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4 kids world tour year

août 2022 - juillet 2023
With mum and dad, we visit 36 countries on a world tour in 365 days. We visit schools, homes, and hospitals to experience the lives of other children En savoir plus
+28
  • 270empreintes
  • 36pays
  • 361jours
  • 1,9kphotos
  • 79vidéos
  • 172kkilomètres
  • 137kkilomètres
  • 10,1kkilomètres
  • 3,6kkilomètres
  • 3,5kkilomètres
  • 425kilomètres
  • 153kilomètres
  • 133kilomètres
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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 29

    500km through the Namib desert

    2 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    We start quite early for two reasons, 1st we have 500km to the next stop, of which 400km is dirt or sand route, and 2nd we need to change a tyre, the spare tyre, because as we learned the day before thet burst here far, far more often than at home.

    We stopped at Trent Tyre for the replacement. They take off the spare, then say they don't have that size, but in 2 days, it can be there. Hmmm. So we set off to the next place called Aus, 120km up the road. We had asked who sells tyres there, and the answer was Namib office. When we get there, we discover the Namib office is the only shop in town. It's owned by a nice old lady and her son ( age 50+). It's a supermarket/souvenir shop/cafe/petrol station, and importantly, tyre shop. They change the tyre in the time it takes to drink a coffee , and we are off. The "son" tells me to avoid big stones. Good advice, except that in the next 400km there are many millions, probably billions of stones.

    En route, we stop for a break and tank up at Helmeringshausen, where again, a nice old lady has a shop that sells pretty much everything, including condoms at the cashier. They're free, she tells me, aids prevention, but the locals are not much interested, despite the dashing brand name "Night Rider" 😁. Just 220km to go.

    In Namibia, any arrival time forecast by Google Maps is useless. I really don't drive slow, about 80kmph, but we still take 2 hours more than forecast.

    The drive is interesting, starts with sandy dessert, then savanah, then mountains a little bit like those we saw in Iceland, then lots of other landscapes. Eventually, it was relief that we passed those billion stones with all tyres intact. (Turns out later this is not true :()

    Our campsite is an interesting layout, with each camper having lots of space and our only little open-air bathroom, not forgetting the obligatory barbecue.

    Flo and the kids go swim in the campsite mini-pool, which is somewhat strangely very cold, so I opt for a solar powered hot shower instead.

    Then we do our first clothes wash since Moshi 13 days ago.

    We end the day with a barbecue of beef, chicken, regular sausage, and what is called here "Russian" sausage. Lennox makes the tasteful remark that we are eating Putin's penis.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 30

    Sand Dunes Sossusvlei

    3 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    Today, we go into the heart of the desert, with its enormous sand dunes. It takes a good half hour to walk up, slightly less to slide down on your bottom.

    The guide books say you must see this in all its magnificence at dawn, so we dutifully get up at 0530. However, we get to the gate, and it's closed. Security guard insists it's only open at 0715, and we are there at 0620 😞. So we wait, and in the meantime, children have breakfast in the back.
    Then, at 0700, there is a bit of action, as an official in a military styled uniform orders me to move the car forward to the stop line. I try to do so. "Move back, you are over the stop line!" I can't see it, so he guides me. He then pulls out a note-taking board and says, "You are number 1, where are you from?, name? . Ok, you go in now and pay later when you leave. Strange, but Ok.

    So we are off along a beautiful tarmac road and arrive at the dunes 30m later.

    The dunes themselves don't impress me that much at first, but they grow on me as we climb up, and even more so when we reach a mixed landscape of dunes, died out salt lakes and long since dead trees.

