Stage 2: Ruancana - Eenhana

Now that I have my legs spinning around voluntarily, I am heading into a mild breeze. The wind can be rather strong in the mornings, but settles down around lunch time. On my return stay at Outapi I found a camping site under a beautiful big Baobab tree. Right opposite it is the War memorial with a lovely Bunker style accommodation. Darn it would have been a great place to stay instead of the lodge. Their fees are quite reasonable as well. So far it is the only War Memorial I had come across in this area. It is as if the people had simply put the war behind them and carried on with their lives. I'm sure if I raise the issue more often, then more will be revealed.

Instead of heading back to Oshakati / Ondangwa before going up to Eenhana, I decided to take a back road via Engela to Oshikango. I was told it is a very safe road but not in a good condition. Trust me it is in a bad state! Beautiful but very corrugated. Where there is no corrugation it is thick sand. I many a times thanked my stars for doing the back roads of the Kalahari. There I encountered roads like this one, but the stretches were much shorter. It is easier to deal with thick sand than being shaken for kilometers on end. Additionally the road is quite busy and as a cyclist, I am expected to cycled in the loose powdery gravel, where the bicycle just slips and slides.

Despite this I still made a good distance. I thought I'd make it to Ongenga, but 10 kilometers before I realised that I had been shaken around too much. I was in a small settlement, so I went to a house that looked fairly nice and asked the lady if I could pitch my tent in the yard. My request was accepted AFTER the headman of the village came to 'interview' me. Hikka was rather concerned that she could not offer me much, but I insisted that I had everything I needed. I had bought some of that fried fish at a road stall earlier the day and was looking forward to having that for supper. The kids were fascinated by the whole process of pitching camp and all the things that 'crawled' out of those panniers.

I still had about 40 km of even worse road before getting to the tar. Along the way a bunch of school girls kept me company for a small distance, running alongside me and chatting away! Then a young man, who is not very fluent in English, said he'll cycle with me to Oshikango. For his camaraderie I invited him to have a cool drink with me half way through. Thanks to him, he stopped me in time when my pannier fell off from all the shaking.

Oshikango is much bigger than the schematic depiction on the map. It has all the shops: Pick n Pay, Builders, Spar, Dunns, etc and even a Kentucky! Just so wish governments will stop changing street and place names and rather make more effort in depicting these towns and settlements on the maps. Even in South Africa I have traveled through big 'settlements' that are better equipped and has more people than the traditional 'white' towns, but they are often not even marked on any maps. Having them on the map, I think, gives more recognition to the people living there than changing street and town names of existing places.

For all the shaking and sliding I treated myself to a stay in the Square Sun Hotel. Their price is the same as the Lodge, but they were not going to have a disco! Was rather odd to have everything in English and Chinese!

I knew that in Eenhana there is more infrastructure than what, again, is schematically depicted on the map. First I had to battle with the wind again. Headwinds are mentally draining for cyclist. The pits are when one stops and wonders where the heck the wind disappeared to!