Early Morning Toyota Service in Okahandja
Good day, February 9th, 2026. Well, this is a Monday. I needed, or I had made an appointment at the Toyota place in Okahandja. And Okahandja is about 70 kilometers away from where I’m at in Windhoek. So I’m going by the experience I had in Oshakati where the order that you arrived at in the morning determines at what time— not the time, but determines the order that your repair will be attended to that day.
Well, apparently they had the same system in Ocahontia. So I ended up getting up early and leaving about quarter to 6, I think, and made it there in or yeah, something like that, close to 6:30, which was early enough because I definitely was the first one. So it’s a bit of a different story there, but it’s also a smaller town. The person attending that I made the appointment with came really early, so that all worked out.
Vehicle Repairs After Robbery Incident
The main thing that I wanted to have done is replace the lock in— locking mechanism on the passenger door because when the guys— when I stopped for the guys that robbed me, they— I think one of them was able to get to get with a screwdriver and try to open that lock because I had my door locked, that one anyway. I messed up the door lock, which it wasn’t already working very well anyway, so I figured that was a good idea.
Then I thought of two other things. That had come up. One was the handbrake wasn’t as solid as it’s supposed to be, and after the first repair 1,200 km ago, that should have been really solid. That was not attended to. And then I was still looking for a leak of my main diesel tank.
So, uh, altogether, uh, it was just a bunch of waiting and going to the grocery store and get some food and do some more waiting. But there was Wi-Fi there, so I could at least, uh, keep busy. Um, eventually they were able to replace that lock, reset the handbrake, uh, didn’t find a leak for the diesel, so we’re all good.
Journey to Swakopmund Coast
So then it was time to go to the coast, and in this case that meant, um, okay, Let me see that. Swakopmund. Swakopmund. What a name. So I was already in Okahandja and the main road to go to the West Coast is through Okahandja. And that’s a very— that’s just a paved road all the way. But if you come from Windhoek, that’s not the shortest route. But I was already there. It was all figured out.
So I made it to Swakopmund, about 3.5-4 hours drive. And found a place there to stay, a very reasonable place, a small hospice. I don’t know, some something, something like that. Very helpful, comfortable, not too expensive. I try to always stay below $100 a night, which has not been an issue at all. I’ve had one or two times to go over that, but that was really good reasons for for it.
Experiencing Swakopmund’s Coastal Charm
So that really worked out very, very well, and I got a taste of Sokopmund, a touristy town, a very touristy town, but it wasn’t too busy at this time. And I stayed about a block from the beach and can’t get enough of driving by the seaside, so kept doing that.
Anyway, if you ever get to Namibia, Swakopmund should be included in your journey. Also great fish because it’s, I mean, obviously a fishing town where they, uh, they’re right at the ocean. Ah, thanks for coming along.