    Flo and the kids, and Cedric and Audwyn can't get enough of dune climbing , so I let them carry on and sit down to watch them climb. I must have lasted 5 minutes before I fell asleep 😴. (thank goodness I was in the shade of a dead tree). I woke up an hour later. I just hoped they didn't go back without me, but that seemed unlikely. I walk back, and I bump into a driver who asks if I want to go to Seseriem for half an hour. Why not? It turns out to be super lovely and interesting. A real oasis, or so I thought. Not a fantom organa, but rather a salt lake. Surprisingly, 2 oryx were hanging out there , and they seemed unphased by myself and two others being there. After taking g a few photos, the driver is back, and I head to where the camper van is parked. Still no sign of the family, quelle surprise 😉.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 31

    Sossusvlei to Swakopmund

    4 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ 🌬 16 °C

    Today, we planned to travel ONLY 320km to the next town, Swakopmund. Bearing in mind that according to the World Economic Forum, Namibia has the best roads in Africa, that should be easy, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong! This is a good example of statistics being entirely wrong because the entire premise is false. Tarmac kilometres/ population looks great, but it's entirely meaningless in a large country with a small population, where most roads, even main roads, are dirt track. Worse, they are covered in stones and sand and have innumerable ruts and potholes.

    Thus, a 320km journey with not a single town en route was a new form of hell. The camper shakes like crazy. Every now and again, a cry from the back, "X is going to fall off!". We made it though, with no burst tyres, and only the wiring for the back lights, which had shaken loose to fix.. En route, we did stop to pee and Kaka, where there was nowhere to hide, and we took photos at the sign for the tropic of Capricorn.

    30km before Swalopmund is Walis Bay, which it turns out is quite big and has lots of fancy houses, and lots more decent houses. It's not on any European tour of Namibia, but it seems other southern Africans love it for fishing and kite surfing. It looks attractive, but look closely at any photos, as it is very windy and rather cold. Nevertheless, we go for a walk along the beach where there are a lot of flamingos.

    Then around 5 pm we are in Swapokmund, and we decide to eat in a restaurant, as we can't be bothered cooking. The campsite host recommends Altstadt, and we go there and have some tasty Bavarian/Austrian food and good draft beer.

    We all have a great laugh and as we pee before leaving, the young boys, not Cedric, notice that the pictures are not sand dunes, and tumble weed, but rather women's breasts and vaginas. As we noted in Lüderitz, political correctness has not reached Namibia yet.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 32

    Swakopmund

    5 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ 🌬 17 °C

    This was a lazy but interesting day,with for me a strange highlight of having a tourist info lady who not only knew her stuff but also knew the least worst driving routes. Based on her advice, we might change our plans for the next 4 days.

    That said, there were a few other things we did, so quite an active lazy day, we visited a snake place that had a really super keeper. Black mambas , pythons, and that viper we had seen in the wild. We went for a walk along the seashore and the pier, admiring the magnificent waves, and we ate local food, including worms. Yes, worms is not a typo, intestines, and very skinny chickens. The children played in the play area until we saw a circular saw stored next to it, with the blades exposed.You can see I enjoyed a beer, and the children enjoyed making silly photos of me.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 33

    Desert Wildlife

    6 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    This was a great day for the kids, a quieter one for me. They went with Flo on an educational half day in the desert to discover and understand wildlife. See Flo's blog for details.

    I, for my part, stayed on the campsite and tried to plan our stay in Myanmar. Result I have concluded that it's probably not going to happen and we will go to Laos instead. It's not the politics of the generals, as we wanted to visit to see the real people we had seen on our last trip Yangon to Mandalay, but rather the crazy burocracy and cost of entering the country. You need a visa, you need to buy health insurance, and you need a covid test pre arrival and on arrival. That is around $125 each with a risk that one positive test and they won't let you in and there is no refund. It was too expensive, too risky with a group of 6.

    At the end of the day, we went for a walk and visited a rock & crystals museum. Very interesting and educational.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 34

    Swapokmund to Twyfelfontein

    7 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 38 °C

    Today, we have another journey that google tells us to take 4 hours. We have learned from previous mistakes, and we set out early around 8 am just in case.

    We have two stops on the road both along the 1st 100km, which is called the skeleton coast. It gets that name from producing lots of human skeletons. The people's fate generally started with one of the many shipwrecks, and of course, many simply drowned. If they survived the initial wreck then they had a high chance if dying of hypothermia, abd the lucky ones that didn't mostly died of thirst and hunger, because the coast is an endless stretch of sand and salt flats.

    Stop 1 is a recent wreck of what looks like a very large fishing boat. Now it's a bird colony. It looks like a Gannett colony, except the birds are black. Too large to be cormorants.

