Northern Cape

It was yet another early rise at 5am - it felt like I had been getting up before dawn for weeks. I was rewarded with a stunningly clear starry sky with the milky way and its billions of stars set clearly in the darkness like the facets of a great jewel. I showered and had breakfast with my fellow travellers, before we boarded the truck and headed to the nearby border with South Africa. We had a straightforward passage through the border and travelled through more flat desert terrain with large mounds of loose rocks that looked like they had been put there by giants on an abandoned building project.. It was another example of the incredibly strange and unearthly geology in this part of Africa. The sun shone intensely in a bright blue sky. We stopped at a supermarket to buy some lunch and then continued for mile after mile of mountain ranges rising out of hot desert sands covered with low bushes. As we approached our destination the famous South African vineyards began to appear. They were well irrigated to grow grapes in such a hot and dry climate and a large water network had been built to take water by gravity from the nearby rivers to irrigate the vines. We arrived at our campsite which had a nice grassy area for camping and nice bar and long pool. We put up our tents and then had one of our periodic truck cleans when we clean everything on the truck. It's a big task but many hands made for lighter work. After cleaning the truck contents in the hot sun, most of us jumped in the pool to cool off and spent some time resting. We then had a wine tasting session with some cheese and crackers. I hadn't eaten good cheese for many years and the blue cheese, especially, tasted like heaven. We also tasted some wonderful local wines including red, white and rose wines. I particularly liked the local Pinotage red wine and Brian and I ordered a bottle to drink with the barbecue meal that was made for us im the evening. Lauren and I made a drunken deal to go vegetarian one day and meat eating the next day for the rest of the trip. Today was our vegetarian day and we were both a bit disappointed to miss out on the barbecued chicken but were compensated with a lovely stuffed butternut squash instead. The drinking continued into the night - I started to feel low in mood for a particular reason and drank too much rum and coke to drown my sorrows. One of my fellow travellers, Ian, noticed I was out of sorts and came up to check in on me and we later had a chat by the pool after everyone had gone to bed which was very helpful and kind of him and much appreciated by me. It took me ages to locate my tent as I got lost in the dark heading back from the pool, but when i did eventually locate it, i quickly fell into a drunken sleep under a starry sky.Read more