Day Thirty Nine – Sat Phone Pursuit

Arriving back from the Waterberg Plateau we nipped up to the top of the Windhoek Hilton for a couple of cocktails whilst the sun set on our penultimate day in Windhoek. Their Mojitos lacked lime, which at six quid a drink was a sad affair. Their Caipirinhas though scored a nine out of ten. We’re not sure what ten tastes like but we were happy none the less.

Waking up we had a plan, get the phone, get the papers, get gone.

We got to one DHL office, no joy, they told us that they have a bigger office down the road so off we went again. I entered and asked if they had a parcel for Ina Beamish. “Oh, hello Mr Beamish somebody just tried to deliver a parcel for you but I told them I knew no such name,” said the friendly receptionist. Two minutes later I’d ascertained he had no idea who had tried to deliver the parcel, he didn’t recognise the courier and he could be of no further assistance, but he was sorry.

I’ll gloss over seven painful hours of phone calls, e-mails and running around, once again Maria was a complete hero. I walked into the courier office in Windhoek at 5.30pm and got our parcel. Opening that parcel was the most excited I’ve been since I found Father Christmas doesn’t exist. The Motorola 9500 is a real phone. When you lift it you feel your biceps working. He’s about eight inches by two inches by three inches, his aerial is another eight inches extending to twelve, no jokes please and he weighs close to 1.5kg. If it weren’t for his five glorious lines of green LCD and two batteries he could easily be confused with a house brick. His name is Tony. And although he doesn’t work yet, (still no sim,) he gets used a hell of a lot for making fake phone calls and speaking in my broadest Scouse accent.

Anyway that little debacle meant Somers, Redvers, Tony and I were going nowhere until the following day. Over the next three weeks we’ll be heading via the Skeleton Coast into North West Namibia and up to Epupa Falls on the border with Angola. From there we’ll go through Etosha again and then with a bit of luck go through Khaudom National Park, though we’ll need another vehicle to join us as the Wildlife Service says Khaudom is quite remote. We’ve advertised for some company for Redvers, all we can do is wait...

For the first time in a little while we’re actually going to start making progress. It feels like a second start to our adventure and we have towels. From Khaudom we’ll travel into Botswana and roughly due east, but we might struggle for internet for a while so there’ll be no more updates whilst we’re out wandering.