Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Be it ever so humble....there's no place like HOME!!!!

Wow!! After an odyssey lasting almost three months we were finally able to make it back to our home in Lubango early Saturday morning. Apparently at 1:32am to be exact, because that is when Brent, our other MAF pilot, says he looked at his clock when we knocked on his door to wake him up to get the key to get into our house.

The drive from Windhoek to Lubango was one of the most eventful trips we have ever had. Tammy almost got hit when she was making a right turn by someone that decided to pass her on the right in an intersection. That certainly got the heart going, fortunately there was no collision. We were also bringing back a truck that we had bought online last November from Dubai, Matthew was torn between who to ride with...not really, the new truck won! We discovered at a police check point that in the fine print of the temporary Namibian transfer license you are not allowed to carry passengers or goods, $50US dollars later we were on our way. Matthew was thoroughly enjoying the fact that I now had a receipt that was emblazoned across the top with, "ADMISSION OF GUILT"!!

Later that day we arrived in Ondangwa, which is a town in Namibia about 50km from the border with Angola. At the motel where we stayed that night the clerk led us to our rooms and upon opening the door to our room quickly discovered that the man already asleep in the room did not want to share it...ooops. The following day we set off for the border with all of our documents organized and ready to zoom through and head for home. Okay, okay I know some of you are laughing, zoom through the border!? Riiiight! Well the immigration part went smoothly and the police part went smoothly, but the customs ...not so smoothly. About four hours later we were on our way to pass through the gates to Angola. On the Angolan side immigration went smoothly after we discovered that Tammy had had her purse stolen on the Namibian side, fortunately our passports weren't in it or we would have been caught between the borders with no documents. I don't even want to think about how that would have gone. The police part went smoothly, customs...not so smoothly. Three days later we were on our way home at 5:30pm after they gave us our documents minutes before the border closed on Friday. Yahoooo only 360km to go and we would be home!!! In case you are wondering why it took 8 hrs to complete what normally is a 3 1/2 hour drive for some of you, there is a reasonable explanation. First of all, it was dark and you have to slow down for all the people and animals,which I guess you have to do in the day as well, its just harder to see them at night. Secondly, it's rainy season which means you actually have to drive on the road instead of in the ditch, which is normally in much better condition, but is now filled with water. One 95 km section took about 4 hours to navigate of which one 20km part took an hour and a half. We are hoping to drive out on this same road with my (Gary's) mom in April. It's not that I don't like my mom, I love her a lot, we just thought that after she went skydiving with us the last time she visited we needed to come up with another memorable experience.
All said and done, we are thrilled to be home for the short time we have here before heading to Canada. We look forward to seeing you this summer, please let us know if we can drop in for a visit when we are in your area. In the next few weeks we hope to be able to post a bit of a schedule of the places we will be visiting.

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