Most of our posts on this blog will be happy recollections of some moments of our trip. But life on the road won’t always be fun. We feel like we’d like to share some of these moments of misery too. (OK, and vent a little about them too…)

Nineteen days into our safari, we were feeling so confident about the camping aspect of the trip. Sure, it had been a little cold, but we had figured out how to dress ourselves to deal with that. We were getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night, if not more.

Then it got windy.

After the sun went down on our night in Solitaire, a strong wind started to blow. We manoeuvred the truck into place behind the ablutions block, but it still didn’t really block the wind very well. Our tent was pretty sturdy, so we were worried about it collapsing or blowing away, but the wind was gusting strongly enough to cause the sides to flap very loudly, and even the wooden floor to vibrate. We didn’t get much sleep until the wind died down around midnight.

Hiding our tent behind the ablutions building

The next morning we were pretty frustrated not to have gotten much sleep. But, it wasn’t windy anymore, so we hoped our next night in Sesriem would be better. All day it was nice and calm, and even by the time we went to bed, there was only a light breeze. We were looking forward to a nice night of sleep to make up for the previous night.

Around 11, the wind came.

It was just as bad as at Solitaire, and this time continued on through the morning, interrupting some of our plans for visiting Sossusvlei. By the afternoon, the wind had died down to a light breeze. OK, this night, we really were looking forward to some solid sleep.

Around 10, the wind came.

Again, the wind lasted until the morning. We left Sesriem pretty bitter about the lack of sleep and interruption of our plans.

The next night, in the Quivertree Forest, there was no wind, and we finally got some good sleep!