You do not travel if you are afraid of the unknown, you travel for the unknown, that reveals you with yourself - Ella Maillart

10 April 2019, Asab to Gibeon, 45,3km
Gibeon Guest House & Camping N$400

Gibeon lies 9km off the B1. Though we were reluctant to travel here, and back tomorrow, it is our only option for reachable accommodation between Asab and Mariental. [We could, in theory, wild camp alongside the B1, but there is virtually nowhere to do so hidden from sight, or in shade - considerably less comfortable than an additional 9km on a tarred road.]
We knew there was a guesthouse / campsite in Gibeon, and were pleased to have this confirmed by a small sign at the turnoff. Namibians, however, are extraordinarily bad at advertising themselves. At around the 9km mark, a sign pointed right to town, and we peeled off there, surprised to find our Asab shopkeeper standing on the corner - she had hitched to the Gibeon clinic this morning and was awaiting a lift home. The turnoff led, not to “town”, that is, the original German settlement, but to the “location”. A lady at the Village Council advised us to retrace our steps and continue along the original road, but first we popped into the Blue Palace Trading Enterprise to buy a colddrink and in search of something to eat. The entire shop was located behind an indoor fence, floor to ceiling. On the fence was a list of available items from which customers could choose. Having done so, the shopkeeper fetched the required item/s and passed them through a gap in the fence, having first received payment. Either crime is worse here than in South Africa, which seems unlikely, or this is a weird throwback to the fifties when shopkeepers effectively did your shopping for you,..
The Blue Trading proprietor proposed we enter the location proper, thinking we could get cooked boerewors at the local butcher. We could not find the butcher, and were finally directed by Mensie, standing outside her recently gutted home (she blamed the fire on arson by “blacks”), back the way we had come, saying we could probably get a plate of food from the Seboa General Dealer en route the guest house.
So back we went and down the hill to a small green oasis, comprising dilapidated German homes, an intact German church, the Seboa General Dealer and Loslappie bar, and a brand new Business Park. At Seboa we found the owner’s wife preparing several plates of food for municipal staff - Namibian taxes hard at work. They were enormous plates of food: barbecued chops and sausage, potatoe salad, spicy pasta, roosterbrood (barbecued bread). She agreed, for N$65 each including a colddrink, to prepare the same meal for Charl and I, which did us for both lunch and dinner.
The very attractive Business Park encompasses the guest house and campsite, an internet cafe (closed), a coffee shop (closed) and supermarket (closed). We were the only guests, and managed to negotiate the room rate down from N$500 to N$400, only N$100 more than the shadeless camp sites and including aircon, dsTV, coffee station and clean, comfortable beds. There had apparently been a Dutch couple in residence the previous night, and Niklaas, the supervisor, said the guest house was full during the annual Captain’s Festival. More wasted tax money on a place for the elite in a poor environment. We do believe, however, that the guesthouse is privately run, so perhaps some of the money flows back to the Village Council.
Today we saw another dead horse on the roadside; we saw one yesterday, its body shrunken away, just its head still full-size with large teeth exposed in a grimace. Today’s horse was hugely bloated, so round and fat its legs, one fore, one aft, were forced upward in a salute to the sky.
And we met Trevor the goat herder, six months on the job, feeding the goats on thorn bushes on the road verge, no doubt because whatever greenery there was on the farm was long gone in the extended drought.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…