The north west of Namibia is an area of gravel roads running between Himba villages and at Seisfontein the gravel roads stop and the immense, exciting wilderness full of wildlife begins……this is the Kaokoveld.

Fort Seisfontein which was built in 1896 as a police outpost to stop elephant and rhino poaching and is now a peaceful cool haven, where you can enjoy a Rock Shandy in the shade of the palm trees that were planted by the German Police who manned this outpost. The story behind this picture begins here.

Louise and I arrived at Fort Seisfontein during a reconnaissance and we stopped to re- fuel from the Forts pumps and to enjoy lunch and a unique drink to Namibia, a Rock Shandy, I seem to remember that we had two or three of these refreshing drinks. The Rock Shandy is a mix of ice, lemonade and soda and is the most refreshing drink that we have ever tasted.

In the car park sat the white Series 3 Land Rover and as we entered the courtyard we were greeted by two men who were enjoying lunch under the shade of the palms and, as is the way out here in the bush we got talking about where they and we had been and what they and we had seen. It transpired that the older of the two was an American Geologist here in Namibia just revelling in the amazing geology of this land and his friend was a descendant of the Huguenots who were hounded out of France in the 16th and 17th centuries.

They finished their meal before us, so got up from the table, bid us farewell and headed of south towards Palmwag.

Some twenty minutes later Louise and I also left and headed south towards Palmwag continuing our journey south. We had been travelling for half an hour or so, a stream of white dust spreading out behind us in the hot still air when we came across our friends on the side of the road changing a wheel. All looked well but we stopped just to make sure as you do out here and it was a good job that we did.

Yesterday they had had a puncture on the way from Umboro to Seisfontein so had used their spare tyre. At The Fort there is the facility to get tyres repaired and that it what our Geologist and Huguenot did whilst enjoying lunch, only to find this afternoon after a second puncture that the repaired tyre had not been blown back up!!, luckily we have a compressor on-board (an old air conditioning pump) so the offending tyre was soon back up to pressure. We also repaired the puncture on the other tyre so left the white Series 3, its Geologist and Huguenot all set for another adventure.