Cycling The Road Less Travelled

Though we would much prefer to travel through South Africa and Namibia on bikes, we had to come to terms with the fact that we have a limited amount of time before we head off to Europe. To see and do all the things we wanted to do, we would have to drive. There are a few challenges with this idea:

1. It’s expensive and we are going through our funds at a fast and furious pace
2. Neither of has driven in 5 months,
3. The steering wheel is on the other side.
4. Need to shift with the left hand (We can’t afford an automatic)
5. I have a tendency to panic and run into things.

We rented the car, but apparently there is only about a 5 km span somewhere in the Namib Desert that I’m allowed to drive. Hmmmph. Anyway, all that aside, we asked the rental car company for a Yaris, the smallest car they had. They didn’t have any left, so they gave us a Toyota Avanza. It seats seven…SEVEN. We’ve been living in a two man tent for 4 months and now we are driving around in a car that is bigger then our condo. We were joking about installing a hut tub in the back seat, when suddenly inspiration struck. Being the “savvy entrepreneurs”…the “unemployed travelers desperately wanting to prolong their trip as long as possible” that we are, we decided to turn it into a dalla-dalla (Tanzanian term for local transportation, usually a pick up or mini-bus, always crammed with people). The owner’s manual says it seats 7, but we can easily cram in 18. We’ll charge 5 rand for locals, 50 rand for tourists…suckers.

Anyway, this is the car we will be calling home for a bit. His name is Lester. White on the outside, tan on the inside, poor thing is in some serious need of pimping up. He doesn’t quite have the character or heart of our sweet, sweet Bessy, but he’ll do. Now, if we could just stop turning on the windshield wipers every time we want to turn, we’d be set.