Moon Mountain Lodge, Namibia
It’s 11:30 am and we’re 2.5 hours behind schedule and counting. From our vantage point on the deck off the dining room, we can see the van that drove us 3 hours into the Namib Desert way down the hill. The hood is popped, one truck is parked directly in front of the van, and a second truck is parked to the side a bit. Tiny figures of men and one dog move around the scene.
We trundled onto the private road that leads to Moon Mountain Lodge at 6:45 the previous night and the van shut off. Our guide and driver, S, tried to start it a few times and it would almost get going but sputter out after a few seconds. S popped the hood and started fiddling around, but he clearly had no idea what he was doing. I don’t feel rude writing that because he said it out loud multiple times.
Andrew stood next to S at the engine and admitted to also knowing nothing about cars. I stood further away, thinking the kitchen already had enough inept chefs, and enjoyed the darkening orange on the horizon that followed the sunset. After about 20 minutes, I wondered how long we would have to pretend we could fix the car before S would call the lodge and ask someone to pick us up. I could see the lodge up the hill, but I didn’t want to walk up there in the dark with all the predators that Namibia has to offer potentially stalking me from the shadows. It was definitely more than a mile away, maybe closer to two.
Before I became impatient enough to ask S what his plan was, a truck pulled onto the private road and asked if we needed help. The guy jumped out when S said yes, and he played around with the engine a bit before giving up and offering us a ride to the lodge. S said he was going to stay by the van but told Andrew and I to go ahead; he asked us to tell the manager that he was stuck and see if he could send someone to tow the van.
Andrew and I climbed in the backseat of the truck and thanked the group profusely. It was a group of three tourists from Mexico City. It seemed like a couple in their early 30s and one of their mothers. They were driving themselves around Namibia (with better success than our professional guide) and staying at the lodge that night. The five of us piled out at the top of the hill and went our separate ways, but I’ll remember them as one of the nicest parts of Namibia.
Andrew and I were eating dinner in the lodge’s dining room about 45 minutes later when S walked in, swearing up a storm in a jokey tone but expressing a wish to “kill a mechanic.” He had spoken to the mechanic who maintains the vehicles for the tour company and learned that when the fuel gauge dips below half full, the tank is actually empty. I say he “learned” this on the call, but I suspect someone told him earlier and he wasn’t paying attention. That might be unfair, but it’s based on all the things he seemed to not have been told or that weren’t his fault throughout the 2.5 days we spent with him.
But the problem had been diagnosed and it was an easy fix. S would hitch a ride to the nearest gas station in the morning (in Solitaire about 30 minutes away), bring back enough diesel to get the van to the same gas station, fill up, and then we’d be on our way. He promised that all of this would happen early and we’d be on our way at 9 am, with plenty of time to finish the itinerary. Andrew and I went to bed laughing at how we were not at all surprised that S managed to run out of gas in the middle of the desert. It just fit his personality. It was mildly annoying, but it happened right outside our lodge and it would make for a funny story. We went to bed happy.
The next morning at 8:50, Andrew and I were wrapping up breakfast and about to grab our bags to check out of the lodge when I received a WhatsApp message from S. He was just leaving to get gas and would be back in about an hour. I asked if the itinerary would still work and he replied “Yes no worries 😎”
We watched the last of the other lodge guests drive off into the desert. At about 10, we took our bags out of our room so the staff could prepare it for the next guests and waited in the dining room for S to return. That’s when Andrew spotted our van down below with the hood popped. He was pretty sure he saw S walking around by the van, so we settled in to wait. And wait. And wait. By 11, we saw other vehicles coming and going from the van and people appearing and disappearing, but we hadn’t heard anything from S. We decided if he hadn’t messaged by 12, I would follow up.
At about 11:45, we heard S before we saw him, making his entrance again with a string of complaints punctuated by curses. The fuel hadn’t solved the problem; running out of diesel triggered a bigger issue and the van needed to be towed back to Walvis Bay (3 hours away). We were now going to wait at the lodge for the tour company to send a car to tow the van and a second car that S would take to continue our tour. We finished the desert tour yesterday (after having to cajole S back on schedule, but that’s another story), so today we were supposed to drive back to Walvis Bay, see some nature reserves in town, and then drive out to Sandwich Harbour. We had about 4 hours of sightseeing on the agenda, and now it sounded like we’d be arriving in Walvis Bay at around 6 pm. The sun sets around 6, so I didn’t understand S’s confidence that we would get everything (or anything) done. He talked vaguely about cars leaving already but didn’t give times or explain what that meant.
