14 July 2011 - Fish River Canyon to Kakemas

Having learned from past experience, we decided to leave early because we have a lot of ground to cover today. But it was not meant to be. :( It was the Joneses turn to deal with a puncture. So, first thing in the morning Clinton was crawling around in the dirt changing wheels, while Curtis explained how to operate the jack.

We had chosen the path of least resistance, so we headed East 60 km to the tar road, and the rest of the day was on tar road - a nice change indeed. South toward Noordoewer border post. Vast open spaces, quiet roads, wait for the time to pass. About 5 kilometers before the border we clocked 7000km milestone. We stopped for our traditional milestone celebration. This time with the last of the sandy desert in the background, and the mountains of the Richtersveld on the other side of the Orange river. It was time to bid Namibia farewell, and so we crossed the border back into South Africa.


Our route took us to Springbok, then Pofadder, before arriving in Kakemas. "Why?" you ask? Mainly just to say we've been there. We have photographic evidence that we have visited those little towns that are so often the butt of jokes.


As we traveled through the Northern Cape we kept seeing these huge communal birds nests. Most of them are built on telephone poles because there are so few trees around, but some of the largest we saw were in trees. Eventually we had to stop and take a picture. We don't know what sort of birds these are, perhaps a more knowledgeable twitter can comment on this post to fill us in. Just look at the size of this nest that Damon is "holding up".


So, despite our efforts, we approached Augrabies rather late in the day, and decided we would leave the visit to the falls for the next morning. We went directly to our accommodation in Kakemas. Vergelegen Guesthouse gets our thumbs up! If you will ever be in the Kakamas part of the world and need a place to stay, stay at Vergelegen. If you are a family - you MUST have unit 16 - sleeps 6 at only about R1600 per night. And the restaurant is outstanding!