Gariepdam

We hardly got any sleep last night thanks to the tent life wankers on the pitch opposite. We knew we were in for a bad night as more and more cars turned up and the music went super loud and then quiet again. At 10pm when we put are heads down the music, talking and laughter was bearable but that’s when they lit there Braai opened more drinks and at midnight for 45 minutes the music was so loud I could hear it clearly through my earplugs. Then a couple of the twats tried to cut through our camp and tripped over the guide ropes and all you could hear was laughter right outside our window.
I got up at 6am and in retaliation opened all the cars doors and kept slamming them shut. I did this every time I went into the kitchen which was a lot.
By 7:30am we had packed up and at 8am we left mosalspoort for the last time with hardly any sleep.
We had filled the car yesterday and once we had driven 8 miles down the washboard gravel we picked up the N1 motorway and then stopped to pick up breakfast at the first services.
We had a Mega drive ahead of us today. And we were glad to get going early as the roads were quiet.
We did the first 100 miles on the N1 before turning off and picking up the rural road to Gariep Dam. The next 83 miles were much calmer, there was no traffic atall and it was all farmland with long straight roads as far as the eye could see. After 183 miles we came to the Gariep Dam Viewpoint, this is the largest dam in South Africa and even though it was running over the dam the size of it was impressive and the water and landscape looked beautiful.
We took some pictures, grabbed a cold drink out of the fridge now that we can keep it cold with our new Dc to Dc charger and replotted the sat nav. It would be another 183 miles to mountain zebra national park and TomTom said we would arrive at 1:30pm, but after just 10 minutes of driving we stopped at a roadside padstal to look around and get a drink and brought a slice of some very sweet cake to share.
After a 20 minute break we were rolling again, and it was just long straight boring roads with rolling farmland as far as the eye could see for the next 180 miles until we reached the signs for mountain Zebra national park and turned off onto a dirt road.
After 5km on the dirt road we came to the security gate. We gave the guard our names and he took all of our details and once in we had another 12km drive on dirt roads to get to reception and our camp. On the way we passed hundreds of mountain zebra which look very different to normal zebra, we also saw hartibeest and springbok and kudu.
We found the camp and it was much smaller than we thought and there was already about 10 other campers here. But we have a big pitch all to ourselves away from everybody else.
We put our sun tarp on and thanks to our little practise yesterday evening we looked like pro’s even though it was blowing a hooly. Within 40 minutes camp was pitched and it was now 3:30pm. We had spent the whole day driving and it had been our biggest driving day by far and we were both really tired.
After a quick drink we went over to the pool and I cooled off for 10 minutes and when we got back at 5pm I lit the Braai. I cooked pork in a prego sauce with vegetables in a Braai relish and garlic bread. It was all super tasty then we waited for it to get dark and for the stars to come out and went into the caravan to watch tv.Read more