Road Trip Windhoek to Cape Town

There are moments in life when one simply needs Cape Town. Its beautiful beaches, eclectic nightlife, sublime natural scenery and the peaceful yet pervasive presence of its aptlynamed mountain.

By plane, all Cape Town has to offer is a mere two hours away and for flush flyers, breakfast at Windhoek’s Utopia and lunch at Cape Town’s Paranga is all in a day’s decadence.

Though booking a painfully priced seat on Namibia’s national airline is par for the course for the tenderpreneur, the business mogul and the blessed, for those exploring on a shoestring, there is Namibia’s B1 and South Africa’s N7.

Two contrasting roads that make up the Cape Namibia Route that stretches for almost 1 500km, for over 15 hours changing from the aridness of Keetmanshoop to the surprising vineyards of Noordoewer before winding over the Orange River and into South Africa where the land slowly but surely becomes greener, friendlier, fruity.

But first there is Rehoboth.

The first stop on a road trip to the Mother City where one can pull into a service station and load up on snacks, use the bathroom and enjoy the best cellphone signal you will have for miles in between double checking the trailer you hired for N$250 a day in Windhoek.

A beat up Venter trailer that has faulty lights, an indicator that follows suit and which you spent almost two hours fixing at the rental place with a mechanic the night before after insisting on checking that the relic works better than it looks.

From there it’s just a straight shot until forever via Keetmanshoop where you can eat a dismal Wimpy burger and bask in the fact there is no sternfaced woman asking you to pay a dollar to use the bathroom.

Though it seems silly to make sure you have some silver in your wallet, the coin situation is a serious concern because many petrol stations require one pay a small fee to use their facilities. And the detour inside a kiosk to buy the cheapest thing you can find can mean the difference between glorious relief and peeing a little in your pants.

Keetmanshoop is also a good stop to recheck things you should have checked a few days before.

Oil, water, tyre pressure, the existence and viability of a spare wheel and a first aid kit, basic tools and the engine.

A lovely stretch of grass on which your loved ones can languish while you notice that your car and trailer license are about to expire adds to the town’s charm and is just the stretch of the legs one needs before making a beeline for the border.

All told, from Windhoek to the Namibian/South Africa border at Noordoewer, the driving time is about eight hours.

There are very few road blocks which makes for a quick drive but trucks travelling to and from the two countries may hold you up a little as will finding yourself behind the kind of fully loaded Intercape bus that will stall your plans for decades to come.

For Namibian passport holders, South Africa offers a tourist visa of up to 90 days so crossing the border is only a matter of exiting Namibia, having an SA visa stamped into your passport on arrival on the South African side of the border, handing in your passport for a quick police scan and watching your cellphone switch to roaming.

If safety is a priority, checking into a lodge and continuing your journey the following day should be a part of your plan for a long, happy and entirely ablebodied life.

The Frontier River Resort situated just a few kilometres from South Africa’s Vioolsdrift border is ideal and offers luxury tents which are rustic on the outside and completely fabulous within.

Boasting soft beds, aircon, hot showers, a fridge, a communal braai place and a view of Namibia across the Orange River set to a majestic morning medley of bird song, Frontier River Resort is glamping on the more glamourous end of the camping spectrum and perfectly beyond any screaming your head off courtesy of snake in sleeping bag.

After a solid sleep and the division of a trip that allows you to avoid nighttime travel’s poor visibility and a long day of driving’s fatigue and resultant impaired judgment, a crack of dawn farewell to Frontier River Resort’s wonderful owners will put you back on the road to Cape Town hurtling towards two construction centric road blocks, one of which will almost end you.

Not because you don’t stop and wait when you see a sign to stop and wait but because the attendant making sure a day goes by without head on collision is off reading a newspaper somewhere and so neglects to tell you that you are about to be killed by meticulously timed and currently invisible oncoming traffic.

He will, however, run angrily out of a booth to tell you how it all works in due course and the eleventh hour and that will be that.

Then there will be Springbok.

A relatively lively hub of humanity where an incrediblystocked Spar will break your fast and a random television news crew will ask to interview you because you’re a white man wearing an African shirt on Africa Day and they have clearly struck fluff piece gold.

The next stop is Klawer, mostly for a bathroom break but also to hand five bucks and a melted a KitKat to a little boy in a yellow jersey who begs you from the bushes between the road and the service station before being shooed away by the manager.

On the way home, you may want to stop to secure a pocket of oranges and raw honey for a steal in Clanwilliam or see what tuisgebakte goodies farmstalls in Citrusdal, Piketburg or Malmesbury have to tickle your taste buds.

But if you can’t remember a time before you were driving to Cape Town, you may just want to get there and thus drive straight through.

Onwards past South Africa’s verdant farms and fruit, towards its revered rock and its elegant airport filled with planes flying to Namibia in just two hours as you get there a lifetime later.

Tired, a little traumatised but terribly excited to be journeying through southern Africa.

On Africa Day.

In an age of information overload, Sunrise is The Namibian’s morning briefing, delivered at 6h00 from Monday to Friday. It offers a curated rundown of the most important stories from the past 24 hours – occasionally with a light, witty touch. It’s an essential way to stay informed. Subscribe and join our newsletter community.