The day after the accident- Twyfelfontein

We spent one more day at Twyfelfontein Lodge (close to Kipwe, which was unfortunately fully booked) since our car was going to be towed away on monday and it was sunday. The towing trip was an adventure on its own! Stephanie had spent the whole morning from 9.00h to 13.00h at the ‘nearby’ police office (60km) to get the police report. First they didn’t want to write the report since she wasn’t Jasper. Then the police officer didn’t write down all the details when he came to visit us, so Stephanie had to contact Jasper which wasn’t possible since it was a remote location. Eventually she got hold of him via the satellite telephone and could ask for the details. Then the copy machine was broken and they wanted us to drive another 100km to the nearest police station. We managed to drive to Palmwag Lodge, ‘only’  about 40km on dirt road. At 14.00h Stephanie had arrived and the towing car was able to drive to Swakopmund. The roads were in such a bad condition that the driver had decided to drive via the north (Torra Bay). This what you call a detour! After the 2nd flat tire (and only one spare tire with him!) we understood why he wanted to get rid from this part of Namibia. We arrived at 22.00 in Swakopmund although we had a good time with the friendly driver and again a flat tire…..

Swakopmund- Swakopmund- Swakopmund

Again a warm welcome and a helping hand from Jeroen and Roos. Jeroen had booked us a hotel and the next day Roos picked us up to make a plan for the car and look for a self catered apartment.  That morning they called a mechanic to check on our car and we were a bit afraid of the verdict, as the car looked seriously damaged. He told us it could be fixed, joehoe! Now we had to wait for parts to be found: a ‘new’ roof, 2 doors, a windscreen, a new diff, a new prob shaft, new springs. Especially the mechanical parts took a while to arrive, but after 2 weeks they could start fixing the rear axe and springs. This seemed to be the ‘easy’ part. From there the car was driven (!) to another garage to have the body parts done. We even saw our own car on its way to the other garage: yes the Landy is driving again! Now this turned out to be the difficult part in terms of time and patience…. It took this garage about 2,5 weeks to have the car fixed and the last week Jasper has helped them to rebuild the car after the spraying. Lean management, structuring and efficiency aren’t in the dictionary here……

Meanwhile we were visiting every lunch cafe and bar in Swakop, checking them on good food and wifi and reading books and watching films. Roos and Jeroen offered us to stay at their place and we were also offered to temporarily use one of their cars. We really appreciated those gestures! Though 5 weeks in Swakop is quite long and sometimes a bit boring, we do like the fact that we got to know Roos and Jeroen and have a great time with them.

While writing this blog I (Stephanie) see Jeroen and Jasper together working on the LaRo to rebuild it into our car again! Hopefully we can continue our trip on feb 11th.