Wiping all the dirt off (literal and metaphorical) that we felt like we’d picked up in Kolmanskop, we were back in the cars. We took back to the B4 and headed east, retracing the path we’d taken last night, back toward the town of Aus. From Aus, we’d say goodbye to paved roads and start heading north. Day 4 Day 4 was, thankfully, considerably less driving than we’d done the first two driving days. But, as I mentioned above, it…
We’ll never really know if the apfel strudel woman was right with what she said about Lüderitz, as we never really saw it. We got in after dark, and the next morning we were up early and back on the road, with no time to spend in Lüderitz itself. It seemed cute enough. Though as we saw now driving out in the daylight: the surrounding area is harsh, ugly desert. Sands routinely blow across the roadway and obscure the road….
Namibia is a big country, it turns out. And, we saw an awful lot of it thru the windows of our cars. No more so than on day 3 of the trip, a day we spent almost the entirety of in the car. Most of it on low-quality dirt roads. Day 3 After fueling up in Keetmanshoop, we got back on the B1 heading south, before switching to the B4 west, another of the few paved roads in Namibia. Day…
Our “relaxing” time back home was anything but. It was, maybe, the most stressful time we’d had all year. We had just under two weeks before leaving for Namibia, which we were looking forward to using to reload and recharge. But in the days leading up to leaving Mexico, our to-do list grew and grew. We had to buy new toiletries and supplies for Phase 2, and get my phone fixed, and fully catch up on laundry, and actually book…
Phase 1 of our grand adventure was, itself, an incredible adventure. If our entire trip were only what we just completed, then the trip would already be an incredible, life changing, worthwhile thing. The fact that it’s only a piece of it, and we have plenty more to go, leaves us feeling so fortunate and excited. By The Numbers We spent just a shade over 4 months on phase 1, leaving Raleigh, NC on January 15, 2018, and returning on…
Erika and I didn’t want to pass through Mexico City without actually seeing it. We also didn’t have a lot of time available in Mexico, though, and wanted to focus most of it in San Miguel de Allende. So, we planned for just one full day in Mexico’s capital at the end of the trip, where we’d do as much as we possibly could in that one day. We got into the bus station from San Miguel in late afternoon,…
“I want a penthouse,” Erika said while looking through AirBnbs for Arequipa. We’d had just about enough of our budget housing for our trip to Machu Picchu, and we wanted something a little nicer again. We still missed our condo in La Paz. “Oooh, forget a penthouse, maybe I want a colonial house!” The sky was the limit for us, apparently. We did settle on that penthouse, and on May 5 we left Cusco and flew to Arequipa, Peru. The AirBnb…
Erika was fortunately starting to feel better when we woke up in Ollantaytambo on the day of our train ride up to Aguas Calientes. Which was excellent, as we were a day away from Machu Picchu, long one of the most important points on this trip! Our train was leaving just after noon, so Erika wanted to spend a little time walking around Ollantay in the morning. We headed down the main road, to the entrance to town, where awaited…
“My throat hurts,” Erika said to me Saturday night while we were packing up Franz and Helga for our early morning flight to Cusco, Peru. Thus began nearly a month of Erika dealing with illness in one form or another, and of me exploring Peru on my own for a while. Cusco We landed in Cusco and had to argue with the taxi drivers over rates—amazingly, something we really hadn’t done until now. “Oh, that’s for taxis outside the airport,…
We had unfinished business in La Paz; we also had a flight to Cusco in four days, that we’d booked weeks ago. So though we were kind of ready to go to Peru early, that wasn’t happening. So we went back to La Paz to spend a few more days. We’d hoped to rent our 18th floor condo off AirBnb again, but sadly it wasn’t available for the entire time we needed it. And, for the days it was available,…
