A diamond in the rough: day 7
Posted by Piers Ward at 1:00PM on Wednesday 17 January, 2007 0 Comments
It was a seriously early start this morning because we wanted to get to Fish River Canyon before the sun rises. And we've got a long way to go before we get back to Cape Town and catch our return flight home.
The journey starts well, but it takes ages to cross the border. That's because there's just one South African border official to check passports and he's winding down over Christmas, obviously. Which is fine, but Noordoewor is the only 24-hour crossing point between Namibia and SA, so it gets pretty busy.
That costs us an hour, which means we have about six left to do the 416 miles between the border and Cape Town. And it's here that the Land Cruiser finally starts to feel a bit pushed. Sitting at motorway speeds for long periods of time, constantly changing down to dodge past slower traffic and trucks, pushes the temperatures up.
The car's still incredibly comfortable, but we get the occasional oil warning light coming on. This gets checked when we stop for fuel and the oil's fine, but it makes you worry. There's more traffic in South Africa, but any sort of delay will kill our return flight prospects.
We made it, but not with much time to spare. I'm gutted to be heading home, because I love Africa, but I'm not as gutted to leave the Land Cruiser behind.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic car and really, really capable, especially in the dunes. But I don't love it like the Namibians do.
But then maybe that more than anything else shows the different priorities they and we attach to cars. Here, we want soul, style, pace, handling. There, they'll just settle for reliability. And that, the Toyota has in spades.
Photography: Stephen PerryAdvertiser links
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