No good deed goes unpunished

For some weeks now we've been wanting to see the ocean. It's about 200 km due west from here. With call and other excitements we've been doing other things, but this weekend, we went. Sat morning 8 am (Mark finished call) we went west. Picked up some young chap, dropped him at his farm, and picked up a young kid there, about 11 yrs old, who'd fallen from a donkey cart and scrapped his foot. It looked a bit dirty and so on, but not too bad. His dad wanted to take him to the clinic in Bersig where there was a nurse, about 30 km along our route. So we did. The dad pointed out some elephant droppings and was able to tell us how many had gone by, and in which direction. Really neat (and I was thinking: no good deed goes unrewarded...)

But when we got to Bersig there was no nurse, she'd gone to Khorixas for the weekend! It was really annoying, what were we to do? Drop him, to wait for the nurse (and the wound to get septic?) Take him with us (there is a clinic in Terrace Bay, about 100 km further on) but what if that nurse was away as well? How would he get back? Would he be waiting for us? while we were sightseeing? UUURGH! How did it become our problem! Well, it became our problem when we picked them up... Soooooo we drove them back to Khorixas, at the hospital gates, and started again. 4 hours later...

We spent the night at Springbokwasser gate, at a campsite, for free. This is the Gate for the Skeleton coast national park. It was incredibly remote. A small group of buildings for managing the access to the park, surrounded by nothingness. We explored the river bed, took loads of pictures of Welwitchia (the miracle plant that grows in the desert... About 1 cm per year). Baked potatoes on the fire, slept, woke at sunrise. Wow, what an amazing sunrise. I don't see many sunrises, just not that kind of person, but I've seen more in Namibia than anywhere else. Mark took some amazing pics (we'll upload them later).

The seaside was cool, you could feel the air changing as we approached it. The seasonal campsite (only open Dec and Jan) was eerie with cormorants. Just beautifull. The water was too cold for me. (And I'd been looking forward to swimming in it.) Mark immersed himself, and I paddled.

We stayed for a few hours, and there was an enormous dune just back from the ocean which we climed. Very desert, very Laurence of Arabia.

Who knows? Was our good deed punished? We had a fantastic weekend, no matter if it was because or despite giving a lift to that child...