed will let me go that is) – here’s to the road ahead!

Peace

Chris