After a few minutes, I think he did the math and realized it was highly unlikely that we would cram everything in today. He asked when our flight was the following day and I told him 2. (It was 2:40, but I learned to build in time when talking to S.) He said he was still confident we could do the tour today, but just in case he had a backup plan.
He offered to pick us up from our hotel in Walvis Bay the next morning, take us everywhere we should be going today, and drive us straight to the airport to save time. We had a shuttle booked to take us to the airport, but it cost $50, so if we could get a free ride from S out of this debacle, why not? We didn’t have anything planned for tomorrow morning anyway. We settled back in to wait a few more hours, annoyed but satisfied that we would get to see everything on the itinerary, even if it required an extra half day. We had arrived in Namibia on Thursday afternoon, had the tour booked for Friday and Saturday, and were flying back to South Africa on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have much wiggle room in the schedule and were grateful our afternoon flight gave us the flexibility we needed.
We settled into the comfortable chairs on the deck with our books and around 2 we heard S on the phone. He was speaking Afrikaans, so we didn’t understand him but we were familiar with the tone. After the call, he briefed me and Andrew. The driver of what was going to be our new car had an accident en route. The car rolled over and the driver was being transported back to Walvis Bay to the hospital. The mechanic who was driving the second car (which would tow our dead van) was staying at the accident to work on the car and see if he could get it ready to be towed as well. At this point it seemed like the company had run out of employees, because the owner was driving out with one last car. I couldn’t keep up with all the variations S was throwing out, but at least this latest development forced S to acknowledge that we wouldn’t be doing any sightseeing today. We asked how the driver was but S said he didn’t get information about that.
S wandered off and a couple minutes came back in a rush. The lodge manager had agreed to drive us … somewhere. It was unclear. We thought he was driving us to the gas station in Solitaire to meet someone else with a car, but he actually drove us to the car accident, which was about an hour away. Either way, we had to hurry for some reason. So we all piled into the manager’s SUV for another wild ride along Namibia’s bumpy roads. When we arrived at the accident, it was much worse than I expected. The car had flipped; that was clear. The entire roof was caved down on the seats, the windshield and all the windows were shattered, all the airbags were deployed, and a tire was just gone. When I said I really hoped the driver was okay, S laughed that he was sure the driver was fine for now, but who knows after the owner of the company got to him. I asked if that meant he had an update on the driver’s health, and he said no.
Now the plan was for S to take the mechanic’s Land Rover and us back to Walvis Bay. The mechanic was going to wait by the wrecked SUV while the owner of the company drove out to meet him. They would tow the SUV back to Walvis Bay with the owner’s vehicle, the manager of the lodge would go home, and hopefully everyone would spend the night where they were supposed to. The next morning, S would pick up Andrew and me at our hotel in Walvis Bay and we would finally finish our 2-day excursion on the third day. Along the way, we passed the owner/S’s boss, and pulled over to chat. The owner apologized and offered to refund part of our money, if we weren’t able to finish the tour the next day. S assured him we were going to get to Sandwich Harbour, and the owner seemed satisfied. I again asked about the driver because no one really seemed to care about him and it was pissing me off. The owner shrugged and said he didn’t know how he was doing because, as he said, “I haven’t met him yet.”
The next day we did in fact see everything on our Namibian itinerary and made it to the airport in time for our flight (but 40 minutes later than S said he’d get us there, so it was good I told him the flight was earlier). We’ll write posts about the actual sightseeing we did, what was worth it, and what we wouldn’t recommend, but I wanted to jot down this story first. I’m not including our guide’s name or the name of the company because I’m still a little angry about the flippant attitude everyone had toward the injured driver.
When S picked us up the last morning and I asked again how the driver was, he said he heard the driver had a concussion and some bruises but nothing serious. But it took me asking again and again how he was and getting lots of apathetic responses before we finally heard he was okay. I’m sure there’s a work culture in the industry that I’m not privy to; there were some terrible roads on the tour and people constantly have issues driving out there. Maybe the attitudes of S and his boss come from a type of gallows’ humor and an acceptance of the dangers of the job, but it felt callous and unprofessional. But because I didn’t say any of that directly to S, I don’t feel right about calling him out here. At least not by his actual name. 😎
