No Stopping for Lions by Joanne Glynn

of First World education for simple-mindedness, and a difference in culture for a lack of one. It’s just as well I’ve met Mac early in our travels and been forced to question these prejudices before falling into a bigger trap. After meals when his duties ease, Mac, the German and I talk about food and cooking. Mac is hungry for knowledge and loves to hear stories of our favourite dishes and new-to-him ingredients. The German tells of eating truffles in France, and I try to explain why I think prosciutto with melon is the perfect pairing. I promise Mac a cookbook and he jots down his contact details, saying that eleven months is not too long to wait for it.
    We move on northwards to Barchan Dunes, a farm that offers accommodation I’ve been wanting to stay in ever since I saw it on the Internet. Called KuanguKuangu, it’s located a kilometre up the valley from the main house in a lonely, lovely spot. The design is inspirational, with the kitchen and bathroom open to the stars. We eat at a table under a solitary thorn tree and look down an ancient valley of yellow grasses and purple peaks. For hot water, Neil lights the donkey heater, and for food, I cook on an outdoor gas stove. Hannetjie, the chatelaine at the main house, is an excellent cook and on the first night Neil and I walk down the valley for dinner. They serve springbok fillet — ‘seared for five to eight minutes only’ — and a lovely yoghurt and chocolate dessert, an old German recipe that Hannetjie graciously translates for me. Her husband used to be an engineer on the Windhoek municipal council before Black Empowerment replaced him, but it’s obvious that his heart has always been out here in the empty valleys and hills of his homeland. He takes us on a drive around his farm, mainly looking for his baby gemsbok and the elusive mountain zebras. The former he farms for meat, while the latter are protected wildlife and have the run of the range.
    Going through the Namib–Naukluft Park on our way to the coast, with nothing else in sight and desert on either side, the first car in an hour drives past and throws up a huge rock that hits the Troopy’s windscreen. We’re momentarily deflated, seeing a big tennisball-sized crack on our pride and joy, then we perk up a little when we convince each other that this battle scar adds something; the Troopy no longer looks like a brand new cadet but a war-weary general of character and experience.

A SERiES OF UNFORTUNATE MiSTAKES
    Swakopmund is roughly halfway down the coast of Namibia, just north of the commercial port of Walvis Bay and due west from the country’s capital of Windhoek. It’s trendy and smart and very much the holiday destination for Windhoekers, with its cafés and boutiques, and overseas tourists fill the streets and hotels. Driving in for the first time you can’t help but be amazed by its position slap in the middle of desert, where dunes roll right up to the sea. Over the next few days we settle into town life in a house rented from a Windhoek family. Town water is a little salty but okay to drink, and there’s a garden hose so Neil tops up the Troopy’s drinking-water tank reasoning that the salt and the metallic taste of the new tank will counteract each other.
    I go to an overworked, rude dentist to get a wobbly front crown glued back in and Neil goes to the post office to try to phone the United States about the satellite phone, which is still giving problems. The repairs done in Upington were short-lived and the on/off switch has jammed in the on position. Neil is once again preoccupied with solving a technical problem and spends most of his time trying to contact the right people overseas and organising the posting to America of the offending phone. He becomes grumpy and forgetful, and when he starts to leave things in cafés and repeatedly walks off leaving the Troopy unlocked, I become apprehensive. We’d always said that