Off The Beaten Track – The Road To Kuenene River Lodge

Most of the roads in Namibia are good tarred roads but once you get off the beaten track, it’s quite another story! For a city-dweller, the road to Kunene River Lodge can be quite hair-raising!

It starts off easily enough leaving Ondangwa after breakfast, nice tarred roads.

You do need to watch for traffic jams!

Animals can wander on the road so you need to pay attention, not drive too fast and avoid traveling at night.

Random town enroute

The turn-off to Ruacana (not much there) with the petrol station on the right. There is a small shop for snacks and drinks but no restaurants.

It’s advisable to fill up despite the price as you don’t want to run out of fuel in the bush!

We met a South African couple in the petrol station so we just followed them as they wee also going to Kunene River Lodge.

The road becomes a rough gravel road which was do-able in the Toyota Rav4 but I was nervous the whole way as I am not used to them.

Following someone made the trip pretty dusty but I was glad to have a safety net of someone else knowing we were there.

At last we arrived!

This is the return trip to Ruacana, then onwards to Kamanjab. We left the lodge and hit the gravel road where the lodge turn-off is sign-posted. At this point, we turned left to go back to Ruacana.

There were local Himba people going about their daily business.

Slowly, slowly!

That’s Angola across the river.

Small Himba villages and random houses.

There was a fork in the road a ways back and we took the wrong turn and ended up on a horrific road. I knew something was wrong as the road hadn’t been THIS bad on the way in!