Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

DISCLAIMER: If you are someone who worries about us while we are gone, this is not the post to read. Instead, here is a summary: We went to the desert. It was hot. It was gorgeous. We are no longer in the desert.

For everyone else:
So our planning and decision making for this trip to Namibia went something like this. Hey! Namibia is close to South Africa. Let’s see how much it is to fly there. That’s not too bad. Book it. Turns out we should have done a little bit more homework.

We landed in Windhoek Monday afternoon, collected our car and headed to our guesthouse. The guesthouse was incredible – huge room, easy to find, lovely pool, great host. We got the kids in the pool and sat on our little porch and enjoyed a beer. We had good intentions of heading to the Checkers to pick up some groceries before heading out the next day but by the time we got there it was closed for the evening. No biggie we thought, we’ll go in the morning.
Morning comes and of course we are running late. The kids slept in. We are slow to pack. We enjoy our breakfast (well we attempt to while dealing with the children at a restaurant). According to google maps we only have a 4.5 hour drive ahead of us. No problem, we will just stop along the way. Epic mistake #1.

We have the GPS set to take us to Sossusvlei, but it has a different route suggested than Google maps. The GPS is suggesting we take a gravel road. So, we decide to turn around and head to the route Google suggested. Epic mistake #2.

So here’s where a little bit more planning would have gone a long way. Now I knew there were quite a few gravel roads in Namibia. I did NOT know we would have to take them to get to Sossusvlei. As in you have no choice. I remember reading that there were tarred roads to Sossusvlei (for the record they are talking about inside the national park). Now, I’m not talking a few kilometres of dirt roads here.I mean all 400+kms of this trip is on African gravel roads. Through the desert. And mountains. Because of course, the route we have elected to take has two mountain passes in it as well.

A few groceries and a bit more than 1 litre of water would have gone a long way to making me feel slightly more comfortable as we wound our way through the middle of nowhere.

We eventually make it to Solitare where we grab some lunch, gas and water before we take off for the last hour of the trip. We are feeling a little better now that we have at least had some food and have some extra water in the car. With about 40 km left of a very long day we blow a tire. Yup, that’s right. In the desert with two small kids we lose a back tire to a large rock. Thankfully it tuns out that Jacob’s superpower is changing tires and has us back on the road in less than 15 minutes. I’m not even kidding. What a man!

All is well that ends well though and we got checked in to our incredible lodge, had a swim in the pool as we watched the sunset over the desert and then an amazing buffet at the entrance to the park gates before settling in for the night.

Note: We took the original GPS route out of the desert, which while still gravel has no mountain passes and therefore is markedly better.