Trip report: Southern Africa
OK, so I've had my takeaway and a bottle of Belgian beer. The cats have stopped attention-seeking and the house is quiet because Sally is 20 miles away with an IV antibiotic drip in her arm failing to...
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Day 7: Friday - Rainy season arrives
So far I have been boasting about the benefits of travelling in the rainy season. On this February Friday morning it suddenly didn't seem such an advantage. It had rained like I had never seen rain the night before, and now it was raining some more. We were woken early by a dawn chorus of local guard dogs - this campground was on the edge of the small town of Zastron. We sat under the canopy in the campground wondering what to do, we went and sat in the warm bathroom too. I wanted to wait for the rain to stop so I could fold the roof away without trapping water in it, which would undoubtedly seep through and wet the bed. I was also checking the weather on my phone in various locations. Our itinerary was flexible so we could adjust it to get away from the rain. However, wherever I looked the rain was there too. I decided to stick to plan A and just hope it wasn't as bad as forecast.
I wasn't in a great rush today. We were now a day and a half ahead of schedule. The GPS showed a lengthy drive to get to the coast where we planned to take a ferry. If we attempted the whole drive today we would probably turn up too late to catch the ferry. So instead I decided to head for a campground just inside Eastern Cape, a third the way to the coast, and have a relaxing day. This was a campground I was hoping to stay at, and it would bring us neatly to one whole day ahead of schedule, which we could spend later on in the journey.
The Orange river separates Free State from Eastern Cape:
We cruise along the wet roads at between 80 and 100 km/h, taking the time to get through a few more CDs in a Cathy Reichs book on tape (did I say tape?). We find these (whether Reichs or Grisham) are great for distracting you on long trips, but Sally tends to doze off and my mind wanders while driving, so we both miss chunks of the action, but it is better than listening to a diesel engine and tyres on tarmac.
Sterkspruit looking busy:
Bus shelters were colourfully painted this one is on the road outside Lady Grey:
With time to kill we turned off the main road and headed into Lady Grey. A small town set out on a grid. I noticed on the GPS that a small back road ran, well, not parallel, but came out of the back end of Lady Grey and wound its way through the hills, joining up with the main road again the other side. This seemed a reasonable detour to kill some time. It turned out to be a good decision:
Another species of long-tailed bird:
The heavy rain made the road quite slippery. However, despite this I was very pleased with the Cooper Discoverer S/T tyres. They performed excellently, although they did slide around a bit on this wet mud. But I had to admit I was unfairly comparing them with the extreme mud tyres on my Suzuki Samurai, which is our tool of choice in deep mud. If I drove this same road with my pickup truck's BFGoodrich AT/KOs on I suspect it would have been even more slippery.
This appeared to be a nature reserve, with marked hikes and picnic places. The detour had taken a couple of hours and then we were back on the road, but covered in even more mud than before.
Some typical small houses:
We were coming to the edge of the plateau, from which we would drop down as we headed towards the coast - we would drop down in further increments the following day too - there seemed to be a number of plateau layered one on the other.
We descended the plateau and at the bottom found a turn-off for the campground we were looking for. Like the last one it was also a lodge - the main buildings looked like a traditional white-owned African farm house, with picket fencing and shade trees. Like Kelvin's place the owner had a large bar and looked like he had enjoyed the contents of it over a number of years, but everything was much neater and well managed.
This time we shared the campground with two other campers. The other campers have huddled around the bathroom block so as to plug into its electric supply. South Africa uses 230v like UK and Europe, but has the old three round pin plugs like the UK used to use in 1934 - very robust with solid pins capable of taking maybe 20 times the current supplied. We had no use for mains hook-up, so we parked next to the cooking area and monopolised that instead:
You might just be able to see that our fellow campers are an elderly couple (of British origin I believe) in an old Toyota class C RV, and a middle-aged couple with a Mitsubishi Pajero SUV towing one of the wonderful camping trailers popular in South Africa and Australia. These things are hugely rugged, designed to be towed across the dirt roads of developing countries and then folded out into tents. This one weighed around 1000kg, which I noticed when after rain the following morning I had to help him swivel it around so he could hitch it to his SUV - it was a seriously inconvenient piece of kit to wield on soft grass.
The other occupants of the field didn't bother with the electricity supply, but did hang around the shade tree by my fellow campers, and generously shared their flies with them:
Once we were settled the next wave of thunderstorms appears over the plateau, providing an impressive lightning show. I was glad we had a shelter to sit in:
Others sheltered with us:
I tried out the gas lamp on the spare propane cylinder - it worked well and gave a nice warming light, but I turned it off after a while - no point burning through our cooking gas when the area we were sitting in was lit by fluorescent lighting already.
