A long ride with plenty of rewards

As we were leaving Usakos, we encountered a little hiccup with our plans - the car key fell apart! The key is connected to the remote through a little pin, and apparently that pin broke, so now our key had two separate parts. That made turning it in the ignition very difficult. The drive north would take us another five hours or so. Deep into the wilderness.

With a bit of difficulty I managed to twist the key by lodging it somehow in the remote, but they came apart as soon as we started driving. Fortunately, we would pass through a medium sized town along the way. Once there I called the rental agency and asked for advice, and they recommended us to go to a garage and ask them for help to fix it.

So we did, and while I was inside the garage talking to the mechanics our car alarm went off - with Anne still sitting in the car! The mechanic who held my keys and I ran out and managed to turn it off, but we were confused as to why it happened. They were unable to fix the key, but managed to lead a piece of steel wire through the pin hole to make sure the key does not fall off the remote anymore, which was constantly happening and super annoying. As he was finishing up the key, which was now impossible to fold together since the wire was sticking out, the car alarm went off again, and I started thinking of all kinds of unpleasant scenarios.

After a solid delay, due to the key issues, we arrived at the southern gate of Etosha National Park. We had to fill out some forms and were told we had to make payment of our park fees 17km down the road in the first camp. We were also told to hurry up, as our intended destination Halali camp was about an hours drive away and closed their gates in an hour.

Oh dear. We had not anticipated how tricky it would be to make this trip without stopping. Even before getting to the pay point we spotted multiple rhinos, plenty of zebra, and some other animals. Once we had paid, our streak did not end. By the time we arrived at the camp (two minutes before closing), we had spotted herds of zebra and giraffe, all types of antelopes, a family of lions sleeping lazily on the roadside, a spotted hyena playing with its cub, six rhinos (both black and white rhinos), ostriches, and another type of bird that reminded me of emus but wasn't an emu.

At the camp, we quickly parked our truck, and went to the infamous Halali watering hole, where the park authorities had constructed some viewing stalls and floodlight for visitors of both animal and human nature. On the way there, we heard a car alarm go off in the distance, and just looked at each other with worry in the eyes. When we got to the watering hole, we didn't see any animals, but were bitten a lot by mosquitos, so we headed back to our truck to set up the tent and prepare some dinner.Read more