Julie woke me in the middle of the night to announce it was raining. Quite amazing as we have not seen a cloud for the best part of 3 weeks, but it does remind us that we are on our way back to the UK.
Today is a transit day and we have all day to travel about 180km across the Etosha National Park some 80,000 square Km of true African landscape, salt flats, scrub, trees, elephants, lizards, tortoise, impala, ostrich, birds of prey, and most exciting of all a rare black Rhino.
The road is a rough track but we are limited to 60kph. This is designed to give you time to brake if an elephant or similar decides to cross in front of you. We were lucky and saw a Zebra crossing :)
Our stopover last night Mushara Lodge was probably the most naturally welcoming place we have stayed all trip, the staff wore badges saying how long the had worked there, some with over 13 years service, they loved the place and so did we.
Tonight we have arrived at Ongava Lodge, I know I have said it before but this place is just wow! We have our own thatched lodge overlooking a small watering hole teeming with wild life. We are hoping the hippos turn up later.
Molly is still going strong but we do wonder if we bought the right car. a lot of the driving is on dead straight flat roads. We try to keep Molly at 3500-3700 rpm which gives us a cruising speed of around 115km. The bigger cars are batting along at considerable more than that and we always seem to be tail end Charlie. Not that it's a problem, we are nearest the sweeps (this is the last car on the event and is manned by our highly skilled mechanics). What am I saying, we're in Molly Porsche and don’t need mechanics :)
Tomorrow there are a couple of timed stages but if they are anything like the last one there is no real point in us wrecking the car driving flat out. Our top speed on gravel is probably 120-125 kph and some of the guys are hitting over 150 kph. Think we may have to fit a 2.7 RS engine to keep up.
We are on the homeward leg now, Africa is a stunning country and we can see why many of our friends in the UK told us we would love it. They were so right. The country and the people have been very welcoming. We have had the odd case of stone throwing by some of the kids but we get that in Sevenoaks :)
So far a fantastic journey and a great event. Come rallying and see the world with a different pair of eyes.
STOP PRESS
we are sitting by a log fire, glass of red in hand and just below us at the water hole are 3 rhino, a Mum a baby and helper, above us the southern hemisphere night sky, think Molly may fail to start for a few days :)
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