Today is a big day – we are officially launching our blog on the various social media!
We hope you enjoy looking at our (for now) scarce content. Please let us know if you find any bugs, issues that you think we should know about. We will do our best to correct them ASAP. Sophie has added her Instagram feed to the sidebar, so you can see her latest photos there. We have also included a Map page (see main menu) where you can visualise our route, follow us live, and even hop from one destination to the following using the player icons located at the bottom of the map.
Although posting has been light over the last few months, we have been quite busy behind the scenes, planning and preparing the trip. After a fair bit of chopping and changing the itinerary, the dust has now settled and we are more or less committed to our plan now, but still allowing for some flexibility with dates and short stopover destinations.
We are now starting the long and arduous process of applying for visas for the various countries, beginning with the simplest of them all – India (hashtag extreme irony). We need to apply in person at the Indian embassy in Ottawa, which, luckily for us is only a 3 hour drive. Thank the lord we don’t live in Newfoundland! We have in fact, planned our entire summer vacation around this application event…
In other news, our Namibia trip is in the process of being planned out in detail. We have abandoned the idea of heading into the Kalahari desert by ourselves in a pickup truck (too many warnings against the idea in the Lonely Planet guide), and have instead decided to rent an R-V from Cape Town and drive it all the way up into Namibia over a period of around 3 weeks. We will most likely cover a distance of about 3,000 km in total, so a fair bit of driving, but nothing too excessive.
The main reason we decided to go with an R-V is that it will be the height of the summer rainy season in Namibia when we go, so in other words hot as hell during the day, with daily thunderstorms likely. Being able to sleep in an air-conditioned space in those conditions is a huge deal! Also, insect control (especially mosquitoes) will be much easier, and given the recent outbreak of Yellow Fever in Angola, best to play it safe I think. Lastly, having a toilet and shower readily available whenever we need it is worth every extra penny it costs.
Namibia really looks like an amazing tourist destination, far removed from my initial impression of a barren deserted wasteland! We will be visiting an impressive number of natural wonders, including the World’s second largest canyon (Fish River Canyon), World’s largest Meterorite, deserted mining town being swallowed by the desert, prehistoric rock-art sites, dinosaur tracks, not to mention the Etosha Nature Reserve, one of the best sites in the world for game watching. If that intinerary doesn’t get you excited, then I don’t know what will…
More posts coming soon!
A Light Year Family 