    Stop 2 is where you might feel like dying because it stinks, and the stonk stays on the van on our clothes and on our shoes for hours to follow. Cape Cross breaks up the sandy desert with a rocky headland drenched in massive waves that are home to tens of thousands of fur seals.

    We got out to see them, walking in their midst on a raised walkway. They showed no interest whatsoever in us being there. Why? 1/3 slept 1/3 was headed to or from the water, and the remainder was fighting or arguing. Some of the fighting is violent, and many seals have bite marks and scars. Why they fight is unclear since the entire colony is females and newborns, mo males.

    At around 1030, we set off for the remaining miles. Again, this was a hellish journey. It took us till 1630 to cover just 250km. No traffic jam, just crap roads. Future travellers will be spared at least part of this hell, as a new road is being built. We unluckily had to drive alongside the construction.

    At our camp, a couple of dampers. No power. Showers don't work. Oh, well 😞. We are so tired from hours of being shaken that we opt to eat at the camp restaurant. Od dear, they stretch some chicken and sweet potatoes that would be good for 5 to serve 8 of us.

    Small compensation, or actually quite large compensation, we have a truly wonderful desert sunset.

    Photos credit Flo ( I was driving)    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 35

    Pre-historic carvings & petrified forest

    8 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 39 °C

    One huge advantage of this trip is that the kids experience life, geography, and history at 1st hand. For example, in Oscar's class, they have a book about the life of children in an African village. He has been able to visit real children in real homes in Kenya and Namibia. A lot is changing, and he sees that too, in a way that books can never keep up with.

    Today, we had 1st hand lessons from two very different periods. The 1st was the era of the bushmen (4000-8000) years ago. The 2nd was the forests of 280 million years ago.

    In North West Namibia, there are several sites with bushmen carvings. I had relatively low expectations of what we would see, but I have to say I was utterly wrong. The carvings in sandstone are in magnificent condition, and better they show genuine skill and have meaning. There are maps showing the location of water, there are many pictures of giraffe that they considered to have special powers to bring rain, there are priests dressed as giraffe, and there are carvings of animal footprints used to educate young hunters. Quite incredible.

    In the same area, there is a petrified forest with trees from 280 million years ago. Huge trees more than 30m long. They are also thick and were three or four hundred years old when a glacier pushed them over and moved them hundreds of miles south. You can still see the bark and the rings. It is also incredible that all the original organic material is gone and replaced by various crystalline stones.

    We end the afternoon with a 200km drive to the next camp, which for once is a moderately bad road, i.e., one you would never drive on in Europe. We get to the camp just 30 minutes after a magnificent sunset. En route, I spotted a 🦒 and shouted to everybody to look. In my excitement, I did not see three more Giraffes and just missed crashing into a large bull. He also got a bit of a scare and ran off.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 36

    Visiting real villagers

    9 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 34 °C

    Today, we set off with a guide to visit a local farm. The walk there is an hour, and even at 0830 it's very hot. ( Midday it's 38C in the shade). The guide is suffering too, even though he is local, because he drank too much the night before.🥴 .

    This visit is interesting because it's utterly real. It's not a show for tourists. Nobody is dressed up. No music or singing, other than that from the radio.

    En route, the guide explains how the 1st land reform after independence was concieved. The basic idea was to give the tribes goats and sheep, so they would farm them and leave the wild animals alone. Each person got 5 goats and only had to hand over 5, after 5 years. Since goats have 5 or six offspring each year, that should be simple, no? Actually, when it came time to pick up the 5, quite often, the farmer had none. "Taken by hyenas " was a typical explanation. Luckily the government changed course, and encouraged farmers to take up other jobs in town, and it gave those that remained a role in wildlife conservation, and it provided water extraction and storage infrastructure, that made it possible to grow vegetables.

    And that is what we see when we arrive. A good quality water extraction, powered by solar, with 20,000 litres storage and a piping system to homes and vegetable plots. There are about 70 goats, and maybe 15 cattle. They go out each day to graze in the savanah countryside. Here, it rains in November, so there is seemingly limitless food for grazing animals.

    We visit the farmers house, it is made of breeze blocks with a corrugated metal roof.i It's much bigger than houses we saw elsewhere in Africa, with several rooms, and a toilet and wc However, before we get too excited, I should note that the house is mostly bear, with a very old dirty mattress, and assorted junk.

