20-23 May 2019: A Long Way Home

It took five days of relentless, hard driving to reach home, as I was not willing to risk driving at night. As sunset approached I would start looking for a place to sleep, and become more and more apprehensive as the sun touched the horizon. Luckily, very few people rejected my request to sleep on their property.

The first night homeward bound I stopped at a roadside restaurant and asked for a place to camp. The patrons, who were all watching soccer on the telly, tried to coerce the owner into allowing me to sleep in the parking lot, but he flatly ignored me until I got the message and left. A few hundred yards further some policemen and firefighters welcomed me with big smiles, in spite of the language barrier, and allowed me to camp next to the fire station.

The next day I reached my previous campsite at Tundavale, outside Lubango, just after dusk and soon fell into an exhausted sleep. The atrocious 80 km long road deviations and the constant vigilance against tyre-swallowing potholes were taking their toll. While breaking camp the next morning I heard the far-off call of a francolin and decided to investigate. Below a nearby cliff was a distant Swierstra's Francolin standing on a rock in the early morning sun. I managed to take a few (very grainy) photos of this scarce endemic before it suddenly disappeared among the rocks.

Swierstra's Francolin, Tundavala.

A pale morph Booted Eagle passed overhead as I made my way down a narrow kloof where I ticked the Landana- and Ansorge’s Firefinces next to a small stream. On the way back to Daai Dêng I found a Buffy Pipit sunning itself on a rock. This turned out to be a very fruitful early morning birding session.

Buffy Pipit, Tundavala