Tuesday 27 June to Sunday 2 July
Tuesday 27th was a long day. Up before dawn, a final look at the beach and leaving Pongwe for Zanzibar Airport. A nice quick transit through the departure formalities at the new International Terminal and and off to Johannesburg via Nairobi on Kenya Airways. On time into Johannesburg, a 2 1/2 hour layover in the domestic lounge and onto Cape Town. We landed at 10pm and into our hotel by 11. Despite being very tired ( also an hours time change from Tanzania) sleep took a while.
We had arranged the driver we used to get from the airport to help us get around some key sights in Cape Town on Wednesday as we only had a day before the next leg kicked off. Richard picked us up at 8am and we were off. First up, a run through the centre of town , then up to Table Mountain.
From Table Mountain we went through Camps Bay and Hout Bay, then cut back east to the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula. Through Simons Town and down to the Cape of Good Hope / Cape Point. A solid climb to the top of Cape Point ( especially after a week of being in a safari vehicle up to 10 hours a day) was rewarded with great views. We also saw a few pods of Humpback Whales close by Cape Point on the False Bay side.
From the Cape it was back up on the east coast for a late lunch at Kalk Bay. Then onto Groot Constantia, the oldest winery in South Africa for a quick tasting and checking out some old Cape Dutch Colonial architecture. The wines were ok to good – we bought a nice SSB blend and a good 2021 Pinotage.
After a quiet night at the hotel we were up early to meet our tour. We are doing a 20 day ‘Cape Town to Victoria Falls’ small group tour with Nomad . With a maximum of 12 tourists on the truck, we found we were starting with only five – plenty of room for all. Apart from us, there is Ross from the central coast of New South Wales and two mates – Kevin and Warren from Cape Town. All good folks and the group bonded very quickly over buying Gin for the trip …😊 Apparently two Americans should join us in Swakopomund and two Czechs in Windhoek, giving us 9 for the Botswana and Zimbabwe legs. Completing the team are our guide Helmut and our driver William.
We did a lap through the centre of town, up to the top of Signal hill, then headed out of town, passing through the colourful Bo Kap district. Then it was the road north after a stop for supplies on the Northern beaches.
It was a pretty cruising drive under overcast skies and a bit of rain up to our stop in the Cedarberg region of Northern Province. We stayed at a place called ‘Marcus Kraal’ – a working citrus farm with lodges.
The rain had continued overnight- causing a problem for our journey to Namibia. The road north of the town of Springbok was both underwater and washed away. It was closed. This necessitated a nearly 400 km detour to a border crossing that was accessible. We barely made it before the South African post was closing and didn’t make it to the Namibia post , which was closed when we got there, flag down and all. Thankfully the Namibian border guards were good guys and opened up and let us in. Otherwise we would have been spending the night on the truck, on the bridge over the Orange River, between the two countries.
We spent the evening in a very pleasant river camp on the Orange River , well west of our border crossing. We didn’t get in until almost 9 pm.
On Saturday we head north to Ai Ais on the Fish River. The name means ‘hot water’ in the local Namaqualand language. The desert scenery was stark, broken up briefly by and irrigation area where table grapes and dates were grown.
After a walk along the (dry) Fish River riverbed at Ai Ais and a swim in the hot baths it was an early night. We had to be up early for the drive to see the sunrise over the Fish River Canyon – about an hour away.
The walk along the Canyon Rim as the sun rose was cold and spectacular. After a breakfast overlooking the canyon, we headed for the town of Keetmanshoop. This town was named during the German colonial period in Namibia, after a German industrialist who never visited the colony but sponsored the building of the town’s church ( which still stands).
In the afternoon we visited both the ‘Giant’s playground’ and the ‘Quiver Tree Forest’ . The former being an example of differential weathering of igneous rock and the latter a forest of Quiver Trees….🙄
Everyone went a bit nuts climbing over the rocks at the Giant’s playground.
The Quiver Tree forest covered a few hectares and was home to a variety of weaver birds and many Dassies. Dessie is the Afrikaans term for a Rock Hydrax
Ness’ and Mark’s Wandering 