Tuesday, June 17, 2025

We got up at 7 and got ready. We went to breakfast at 8. I had fruit and yogurt, scrambled eggs, toast, juice, and coffee. As soon as we were done, the others were ready to leave. Tammy and I quickly finished packing and got ready to go. We paid our bill and loaded up. We took a few pictures before we left.

We had to drive all the way back to Windhoek that day. It was a long bumpy ride on the dirt/rock/sand road. 

We stopped for lunch/snack at Solitaire. We weren’t really hungry so Tammy and I split a chocolate croissant, which was delicious. We all enjoyed using the internet because it did not work well at the Elegant Desert Lodge. We then hopped back in for another 3.5 hours or something like that. Kelvin and Sandra went straight to the Trans Kalahari Inn, but Tammy’s parents, Tammy, and I went to get lunch. We drove into Windhoek and looked around. Tammy was looking up options on her phone. We drove past a nursery and Tammy’s parents said we should have stopped there. Apparently in Africa, (plant) nurseries often have cafes. We kept looking and followed Tammy’s directions and we ended up returning to the nursery where we ate at the Blueberry Cafe. As we pulled in, we parked right by the entrance so we could keep an eye on the car. However, the cafe was at the back of the nursery so we couldn’t see it at all. Thankfully there was a guard in the parking lot.

I had a chicken pie and a peanut butter milkshake. After we ate, we left to look for a place to buy insect repellent for Victoria Falls. On our way, we saw a police station that had a sign that said, “Traffic Calming.” We thought that was funny. Tammy’s dad ran into a grocery store and bought insect repellent. It comes in a roll-on stick (like a big glue stick) and doesn’t smell bad.

We drove to the Trans Kalahari Inn and got settled. We both showered before dinner. We went to dinner at 6:15. We weren’t that hungry since we had just eaten a few hours earlier so Tammy and I had curry soup with pita. 

There was a big fuzzy cat that was walking around the restaurant. When we went to pay, we confused them because we wanted to each pay the other half of our room plus our own dinner. They were going to charge us the full price of the room until the owner got involved. I ended up paying the other half of the three rooms because they were too confused. Tammy’s dad made a super fancy spreadsheet that we are using for shared expenses. It even calculates exchange rates! We went back and Tammy’s dad found that we had another flat tire. The two brothers changed the tire again and we went back to our room and packed and laid out our clothes for the next day. We got ready for bed, spent a little time in our phones, and went to bed.