Thursday 10 August 2023

Gecko 109 (Cathy and Alec) and Gecko 81 (Helen and Earl) are on the first leg of their road trip to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Northern Cape, South Africa.

Thanks to Cathy’s excellent organising skills the trip that she planned a year ago began today. But there was a hiccup. Earl needed to renew both our car and caravan licenses but when he tried to do it at 3 pm on Tuesday the municipal office had already closed at 12 noon and yesterday was a public holiday! So Cathy printed out the required forms on Wednesday afternoon and the Earl and I arrived bright and early at the Bredasdorp Traffic Department at 07:45. Earl was third in the queue but was finished first as he had his forms all filled in! The office opened at 08:00 and he was done by 08:12 enabling us to meet at the appointed spot by 08:25!

Our first stop at 10:00 was at Christina’s on Van Loveren’s Wine Farm in Robertson where we had a delicious breakfast. It’s a great place to stop as there is plenty of space to park the caravans. Their Eggs Florentine and omelets are awesome. The coffee is excellent too.

At lunchtime, we stopped at Kardoesie and had toasted sandwiches and smoothies before continuing to Calvinia where we spent the night at Klipwerf Self-Catering and Camping. The camping section is tiny and we could not park our little Geckos without using our movers. The site is also on a busy road so the sound of heavy vehicles can disturb your sleep. We have a small ablution of a loo, basin, and shower shared by our two caravans.

We wanted to go to a restaurant for dinner but when I phoned around they were all fully booked It is, after all, flower season! So we opted for takeaway pizzas from Ciela which were excellent. I phoned to order and they Whatsapped me the menu then I replied with our choices – Just Meat for the men, Kiepie for Cath, and Stella for me. South African readers will guess the “Kiepie” had chicken. Stella – butternut and feta among other stuff. They then sent a pin and promised to let us know when to collect. The wait was about 40 minutes as they were really busy. Flower season is really good for business in this neck of the woods!

So those are the details of Day One. Now for the photographs of our scenic drive through Namaqualand. The weather was glorious. Our starting temperature was 12 degrees C but through Namaqualand, it rose to 30 degrees C! August is the best month to visit Namaqualand especially if the preceding months have had good rains. And indeed it has been a very wet winter. The photographs do not do justice to how incredibly beautiful the flowers are this year. Most of my photographs were taken from a moving vehicle!

And for the campers and caravanners – our campsite photos