Getting Stuck in Namibia

While traveling in central Namibia the road transitioned to a dry stream bed. As you can see in the photos, we were driving a large passenger van and had a luggage trailer in tow. Colin was driving and got a little nervious crossing the stream bed. Rather than speeding up to keep the momentium going, he slowed down. The trailer actually acted like an anchor which got us stuck - big time. We all got out and did our best trying to dig out with our hands and fashoned shouvles. We didn't make much headway though.

(Click the photo for full view - Back to return to the blog)

While trying to scoop out the sand, Linda noticed help was coming...

After about a half hour, a local came by in his donkey cart. This form of transportation, a car axle trailer towed by two donkeys, is the norm in Namibia. With our limited understanding of the language we asked if he could get us some help. He excitedly trotted off down the riverbed toward his village. About 45 minutes later he returned, but no one else was in sight. We asked him where the help was and he pointed to the rope in the trailer. After a long laugh... we went to work.

Now this is the hard part to believe... We scooped out all the sand we could in front of the tires of the van and then tied the van to his two donkey powered cart. We also disconnected the trailer. Believe it or don't, it worked! The donkeys had enough power to get us unstuck. He kept us going till we made it to the other bank of the stream bed.

We all still thought that the donkey really didn't do that much, but we still had the trailer to deal with. Remember the trailer was the "anchor", it was buried up to it's axle. We then tied the donkey to the HEAVY trailer alone. If we weren't believers before we sure were when we saw the donkey cart move and then pull the trailer 200 yards through the deep sand to the other side.

What an adventure. Thinking back, it is still amazing that this primitive method worked.

Enjoy the photos.

(Click the photo for full view - Back to return to the blog)

We soon figured out that scooping and pushing was not going to work.

(Click the photo for full view - Back to return to the blog)

Finally... Help is on the way!

(Click the photo for full view - Back to return to the blog)

Tying the trailer to the cart wasn't an easy task.

(Click the photo for full view - Back to return to the blog)

Just a walk in the park for these hardy beasts of burden.

(Click the photo for full view - Back to return to the blog)

As Willie sings it "on the road again"