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 12: Wednesday - Klein Karoo
A family in a pick-up truck arrived late last night. I heard them hammering and making a lot of noise late into the evening. This morning I could see the idiots had hammered a tent peg into the wooden divider the park had installed between camp sites. I guess we have moved away from the sort of isolated places only camped in by experienced and responsible overland travellers, and are getting into the type of place popular among families who are less bothered about their behaviour - those who are just looking for a cheap weekend away where they can drink and play music because, "hey, I'm on vacation".
Sally is limping a bit this morning. She has bad ankles anyway (the specialists don't know why and injections haven't helped), but unfortunately she jumped out of the back of the camper last night and hit her ankle on the tow hitch.
Just up the road is a Bungee jumping site - you can jump from a scenic bridge the N2 crosses:
Sally originally planned to do a bungee jump here, however with her bad ankles she decided this would be tempting fate.
You can see we are now in dense tourist territory. The souvineers have started appearing en masse:
We passed a police check on the other side of the road - seemed to be some random check of drivers. The N2 can be a dangerous road - not due to hijacking or anything impressive like that, but just poor driving. We were passed by a Pajero (size of a Ford Explorer) towing a huge RIB - the type used to take maybe 20 tourists at a time out on the water. It was clearly doing well over 120km/h, which given the small size of tow vehicle compared to trailer seemed pretty reckless.
You can ride a steam train along this coast - the Outeniqua Choo Choo. We stopped just before George to look at the causeway where it crosses the river. The pull in where you can stop and look at this is right on a corner on a 4-lane highway. Everyone is driving fast, so slowing and trying to pull in is risky. Not helped by a guy in a Mercedes who was attempting to reverse out of a parking spot and took 5 minutes to do so, leaving my tail almost sticking into the fast traffic.
We drive through George without stopping, seeing only the car dealerships and supermarkets on the edge of town. On the other side we pull off the highway just before it starts to climb onto the plateau and pull onto the old Montagu Pass dirt road. Nice to be able to travel at a slower pace for an hour, and stop somewhere quiet for a cup of tea.
As we travel inland it gets hotter and drier. Soon it is like Spain, and how I imagine much of Mexico to be:
Frankly it is getting too hot and dusty. I have a campground marked on my GPS - it says it is a spa. We drive a few km up a dusty dirt road - our car raising clouds of dust as it passes. The Spa is in fact what it says. It has self-catering chalets which are occupied, and an empty campground. It appears to be run by a bunch of white middle-aged women - it looks like inspiration for some British comedy movie.
We select a site close enough to the bathrooms for convenience, but not too close to the construction workers who are making a long job out of tamping down some hard-core which I guess they will later pour concrete on.
I was expecting Sally to have a serious sense of humour failure at having to camp in this hot, dry, dusty, windy place, but their swimming pool came to my rescue:
As did their two thermal baths - now that is more my type of swimming: floating around in lovely hot water.
Sally spent a lot of time swimming, which hurt her ankle again. I spent a lot of time relaxing in the pool with 2 other guys staying on site (but not camping) - one in a gasoline powered Toyota Hilux he had recently bought, but which he wasn't very impressed, the other owned a very nice pop-up camper built onto a 78 series Land Cruiser:
The guy with the Land Cruiser was lovely, but I think he took a hands-off approach to discipline, I had to warn his children earlier when I found them chasing peacocks around and throwing stones at them. At one point the father had come out but had just laughed and taken photos of the children frightening the birds.
As with most of the campgrounds we stayed at this one had electric hook-up at each site. Though it didn't appear to be in the best condition:
For maybe the third time during the trip I used the braai supplied at that camp site. That is the other thing you tend to get at each site - a braai of some kind - i.e. a BBQ. Good meat is cheap in South Africa, so it would be rude not to take advantage :B
After the Braai Sally served up a huge malva pudding with custard. Basically a British treacle pudding under a different name. Don't let your doctor see it.
Stay tuned for the Eastern Cape and Winelands...
