Fish River Canyon to Vlooisdriff, South Africa

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Fish River to Vlooisdriff, South Africa

Today was on bumpy dusty gravel all the way to the South Africa border. The desert is spotted with small mountains of boulder piles and fenced, but no domestic animals in sight. Occasionally we saw mountain zebra, ostrich and springbok, but they were widely scattered for the most part. The mountain zebra are unique to this part of the desert and are smaller with stripes down their legs.

At the border we exited Namibia and entered South Africa with no visa payments and no forms to fill in for a change. Our campsite was along the Orange river with real water flowing. Every river in Namibia was bone dry with the exception of Fish River, which was a series of small pools along the canyon bottom. There was no doubt that we were visiting during the dry season.

In the afternoon Kayla went for a canoe ride on the river while Richard did rock hounding. The river has no crocs or hippos so swimming was possible but Richard had decided to avoid local water everywhere. Kayla's river trip was about 3 hours 'paddling' a blown-up raft/canoe down river with a kayak paddle. Her partner was Javier from our group and it was a beautiful warm blue-sky day floating down the river through, at most, class 1 rapids. The biggest hazard was getting caught up on the rocks because the river was very low. There were many birds to see, including Goliath herons. At one point Kayla and Javier paddled to shore to grab a rock for Richard.

Rock hounding meant a walk along the main road looking for access to the hills of reported Archean age. These hills were too far away for a hike so a local rock field had to do. Locals walking along the road must have wondered what Richard was doing, walking slowly, head down on these rocks. But the rock piles produced an amazing variety of colourful stones and filled his pockets.

That night it got down to 12 C and we needed a campfire for evening warmth.

Around the camp fire that night we were visited by "whip man". He drove another overland vehicle that was paralleling our route from Nairobi to Cape Town. Each afternoon he would bring out a large Australian cattle whip and practice his macho skill in cracking. This is very annoying in peaceful camp grounds so he was not a friend. 

But in spite of this his visit to our campfire was entertaining. He told a story of a cobra wriggling into his truck for warmth. A fire extinguisher was needed to dislodge it. He told another about jogging along a road in Livingstone, Zambia and meeting a charging bull elephant.  His jogging partner took off, but of course could not expect to outrun it. Fortunately the elephant was making a false charge. After entertaining us, we forgave him the annoying nightly whip cracks - well almost.

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