Waterberg → Daan Viljoen

Day twenty-two began the same way as the one before — breakfast at seven, everything packed by eight. Before leaving Waterberg, we did one final walk: a guided route up onto the plateau itself, past several viewpoints, through scenery that made the early start worthwhile. No animal sightings this time, but that was never really the point.

We left around eleven and drove toward Windhoek. The first stop was Woodcarvers, a roadside craft market with traditional Namibian souvenirs and a Spar next door where we stocked up on water for the final stretch. After that came 100 kilometres along Namibia’s main highway — a genuinely surreal experience. People were selling live chickens and bags of rice from the roadside, cattle drifted across the lanes, and baboons crossed the highway as though the traffic were incidental. It is not what any of us would call a normal road in a European sense.

Our last lodge of the trip was Daan Viljoen, a game reserve sitting just outside Windhoek. Wildebeest and impalas greeted us on the way in, and an ostrich was making its way through the lodge grounds when we arrived. It was close to four by then — late enough that lunch happened at the lodge itself — followed by time to decompress and a swim. Dinner was at half past six. Afterwards we sat together for a while, without much agenda, and let the day wind down on its own.