A long Journey to Namibia

When deciding how to move around while here in Sub-Saharan Africa, we decided to try to use as few flights as possible and stick to ground based transportation. Our preferred way to travel would usually be the train, but unfortunately a lot of the rail lines in Africa were built during colonial times with the sole intention to facilitate resource extraction. Therefore, the majority of tracks go from the mountains (where the mines are) to the coast (from where the ore was shipped onwards).

In light of these reasons, there aren't really many railway tracks that connect countries with each other. That leaves us with buses. In Africa, distances are very vast. The trip from Cape Town to Windhoek comes in at around 1600km. That's really friggin far. But we found a reputable bus company that operates a sleeper service on the route, with departures twice a week and a scheduled duration of 23 hours.

So, slightly nervous/excited we booked the trip, and today was the big travel day. The bus is a decently maintained Volvo base with a Marco Polo edition built on top of it. It is a large double decker with a total of 60 seats that can be folded open up to 150° for a comfortable position to get some rest.

We left the slightly dodgy bus terminal of Cape Town around 45min late - of course no explanations were given for the delay. But the seats are comfortable and we settled in for a long journey. I had estimated that we should reach the Namibian border a bit before midnight, and figured I'd stay up until we finish the border crossing and get some sleep afterwards, to stay close to my regular sleep rhythm.Read more