Said our farewell to The Cottage and North Wales, and after a final tidy up, ready for it’s summer guests, we started the long, long journey to Southern Africa where a desert rock climbing adventure awaits…

Driving in the UK (especially on a sunny Sunday in July!), is not high on our list of favourite things to do, and as expected, the traffic was bad and at one point the motorway even got closed. Luckily, we had left several extra hours to do the journey, and eventually found our car park spot, near Heathrow Airport, nearly six hours after setting out on the ‘four and a half hour’ drive! A short Uber taxi got us to T5 and soon enough our bulging kit bags were checked in and disappeared down a conveyor belt. Feeling lighter, as we were ordering some food, the news flashed up that the flight was delayed by an hour. As we only have 1 hour and twenty minutes to catch our connecting flight, things were not looking good. All we could do was sit, wait and wonder what would happen next…

Eventually we made it to the flight gate. The next stop was Johannesburg, South Africa. A mere eleven hours away. It’s an overnight flight, so maybe we’ll be able to get a brief sleep?….

Somewhat surprisingly, we did get some sleep. Dinner was served and eaten between midnight and 1am, then some weird dreams got us through to breakfast at 07:30. Inevitably, by the time we’d landed, we had missed our connecting flight. The service from BA was pretty dreadful and we only knew we’d actually missed the next flight after a dramatic long distance sprint through the entire airport at Johannesburg and security – followed by a sweaty, out of breath walk, all the way back to get a new ticket. The next available flight was in 7 or 8 hours time. I tried to negotiate access to the BA lounge, but without luck. Instead we settled into a restaurant to have some lunch and take stock of the situation (and message the driver who was due to pick us up in Windhoek at midday!).

We felt marginally better after some tea and a feed – followed by a massage! Well, we had plenty of time and after spending 11hours, overnight in a plane seat, my back was very happy to get a loosening up (pummelling) from a big, friendly lady at the airport spa. Then all that was left was to snooze and wait as comfortably as we could.

The sun set on Johannesburg before our plane departed….

We took off around 18:00 in a half full, tiny plane. My diet in the past 36 hours has been mainly ‘plane food’ washed down with a steady stream of complimentary cans of beer and coffee. All in succession and at all hours of the day and night. This flight was no exception – we were barely in the air before more beer and coffee was presented.

The skies outside were dark – no lights or signs of any towns below us! The landing surprised us as we hadn’t noticed we were so close to the ground!

Thanks to Clare’s diligence planning and preparation, we already had an e-visa approved and paid for, so we skipped the big queue at immigration and after answering a few questions, and signing our names, we got the heavy ‘thud’ of the all important stamp in our passport. We’d arrived!

I fist pumped the air when our bags arrived on the carousel. Neither of us were confident they’d arrive with us, having last seen them in Heathrow airport on Sunday afternoon! We almost tripped at the final hurdle though – we were two metres away from the sliding door into the arrival lounge, when Clare’s bag got called back and we were sent to be searched! Our driver was nowhere to be seen when we emerged into the waiting throng of pick up taxi drivers, but somehow we managed to find the right guy (who’d not had the message we’d sent about arriving late). Subsequently we shared a ride with a Spanish lady. While she got her bag, Clare got us a new SIM card so there’s a chance of some comms later in the trip.

40 minutes drive later and we arrived at the backpacker lodge in Windhoek. It was 21:20 on Monday 6th. We’ve been on the move since 11:20 on Sunday 5th July. Bed time!