misteroverland

Having spent many hours driving to the Orange river (border between Namibia and South Africa) when I was river guiding I was keen to find out what was on the coastal area of this region.

We spent the first weekend out of Cape Town in Tietiesbaai, as we drove towards the ocean looking for a suitable campsite for the CT crew the ocean in front of us was littered with whales – too many to count. This was a brilliant sighting as even though it’s whale season we saw none while in Cape Town the previous week. We camped below the last manned lighthouse in South Africa listening to the bellowing seals perched on a rock off the shore and watching the migrating Cape Cormorant flocks flying down the coast in such succession it was akin to planes landing at Heathrow. The weekend was filled with plenty of great food, wine and or course company. Thanks for the wonderful potpie bread and fresh mussels.

Driving towards and away from Tietiesbaai we saw 4 secretary birds, these are the first that we can tick off from Timothy’s animal challenge list – a story for another time.

From here we hugged the coast line and travelled north finding ourselves on the west coast 4×4 route – aka the bone shaker. We wild camped on an out crop of rock and enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the ocean on the way up to the Namaqua National Park something I didn’t think (wild camping) would be so easy considering how populated South Africa is. Once in the park we were hoping to see the wild flower displays for which this area is famed, there were a few fygies (fynbos daisy) left but the main displays were pretty much finished. The night skies in this region were incredible due to the complete lack of light pollution, the temperature on the other hand wasn’t warm as the cold Atlantic does a good job of blowing in a mist in the mornings.

On our way out of the park we saw the famous Padloper tortoise – worlds smallest tortoise which was almost lost in Kevin’s hand. Finally back on the better gravel we started to pick up our speed, cresting a hill we were confronted with a Cape Cobra stretched out across the road taking up at least a 1/3 of the width of the road, this is honestly the biggest snake I have ever seen. Kevin did a magic job of swerving around it just as it flattened half of it body and started to rear up, needless to say we didn’t stop to measure this one.

We headed from here towards the Richtersveld, with a stop in Port Nolloth as we just ran out of time to get to this more remote National Park. In the Richtersveld we found a lovely shady spot next to the Orange River and spent a number of days walking up stream and then floating down, we were kept entertained by the vervet monkeys and the incredible display of fireflies in the evening along with the night sky. I attempted some domestic duties too and make roosterbood (bread over the fire) as well as some yogurt; success rate was 50% :-).

This is our last stop in South Africa before using the pontoon to cross the river into Namibia. Photo’s to follow when the band width allows.