Put Foot Rally - Day 3: Everybody get down like animals

King’s Highway Rest Camp, Windhoek to Toshari Lodge, Okaukuejo
Distance: 300 km

Day three of the rally was the first day where the crews from Johannesburg and Cape Town finally met up, at an epic party at Toshari Lodge … dressed as natures finest. But more on that later.

We left King’s Highway Rest Camp rather early, despite it being a (relatively) short stretch to Toshari Lodge. There was a lot to do and a lot to set up. We hit the town of Outjo at around 11h00. The media contingency of the crew stayed in town to ‘upload’ content but the internet was way too slow so we ended up just hanging around. Mike Sharman took it as an opportunity to get all British on us and decided to ‘take his tea.’ The only thing he didn’t do was extend the royal pinky, but I know he was thinking it.

I took some time to explore the town. I found that it operated on a really weird system whereby photographers have to pay people to take photos of them. Within a two quick clicks I was down R60.

I decided to put my camera away for a while. Journalists don’t get paid that much in the first place and the whole thing seemed kind of counter-intuitive. The crew decided to get the hell out of dodge and head to Toshari. For some unfathomable reason I decided to stay behind and visit the two Germans at the Etosha Curio Shop and Info Centre. They were both completely nuts and tried to convince me that this creature (below) was real – the dire offspring of a badly neutered mule and a dassie.

I could be wrong, but I think this taxidermical reverie is the combined result of LSD and small-town, nothing-else-to-do syndrome. Maybe someone can shed some light on the matter, but I don’t think it’s an animal. Which brings me to the next part of the story – The Put Foot Rally Checkpoint Party.

I caught a ride to Toshari with The Goofy Gophers. Toshari is an awesome spot with everything in the right place. We smashed the best buffet dinner I’ve had in ages, got a quick round-up from rally chief Daryn Hillhouse and Put Foot Ambassador Mike Sharman before it was time to party … and man, did the party go down. Everyone was dressed as their best rendition of natures finest and the behaviour followed suit, in the best way possible.

The crews partied hard. The vibe was incredible (check out all the photos on Facebook), teams from Johannesburg and Cape Town mixed it up, jammed it hard and by the end were all singing the lyrics to Paradise City in unison. In fact the vibe was so awesome that one dude, dressed as Spiderman, just couldn’t handle it any more.

Today we head to Etosha National Park, a destination I’ve been looking forward to for ages. If everything goes well I’ll have some cool wildlife photos to share tomorrow.