L: I was up and wanting to go, really early this morning. I have had it a bit rough, the last few days, not feeling at all well and now my back is really painful too, old crock. I just wanted to end the trail, much as I have loved it, to get a bit more comfortable. The roads are really bad and so it is very jarring, especially when you are not driving yourself as you don’t predict every bump and also don’t have a steering wheel to hold onto. Something I have said for a long time is that I would so appreciate a hold-strap from the top of the cab to hold on to with my right hand, instead of two on the left so I can brace myself over all the rough terrain.
We set off, after coffee and packing up at just after 7am and saw the sun come up. I had been a bit nervous about leopards coming to explore while we were in our cave, but none of those, that we know of. We did, however, spot a jackal – really large and running really fast across the veld (open ground).
The views were lovely or for us anyway as we really enjoy the Karoo-type landscape which is all over this area as well as all types of rock formations, dark brown softer rock (sandstone) with hard white rock outlasting it in the weathering process.
The track wound all over the land and we saw so many farm animals, but no farms, the tracks obviously missing those for their privacy.
We stopped for our cereal and had a little break just after seeing 4 huge bulls, I ate really fast as I was afraid that they would catch up with us, not sure if that is what “bull-bars” are for, but not too keen to find out.
The track took much longer to cover than we thought and we stopped at a deserted house for some coffee later on and took more photos. This was recorded as Rooibank on the internet notes that we downloaded.
We were surprised to see, what we thought could only be some type of fox, really quick on its feet.
Then we saw another bird of prey, which I am convinced is the same as the one we saw outside Kakamas, see Tuesday 26th March blog.
I think it is a dark chanting goshawk and not a southern pale chanting goshawk, as it is very dark and seems to have stripes on its bottom half, not smudges. Steve had persuaded me that it was the pale goshawk as my birding book says that they are not found so far West…..Any birders out there that can confirm or correct us?
I think it is a dark chanting goshawk and not a southern pale chanting goshawk, as it is very dark and seems to have stripes on its bottom half, not smudges. Steve had persuaded me that it was the pale goshawk as my birding book says that they are not found so far West…..Any birders out there that can confirm or correct us?
We managed to get signal and chatted to our girls and gave them an update.
S: We finished the trail on the Alexander Bay/Sendelingsdrift Road and turned towards Sendelingsdrift, our next overnight place to stay.
On the road we stopped off at Cornellskop Sink Hole which is, as it sounds, a hole in the ground caused by a geological phenomenon which is too complicated to explain here, but feel free to google. It is about 35 metres deep and all fenced off.
Lesley found something more interesting, when she randomly bounced a little rock off a larger rock and it made a noise like two pieces of metal hitting each other - a pinging sound. We video-ed it to capture the noise and Lesley, being ever fanciful, thinks that the larger rock is a meteor……
We passed through the Richtersveld Park checkpoint with 20 kms to go. The Park Official, a young lady, works a two week stint all by herself being stuck there 24/7, seems very lonely. She was prepared to buy a coldrink from us for R10. We left her with an ice-filled mug of Coke. No charge.
At Sendelingsdrift Park reception, we splashed out on an air-conditioned chalet for a night, being really hot, and booked for 2 additional nights in the park, which we will travel to over the next few days, to camp. The chalet proved ideal for Lesley to recover as well as to catch up on our washing, re-organise the back of the bakkie, clean out the fridge and sort out the chaos on my side of the back seat.
The water here tastes so much better than at Ai-Ais so we decided to pump out all the water from our 70 litre tank and refilled with the good stuff, no cordial needed to disguise the taste…..
L: I started the task of trying to salvage some meat that we had purchased at the Oranje shop at Noordoever, Namibia. It is lamb and we thought, braai chops, but they were tough as Steve’s new veld hat even after marinading. I braised and stewed the one pack for an hour and decided that that was only good for dogs and did the same with the larger pack and luckily those are fairly tasty and tender. Where not to buy meat!!
And now, we have eaten, updated the blog and photos and have time, on a comfortable bed, to watch a bit of TV.
Thanks so much for all the great comments and calls to update the blog asap, we really appreciate your positive feedback, everyone. Night. J
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