Today was a longer drive to Augrabies and we wanted to stop off in Loeriesfontein, or rather I did, as it had one of the largest collections of wind pumps in the world. If that is the case then there are not many of these collections as we only counted 30 in this one. They stand in a windswept yard behind what was a Baptist church and which now is a museum building. We elected not to phone the mobile number on the board for Tuesday to get access to the museum as we did not want to stay too long.
There was still a long drive ahead and it was very hot standing outside. Loeriesfontein is something like Verneukpan, been there, seen it, no need to do it again. L: Hear, hear.
The air conditioner in the Colt is still not working properly yet. It has been a two year saga trying to sort it out. I think it is time to change the service technician. L: Thought we weren’t allowed to mention the air-con!! Or lack thereof……
Just outside Nieuwoudtville we stopped off to look at the Quiver tree forest. A lot of quiver trees but not really a forest.
So….. travelling the hot dirt gravel road to Brandvlei was interrupted by frequent squirts of Lesley’s water spray bottle in a bid to keep cool.
L: 30 degrees Celcius at 9am!!
We filled up in Brandvlei and it seems the Colt is also getting very thirsty. It might be because we are quite loaded and we had a headwind but we were averaging 7.2 km per litre.
Trying to spot birds while travelling is very frustrating as being newbies we have to try and get a photo, then enlarge it and try and identify it using Lesley’s new bird book. We can fly past a bird on a pole at 100 km/h but when we turn around and try and approach it slowly it flies away. We were almost into Kakamas when we found a goshawk (Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk!!) that decided to play ball and pose for us. Lesley was delighted.
We are nicely settled in at Augrabies Falls B&B which is in fact a self catering place. The owner’s great grandfather used to own the land that Augrabies falls was on, he bought it from the Queen in 1893, but sold it to the state in 1907. He was quite useful in suggesting the things for us to do tomorrow to make the most of the day. Aside from going to see the falls, which we will do tomorrow night, there are three viewpoints over the gorge and then a trip to Riemfasmaak hot springs.
L: It is our second trip here, some of you will remember that we celebrated our 25 wedding anniversary here, 2 years ago
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