S: Woke up to the light filtering through the rooftop tent. We had left all 4 sides open (except for the mosquito netting) as it was very warm last night.
After breakfast, we set out at about 8am. The track headed away from the Orange River for a while and then, we turned westward again until we reached the gravel road heading to a little settlement, called Goodhouse.
When we reached Goodhouse, we stopped off at the graveyard to look at the grave of Carl and Caroline Weidner, who were the founders of Goodhouse. L: Not much of a settlement, but anyway…
S: There were also a few graves of soldiers from the First World War, who had drowned in the Orange River.
The track then took us along the Orange River again, hugging the mountainside with the river flowing on the other side.
We turned away from the river to follow a gravel road where we had some reception to chat on What’sApp with our daughters. L: We saw a raptor, which we need to identify….flying above.
S: We turned right, back in to the veld and after a while, stopped at an old Mica mine, where the last goat of the herd, turned back to us and chased Lesley back into the car……L: Thanks for the help Steve, all you had to do was put the camera down, to wave him off.
L: We had a snack and then followed the track to the view point, which was 5kms there and 5kms back to view, rocks!!
S: Then, the last 12kms took us over an hour as we negotiated the dry Kamgab river bed and huge rocks, which Lesley guided me through, from outside the vehicle, as we don’t have too high clearance for this sort of terrain.
We arrived at the campsite, to quite a crowd already here, but found a nice spot close to the river. A swim after the hot journey was really great.
L: We lounged around and had another swim, took photos and braaied. It became very warm again so we had a late night swim in the river which now was pitch dark and quite dangerous on the ankles with all the rocks and stones to get through. As I stepped into a little pool in the river, something hit my foot!! I freaked, not sure what it was but, ugh……I then grabbed Steve’s hand and made him stay with me just in case. It was lovely to cool down again. This is a free-sight so no ablutions of any sort – use the river to wash and dig a hole for all other functions……
At about 9pm we were packing up for the night to go to bed, when the rain started coming down. Now imagine, staying in a dry river bed, when the rain starts, makes it a river. Which made me very nervous.
We went climbing the ladder for bed when the rest of the campers alerted us to fish, jumped and skimming the surface of the water, catching insects. It was fascinating to watch, but we are convinced it was the frogs, diving, hopping a skimming the surface in droves.
Bed. But I would have liked to be able to start driving out, but I knew (and Steve said), we had to wait until it was light……..
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