Tag: Namibia

I have to admit, I was starting to wonder why we were riding through Namibia. After the first two days of nasty headwinds, bland landscapes and narrow highways, I was starting to think this part of the tour might be a dud. I’m glad I’m being proven wrong. Today was another beautiful day, and another beautiful ride! After spending the first 20km getting out of town we were greeted by our preordained dirt road. As I’d mentioned previously, I’ve been looking forward to getting back on the dirt. It’s fun riding, and we have seven more days of it coming up. The landscape is starting to change back to desert. The trees and bushes are shrinking and the sand is creeping in. In a few days time we’ll be in “The Dunes” where some of the biggest sand dunes in the world reside. I can’t wait. 

I neglected to mention in my rest day post that we’ve picked up another four riders in Windhoek. That brings our current total to almost fifty riders (we started in Cairo with 32). TDA has had to add another support vehicle to accommodate all the extra baggage. The new people, including the ones who joined us in Victoria Falls have it extra tough. They are dropping into some of the toughest sections and they don’t have the advantage we had of being able to train our way through the tour. There are a lot of sore body parts on the new guys. 

On a side note, we passed the red monstrosity pictured above on our way out of camp. How would you like to do an overland tour of Africa seated in this thing, and spend your night sleeping in the little coffins they provide?

Last night I actually pulled out my sleeping bag. For the first time in over two months It got quite cold and the morning started very chilly. It was like we were back in Egypt. Nothing a few kilometres and some sunshine couldn’t fix though. After the cold start, the day was pretty much the same as yesterday.  The wind in the morning was calm, but as soon as I left lunch, blammo! The wind picked up and started trying to push me back to Cairo. I felt sorry for the slower riders, who had to struggle with it over a longer distance. The wind, however, wasn’t the biggest thing on my mind, the traffic was. The road we were cycling is the major artery to, and from Windhoek and Windhoek is the capital city of Namibia. Sure, we’ve cycled dozens of busy roads and highways, but this road has the distinction of being very narrow, zero shoulder and a speed limit of 120km/hr. The traffic wizzes by you VERY fast and very close. I can’t count how many times I thought to myself, “just one careless driver getting too close and I’m eating a mirror in the back of the head at 120km/hr”.  Not a pleasant thought, but it mostly kept my mind off the cruel wind that was hitting me in the face at maybe 20km/hr. 

The other thing that kept me distracted was the slowly changing landscape. The trees are starting to disappear and things are getting much drier. I can’t count how many bridges I crossed over that had completely dry riverbeds under them. We are also heading into a more hilly area. Nothing major, but compared to the flatness of Botswana, the 5% grades were killers. The head winds didn’t help either. One nice surprise, the last 10km was almost all downhill. I managed to hit 50km/hr even with the strong winds. It’s too bad it wasn’t calm, I might have been able to break my land speed record. 

Now, after 830km, this five day section is done. We get a luxurious two days off here in Windhoek. Everyone is really tired, with the last three days having been really tough. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record (a spinning black vinyl disk that used to hold music) when I say this but, the next two days will be a much needed regeneration. 

Well it had to happen eventually. Not every day can be an amazing enjoyable experience when your out on the road for four months. Today started interesting enough, our first day of cycling in Namibia. I was looking forward to what the country would offer up, and it offered us a wall of fog. Well…that’s a first for this trip. It was like something out of a Steven King novel. For the first hour of cycling you couldn’t see much more than 200 meters ahead, everything else was just a white void.  Then we emerged out into the sunny status quo for the trip. The temperature was nice and cool and the wind was very minor cross-wind. It made cycling slower but not terribly difficult. Everyone was taking the day nice and easy after our big 208km yesterday, lots of weary legs! Then about 20km after lunch, things just got nasty. We made a right turn onto the Trans-Kalahari Highway and were smacked in the face with a howling headwind. I actually had to pedal down a fairly generous hill to keep from stopping. The next 50km to camp was a relentless battle against the wind. At some points I was struggling along a flat road at 16km/hr. Without a headwind I’d be doing a easy 27km/hr. The last bit of road seemed to drag on forever, my tired legs groaning at me with each pedal stroke. Finally, at about 2:30pm, I rolled into camp and plopped myself down on a chair. The day had taken me almost as long to ride as yesterday, and I did almost 45 fewer kilometres. I’m not going to kid myself, tomorrow will probably be similar, same distance, with twice as much climbing. Thankfully it’s our last day of this section and we will have a double rest day in Windhoek. Everyone is going to be pooped and very happy to have a break.