Stay tuned for the coast...
So far I have been boasting about the benefits of travelling in the rainy season. On this February Friday morning it suddenly didn't seem such an advantage. It had rained like I had never seen rain the night before, and now it was raining some more. We were woken early by a dawn chorus of local guard dogs - this campground was on the edge of the small town of Zastron. We sat under the canopy in the campground wondering what to do, we went and sat in the warm bathroom too. I wanted to wait for the rain to stop so I could fold the roof away without trapping water in it, which would undoubtedly seep through and wet the bed. I was also checking the weather on my phone in various locations. Our itinerary was flexible so we could adjust it to get away from the rain. However, wherever I looked the rain was there too. I decided to stick to plan A and just hope it wasn't as bad as forecast.
I wasn't in a great rush today. We were now a day and a half ahead of schedule. The GPS showed a lengthy drive to get to the coast where we planned to take a ferry. If we attempted the whole drive today we would probably turn up too late to catch the ferry. So instead I decided to head for a campground just inside Eastern Cape, a third the way to the coast, and have a relaxing day. This was a campground I was hoping to stay at, and it would bring us neatly to one whole day ahead of schedule, which we could spend later on in the journey.
The Orange river separates Free State from Eastern Cape:
We cruise along the wet roads at between 80 and 100 km/h, taking the time to get through a few more CDs in a Cathy Reichs book on tape (did I say tape?). We find these (whether Reichs or Grisham) are great for distracting you on long trips, but Sally tends to doze off and my mind wanders while driving, so we both miss chunks of the action, but it is better than listening to a diesel engine and tyres on tarmac.
Sterkspruit looking busy:
Bus shelters were colourfully painted this one is on the road outside Lady Grey:
With time to kill we turned off the main road and headed into Lady Grey. A small town set out on a grid. I noticed on the GPS that a small back road ran, well, not parallel, but came out of the back end of Lady Grey and wound its way through the hills, joining up with the main road again the other side. This seemed a reasonable detour to kill some time. It turned out to be a good decision:
Another species of long-tailed bird:
The heavy rain made the road quite slippery. However, despite this I was very pleased with the Cooper Discoverer S/T tyres. They performed excellently, although they did slide around a bit on this wet mud. But I had to admit I was unfairly comparing them with the extreme mud tyres on my Suzuki Samurai, which is our tool of choice in deep mud. If I drove this same road with my pickup truck's BFGoodrich AT/KOs on I suspect it would have been even more slippery.
This appeared to be a nature reserve, with marked hikes and picnic places. The detour had taken a couple of hours and then we were back on the road, but covered in even more mud than before.
Some typical small houses:
We were coming to the edge of the plateau, from which we would drop down as we headed towards the coast - we would drop down in further increments the following day too - there seemed to be a number of plateau layered one on the other.
We descended the plateau and at the bottom found a turn-off for the campground we were looking for. Like the last one it was also a lodge - the main buildings looked like a traditional white-owned African farm house, with picket fencing and shade trees. Like Kelvin's place the owner had a large bar and looked like he had enjoyed the contents of it over a number of years, but everything was much neater and well managed.
This time we shared the campground with two other campers. The other campers have huddled around the bathroom block so as to plug into its electric supply. South Africa uses 230v like UK and Europe, but has the old three round pin plugs like the UK used to use in 1934 - very robust with solid pins capable of taking maybe 20 times the current supplied. We had no use for mains hook-up, so we parked next to the cooking area and monopolised that instead:
You might just be able to see that our fellow campers are an elderly couple (of British origin I believe) in an old Toyota class C RV, and a middle-aged couple with a Mitsubishi Pajero SUV towing one of the wonderful camping trailers popular in South Africa and Australia. These things are hugely rugged, designed to be towed across the dirt roads of developing countries and then folded out into tents. This one weighed around 1000kg, which I noticed when after rain the following morning I had to help him swivel it around so he could hitch it to his SUV - it was a seriously inconvenient piece of kit to wield on soft grass.
The other occupants of the field didn't bother with the electricity supply, but did hang around the shade tree by my fellow campers, and generously shared their flies with them:
Once we were settled the next wave of thunderstorms appears over the plateau, providing an impressive lightning show. I was glad we had a shelter to sit in:
Others sheltered with us:
I tried out the gas lamp on the spare propane cylinder - it worked well and gave a nice warming light, but I turned it off after a while - no point burning through our cooking gas when the area we were sitting in was lit by fluorescent lighting already.
Stay tuned for the coast...
