The End of the Road: Day 362

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Hi everyone from Cape Town at the end of the road for our year of traveling.

Over the last week and a bit we have been steadily heading south, with our last stop after Swakopmund in Namibia being the Namib desert. We took a dune walk with a local bushman guide into the dune fields where the Tsauchab River is blocked by the world's largest sand dunes. The dunes are progressively marching inwards towards the mountains as successive adjacent dunes join up across the river bed when dry. This creates small pockets of dead trees every thousand years or so as the terminus of the river is pushed further inland. Our walk took us to the most recent patch of tree remains which look quite spooky when marooned out in the dune fields.

On the same trip we took in sunset from Dune 45 (all the dunes are numbered) - one of the taller and more accessible dunes in the desert and a great place from which to survey the local scenery.

We then stopped briefly at Fish River Canyon, one of the largest in the world before crossing into South Africa. We were supposed to have a walk in the canyon, but the temperature at this time of the year makes this pretty unsafe - 43 degrees at 7 pm.

Our overland truck tour finished up a couple of days after this with our last stop being in the winery region of Stellensbosch. Not surprisingly the backpackers we stayed at here was fairly well used and a bit of a bomb site the following morning after our end of tour winery tour. Although nice wines we preferred the French reds, and are looking forward to getting our hands on some good New Zealand whites on our return.

We have spent the last couple of days recovering from the overland trip in Cape Town, our last city stop for this trip. We have taken in one last adrenaline junkie outing - doing a great white shark cage dive the other day. This was a pretty crazy experience as we had 6 different great white sharks circling the boat and the diving cage as all on board took turns in the cage with mask and wet suit. We had some really big sharks turn up, which you can see from the photos next to the 3m long cage.

We have also taken the obligatory cable car ride up to the top of Table Mountain, which frames the city bowl of Cape Town. We had good weather doing this and managed to avoid the "Tablecloth" cloud bank which often engulfs the top of the mountain.

Sadly this was our last "tourist outing" for the entire trip as tomorrow we start our journey back to New Zealand, via a stop off in KL.

We will be back in NZ on the 4th of December, probably feeling a little bit worse for wear for the following few days.

Look forward to catching up with you all very shortly.

S&S

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Photos

Namib Desert
800 year old dead trees stranded when the dunes cut them off from the river.