We left Etosha National Park early that morning and traveled to the Skeleton Coast, making it to the gate 20 minutes before it closed. Multiple times that day I asked Antonio if we had enough cash to pay the park entry fee. Each time he answered with a confident yes. After our gas stop, a confident yes. After our spontaneous visit to the Damaraland living museum, a spontaneous yes. After purchasing the hand-carved mobile of birds for our unborn child from the “tour guide” wearing a loincloth at Damaraland, a confident yes. So when we reached the gate, I was confident we had enough. We didn’t.
He ran to the car and scrounged for change in every nook and cranny while I made small talk with the very bored lady who ran the gate. He came up with just enough of a mix of South African Rand, Namibian Dollars, and the good ole USD, which is not something Namibians usually accept.
She looked at it confused and asked “How much is this worth?”
“It’s worth about $20 Namibian Dollars.”
“I don’t know what we will do with this but I will take it,” She said. We were oh so grateful.
Until we reached our truck.
And saw the flat tire there.
Where did that come from in the past 20 minutes that we had been scrounging and haggling?
As one can imagine, the gate to the Skeleton Coast is not a highly populated tourist destination. Fortunately for us, there was ONE man there. ONE man aside from the judgemental security guard at the gate who watched us struggle and offered ZERO help. But there was ONE nice Namibian man who showed up suddenly out of nowhere and sauntered over, smiling from ear to ear as he watched Antonio struggling to release the spare from underneath our rented Fortuner and me staring worriedly, unable to help because I was six months pregnant. If Iwase to lay on the ground I probably wouldn’t be getting back up any time soon.
This ONE nice man came to the rescue. Within minutes he and Antonio had loosened the jammed spare and replaced the flat with it and we were off, just as the lonely, judgemental security guard was closing up for the night. We made it to the coast in an hour or so and then headed north for our final destination: Terrace Bay. Its the furthest north one can go in the park without a plane and we had booked a room for the night at the simple fishing lodge located there. We made it just in time for this beautiful sunset. Unfortunately, Antonio missed most of it because after dropping me off he went to the ONE gas station located in this region to see if they could fix our flat tire. They couldn’t.
But I was lucky enough to catch this light at the end of the Skeleton Coast road. A barren land but a beautiful sunset.
Magic 100/365, The Light at the End of the Road, Terrace Bay, Skeleton Coast, Namibia, December 26, 2017