    Outside, they put a baby in my lap, and that all say looks cute. I guess they don't mean me. After I hand off the baby to Lola, I take up the offer to play dominoes. The farmers' brother wins both games, with me a close 2nd. (It's a game for 4). We ask about school. "It's 4km to primary and 70km to secondary, and at both the children stay for weeks, including weekends at the school." Boarding school at a very different level. No Tory toffs there.

    There is an offering of food, with what they say is porridge, but looks more like polenta, and a spinnach, potato mix. Everyone except me tries it , and apparently it tastes great, although please note the next day Oscar had fever, though there might be another reason for that, because before food they were all trying their hand at mud hut building. The mud is a water, cow shit, earth mix. Grandma aged 80 shows how it's done. Her granddaughter has a laugh at the foreigners working the shit, as she explains that this form of building is traditional, but nobody does that anymore.    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 37

    3800km, camper f#*ked, passengers alive

    10 septembre 2022, Namibie ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    Today, we left Grootberg for the final 550km back to Windhoek. We thought we would have 225km of bad roads, but it turned out to be only 70km of crap. The relief of driving tarmac roads, after the endless shaking, is the closest thing to an orgasm, without the sex bit. Wow! smooth roads, wooahh 😀.

    Our grand total km is 3800. The campervan is not happy about the trip. List of injuries;

    2 flat tyres
    One cupboard door fell off (6 screws)
    One microwave oven fixing is broken in multiple places
    One door handle fell off
    Camper electrics system, broken down 2x
    One cupboard lock broken
    Dirt and grime everywhere
    Etc

    The cleaning we delegate to Windhoek Central Car wash, where 6 or more guys do a passable job in 30 minutes.

    The repairs we do ourselves. I teach Cedric and Audwyn how to use an old yoghurt pot to fix doors and handles. We brainstorm on how to fix the door handle . More yoghurt pots, of course, and it works.

    We planned the last night to go out for dinner, but Oscar is sick, so we eat in the hotel 's restaurant. A good hotel , I must say, and the chef does do a decent breakfast. However, his main meals remind me of the government canteen in the DDR, namely awful, really awful. Nevertheless, we are all happy, and after exchanging stories , we slope off to bed. Luxury, real beds!    En savoir plus

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  • 4 kids world tour year
    Jour 38

    Namibians can't read Hebrew

    11 septembre 2022, Ethiopie ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C

    and neither can I, but by some minor miracle, we are en route to Tel Aviv via Addis Abbiba, a 12 hour journey that almost didn't happen.

    Lesson for Ian: check, check, and check again entry requirements!

    In the case of Israel, it turns out that whilst we don't need a visa, we do need to make a pre-flight online health declaration. In fact it's not a health declaration at all, we could have the pest, syphilis and 20 other diseases but they do not check for those, just Covid documentation, which we have if course, HOWEVER

    I hastily tried to enter my details into the Israeli Health Ministry online form. They want dates of all vaccinations and a pdf certificate. For all 6 of us! And of course, loads of other data, though thankfully not as much as the world champions (India 6 × 8 pages , including my (dead) fathers occupation).

    I get to the final pages. Upload failed! Try again later? Continue without PDF? OK, but then there is an endless spiral on the page. I hit refresh, and the whole thing goes back to the start page.

    So I try again ×3, and Flo does, too. Always the same uploads fail, scans of QR codes fail,...and then the endless loop, before crashing.

    Ok, give up on phones. Let's try pc. Page doesn't load ....page loads only partially. This goes on for 15 minutes, before finally I get it to load, and voila it works 1st time, but we have a maximum of 10 minutes to board, and we have 5 more to do 😩 . BUT, we now know all the data that governments want by heart, and we get the other 5 done in record time.

    We have our green certificates for Israel 😀 , let's show it at the gate.

    The boarding lady says it doesn't have your name on it. I explained that it's in Hebrew, and that is my passport number. You can check! She thinks about it a bit, and without more checks, she lets us go 😀😃🙂.

    I realized later when I was so ignorant that I had forgotten Hebrew was written right to left, but whatever the case, the document bamboozled the boarding lady    En savoir plus

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