This part of the trip saw us on the final gravel road as we start to head towards the civilisation of the Namibian capital, Windhoek. Other than the one day, when driving from Vingerklip to Uis, the non-sealed gravel roads have been great fun to drive on - almost like driving on slush at times with the car getting quite light as it skitted around a bit on the dusty surface. You certainly needed to keep concentration up, but it was a lot less boring than driving at 120kph on a mainly straight tarmac road. Having left Moon Mountain Lodge we passed through Sesriem (after 80km) and filled up with fuel, and used the facilities before continuing for another 140km to the town of Betta (town being a loose description given it just comprises of a campsite, petrol station and a coffee shop). The coffee shop was an absolute delight and for somewhere remote the cakes and coffee were great and all served so professionally - Namibia really has given us a few surprises, this being one of them. This first part of the drive also took us through the Namib Rand Reserve, somewhere much smaller than Etosha as it is a collection of individual farm owners with some exclusive lodges for people wanting to see wild game. Our drive through was free of charge, but had to stop to allow Oryx to cross the road and to also view Zebra too. From Betta we carried on to Duwisib Castle, now operated as a historic house, hotel and restaurant by Namibia Wildlife Resorts who also ran the lodges we stayed at in Etosha earlier in our trip. The castle was built by 'Baron' Captain Hans Heinrich von Wolf (born in Dresden) who married the stepdaughter of the US consul, Miss Jayta Humphreys, in 1907. They decided to settle in German South-West Africa (as Namibia was called at the time) and bought eight farms in the Maltahöhe area and construction commenced in 1908 on the 22 roomed castle. While they were travelling to Europe in 1914, the First World War broke out and the Baron rejoined the German army, but was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, just two weeks after signing up. His wife could not bring herself to return to Namibia alone and never again laid claim to the majestic castle. Around 80km after leaving Duwisib Castle we were at Maltahöhe and rejoined tarmac roads as we headed to our stop for the evening laying a further 90km east at Africa Safari Lodge near Mariental. Our stop here was pretty much out of necessity as we didn't think we would be able to get much further in one day having driven nearly 400km - and a great stop it was. We arrived just in time for coffee and cakes being served and also discovered that a three course dinner was included in the room rate - we expected to be room and breakfast only! The dinner itself was superb, one of the best of the holiday so far, and it was nice to be served rather than a buffet style offering which had seemed the norm so far on our trip. The individual lodges were simply furnished, very clean and sat around a waterhole within a private game reserve containing 19 different species including White Rhino. Surprisingly, other than a few vertical white posts, there was no physical barrier between wildlife and people. However, other than a herd of Springbok, which were outside our room from around 02.30 until sunrise, and around eight distant Giraffe we didn't see too much wildlife. Having checked out of the Africa Safari Lodge the room rate was also much less than we expected so we hot footed to Windhoek around 300km north on rather boring tarmac roads. I was already missing the gravel roads by the time we reached the capital.