Africa 2012 Travels Videos

On the road

I spent many hours in buses and cars on my easter trip. As some of you know, I keep notes of every busride, its cost and the hours travelled, so in total, during the 15 days I was away, I spent just above 110 hours sitting in some sort of a moving vehicle.

Spending time on the road is not an issue for me, it is a huge part of the experience and I find it extremely interesting. The people I meet, the things I see, the sounds I get to hear and sometimes the smells I have to endure.

Here’s a sneek peek into the moving parts of my two weeks of travelling Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. Hopefully you will get a feeling of what it’s like.

The first video is from the Intercape bus from Johannesburg to Harare, which was the first time I encountered the fashion of collective travel-prayer. I had just met Lloyd, Prosper and Mercy and we were on our way out of Joburg at this moment, in the beginning of what turned out to be a very comfortable 19 hour busride.

This second video is about 12 hours later, on the same bus, after having crossed the Zimbabwean border. I was indulging in the views and we were reminiscing old stories from the past and guessing artists as the very randomly chosen music was shuffling through.

This video is from when I was forced to hitch-hike when the minibus I had taken from Kasane in Botswana broke down on in the middle of a highway. I hitched a ride with a huge petrol truck that took me and an old gentleman the two hours to the nearest town, Nata, for free.

The next video is from the local bus between the small town Ghanzi and the border between Botswana and Namibia, where I met the Kalahari girl Ketshepile and her little son Roonyi. This is a bus I simply jumped on after arriving to Ghanzi, because some people pointed me to it. It was completely full with people in the most random traditional clothing and what struck me the most was the fact that a lot of them seemed to be jumping on and off in the middle of the desert. This bus dropped me off just before the Namibian border, where I had to walk to get my passport stamped, and ended up on the other side by myself, basically waiting for a car to pass by and pick me up.

The last video is from when we were driving the ~400 km from the Namibian desert to Windhoek. Baldwin had dancehall, oldschool R&B and traditional Zimbabwean music in his C220, Nate Dogg was making his own party in the back seat, and I insisted on driving us both ways, as I was enjoying it so much. Never-ending highways, dirt roads and that tarred straight, beautiful, empty road in the middle of the desert that invited me to step on the gaspedal – it was blissful. After summing up the distances, I realized that I had driven almost 1000km in Namibia and it was really great to finally get my fix of driving.

So all these times were great, but you need to remember that if you can’t luv me now don luv me laitah! ..haha

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