A family in a pick-up truck arrived late last night. I heard them hammering and making a lot of noise late into the evening. This morning I could see the idiots had hammered a tent peg into the wooden divider the park had installed between camp sites. I guess we have moved away from the sort of isolated places only camped in by experienced and responsible overland travellers, and are getting into the type of place popular among families who are less bothered about their behaviour - those who are just looking for a cheap weekend away where they can drink and play music because, "hey, I'm on vacation".
Sally is limping a bit this morning. She has bad ankles anyway (the specialists don't know why and injections haven't helped), but unfortunately she jumped out of the back of the camper last night and hit her ankle on the tow hitch.
Just up the road is a Bungee jumping site - you can jump from a scenic bridge the N2 crosses:
Sally originally planned to do a bungee jump here, however with her bad ankles she decided this would be tempting fate.
You can see we are now in dense tourist territory. The souvineers have started appearing en masse:
We passed a police check on the other side of the road - seemed to be some random check of drivers. The N2 can be a dangerous road - not due to hijacking or anything impressive like that, but just poor driving. We were passed by a Pajero (size of a Ford Explorer) towing a huge RIB - the type used to take maybe 20 tourists at a time out on the water. It was clearly doing well over 120km/h, which given the small size of tow vehicle compared to trailer seemed pretty reckless.
You can ride a steam train along this coast - the Outeniqua Choo Choo. We stopped just before George to look at the causeway where it crosses the river. The pull in where you can stop and look at this is right on a corner on a 4-lane highway. Everyone is driving fast, so slowing and trying to pull in is risky. Not helped by a guy in a Mercedes who was attempting to reverse out of a parking spot and took 5 minutes to do so, leaving my tail almost sticking into the fast traffic.
We drive through George without stopping, seeing only the car dealerships and supermarkets on the edge of town. On the other side we pull off the highway just before it starts to climb onto the plateau and pull onto the old Montagu Pass dirt road. Nice to be able to travel at a slower pace for an hour, and stop somewhere quiet for a cup of tea.
As we travel inland it gets hotter and drier. Soon it is like Spain, and how I imagine much of Mexico to be:
Frankly it is getting too hot and dusty. I have a campground marked on my GPS - it says it is a spa. We drive a few km up a dusty dirt road - our car raising clouds of dust as it passes. The Spa is in fact what it says. It has self-catering chalets which are occupied, and an empty campground. It appears to be run by a bunch of white middle-aged women - it looks like inspiration for some British comedy movie.
We select a site close enough to the bathrooms for convenience, but not too close to the construction workers who are making a long job out of tamping down some hard-core which I guess they will later pour concrete on.
I was expecting Sally to have a serious sense of humour failure at having to camp in this hot, dry, dusty, windy place, but their swimming pool came to my rescue:
As did their two thermal baths - now that is more my type of swimming: floating around in lovely hot water.
Sally spent a lot of time swimming, which hurt her ankle again. I spent a lot of time relaxing in the pool with 2 other guys staying on site (but not camping) - one in a gasoline powered Toyota Hilux he had recently bought, but which he wasn't very impressed, the other owned a very nice pop-up camper built onto a 78 series Land Cruiser:
The guy with the Land Cruiser was lovely, but I think he took a hands-off approach to discipline, I had to warn his children earlier when I found them chasing peacocks around and throwing stones at them. At one point the father had come out but had just laughed and taken photos of the children frightening the birds.
As with most of the campgrounds we stayed at this one had electric hook-up at each site. Though it didn't appear to be in the best condition:
For maybe the third time during the trip I used the braai supplied at that camp site. That is the other thing you tend to get at each site - a braai of some kind - i.e. a BBQ. Good meat is cheap in South Africa, so it would be rude not to take advantage :B
After the Braai Sally served up a huge malva pudding with custard. Basically a British treacle pudding under a different name. Don't let your doctor see it.
Stay tuned for the Eastern Cape and Winelands...
