{"id":14727,"date":"2016-03-17T05:29:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T05:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffjones.com\/?p=14727"},"modified":"2016-03-17T05:29:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T05:29:25","slug":"biking-africa-2016-03-15-steinkopf-noordoewer-namibia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/?p=14727","title":{"rendered":"Biking Africa &#8211; 2016-03-15 Steinkopf to Noordoewer (Namibia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tues 15 March 2016<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14730\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14730\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2590.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14730\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14730\" src=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2590-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2590-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2590-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2590.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14730\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunrise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>An early start I was out on the road at half past six, sans breakfast apart from a handful of grapes. After going up the inevitable hill it was a long steady downhill on an empty road and gorgeous watching the landscape change colour with the rising sun. Even getting a cracking image of my shadow.<\/p>\n<p>The long beautiful downhill stretch was somewhat marred by the facewind but still a great way to leave South Africa. I managed a drink at the aptly named Fiddlers Inn at the border with it&#8217;s associated shop. The border crossing was very easy apart from the lady forgetting to return my precious white slip at Desk 1 so that Desk 3 could stamp it \ud83d\ude41 The Namibian office thought it was a bit weird having a bike and wondered where I was going to stay and how long I was going to be there but no problems at all.<\/p>\n<p>By the time I left the border posts someone had turned the heating up to 42 degrees plus \ud83d\ude41 So as I soon I spied the sign Orange River Lodge River Camp a few hundred meters away I disappeared inside and into an room with AC at 11.15am \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14728\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14728\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2622.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14728\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14728\" src=\"https:\/\/geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2622-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"I made it to Namibia\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2622-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2622-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-IMG_2622.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14728\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I made it to Namibia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After a long nap I found the Engen store down the road, it&#8217;s 4 franchises run by one excellent guy: Petrol, Wimpy, Bakery, Shop all operating 24X7 now if only every place at something like that! They sorted a SIM for me at $10 plus $50 credit. No passport or bureaucracy needed at all pity its only an Edge connection so it&#8217;s bye bye Facetime for a while. The Lodges WiFi didn&#8217;t work either.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve now decided to follow the route described by Thomas Anderson in his excellent blog that he rode 3 months ago. Unfortunately it does mean camping at least a couple of nights.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/518213385\">Strava says I rode\u00a037.6mi<\/a> and even with all the downhill I went up\u00a01,242ft<\/p>\n<p>The pictures are here<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/photos\/oWTVDoprTEPTwEjW6\">Todays photos<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tues 15 March 2016 An early start I was out on the road at half past six, sans breakfast apart from a handful of grapes. After going up the inevitable hill it was a long steady downhill on an empty road and gorgeous watching the landscape change colour with the rising sun. Even getting a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-biking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}