Thursday Sept 8 2011 Soussusvlei

SHIFTING SANDS OF TIME

One of the main reasons I chose this tour was that it included a visit to Soussusvlei and that was on our agenda for today. We drove through the predawn light to reach the national park gates which open at sunrise. I sat up front today as co-pilot to Cosmos so I was able to call some of the shots as to when we stopped for photos. This area is made up of huge orange sand-dunes, the sand originally from the Kalahari Desert thousands of years ago. While the shape might change, the footprint remains the same, mainly because the sand is mixed with lots of minerals which weight it down. And these dunes make for some great photographic opportunities.

A very low dense fog drifted along the base of the dunes at first but cleared later in the morning. We stopped at Dune 45 (45 kilometres from the park entrance) and most of my group climbed it. I only went part of the way up as I was a) concerned about my cameras getting sand in them and b) there were too many interesting vantage points at the base to photograph with some wonderful old trees against the background of the dunes. I was following behind one gentleman who was going from tree to tree, thinking he had the same intention as me, until I realised he was looking for a little privacy as there were no public toilets available!

Climbing Dune 45

After having our boxed breakfast here, we then continued on further into the park, finally transferring to safari type vehicles to go the last few kilometres through sand and a walk to reach the dead pan. This is another iconic photographic landscape with the bleached pan and its black skeletal trees against the orange dunes. The river had originally flowed through this area but the dunes on each side of the valley gradually moved in and closed the area off, creating this salt pan and dead trees.

A quick visit to Seissen Canyon, one of the least impressive canyons I’ve seen, then back to a rest stop for a sandwich lunch. We finally arrived back at the hotel just after 4pm and as I’ve come down the head cold doing the rounds of the bus, I had a nap before dinner.

Seissen Canyon

All up, a great day. I love the desert scenery and we‘ve seen a lot of it over the last few days but today was something really special!

 

Wednesday Sept 7 2011 Ai-Ais – Namklut

THE LONG AND BUMPY ROAD

Another very long day on the road driving through the desert landscape. Wildlife viewing included three wildebeest (didn’t they get the memo about the migration?), some ostriches and springboks.

Near Fish River Canyon in daylight

Kwiva tree - which the San use for their weapon making

Some of the scenery reminds of the area around Monument Valley, but without the rich ochre colours. Here the colours are more subdued. We made a short rest stop in the little town of Bethanien and bought water in the small general store where the owner was chain-smoking behind the cash register – not a scene you see much nowadays!

Lunch was a picnic along the way, taking cover from the sun in a camping ground, as there really isn’t much else around here. The population is as sparse as the wildlife!

My first 'real' African sunset

Our accommodation tonight, like last night, seems to be stuck in the middle of nowhere so we had dinner in the restaurant. We’ve got a good group of passengers so we had a lot of laughs throughout the meal. My only complaint is that hasn’t the management heard that you can get higher wattage than 10 watts for lights. In the restaurant you can get away with it but in the room it makes it hard to find things in your luggage.

Tuesday Sept 6 2011 Clanwilliam to Ai-Ais Namibia

MEALS ON WHEELS

Today is reported to be our longest drive. We started off at 6am, an hour before sunrise, and ate a boxed breakfast on the road. We made a short stop in Springbok around lunchtime where we had a quick look in some of the local shops while the bus was refuelled. Once we were back on the bus we were each handed some KFC, once again eating onboard as we hit the road north.



A type of weaver bird we saw at a rest stop along the way

Yesterday we drove mainly through farming country and the beautiful Cederberg Ranges but today the landscape became more barren, dramatically so once we crossed the Orange River into Namibia. Before crossing we saw lots of wildflowers out along the roadside, bright purples, yellows and oranges for mile after mile, but once into Namibia the landscape turned to desert with no sign of cultivation, except for what we’ve dubbed the Domestic Five – sheep, goats, cows, dogs and birds!



Roadside wildflowers



We all moved seats today and once we hit Namibia the roads became dirt, if we were lucky they had been recently graded, if not, then again bone jolting riding. Changing seats didn’t make a lot of difference to comfort as the noise was still ear-splitting!

South African landscape not far south of the Namibian border

Namibian landscape

We reached our hotel at Ai-Ais Hot Springs just after 4pm and only had time to drop off our luggage and wish we were staying here two nights before we were off to see the Fish River Canyon at sunset. Had I known that it was going to be a three hour round trip on even worse roads (if that was possible) I would have stayed behind. Fish River Canyon is similar to Horseshoe Bend in the US but the colours aren’t as good. The only upside was that we were offered wine and cheese as we watched the sunset.

Fish River Canyon



  We finally made it back to the hotel at 8.30pm and went straight into dinner. I decided to go native and had the oryx but it wasn’t that good – next time I’ll stick with steak or chicken.
My room had a bathroom plus an internal courtyard with outside shower, the bedroom then steps up to a kitchenette and covered balcony. Outside the main door were a series of hot spring pools for swimming, so as I said, it would have been a nice place to recover from a gruelling 14 hours on the road!



Monday Sept 5 2011 Cape Town to Clanwilliam

THE LITTLE FIVE

We left Cape Town under a clear blue sky with a Table Top Mountain clearlly visible behind us. Every residence we saw as we drove out of the city displayed the name of their security company or had electrified perimeter fencing, or both.

Our first stop this morning was at ‘Khwa ttu, a cultural and heritage centre for the San people, the bushmen of Southern Africa. We were taken on a tractor tour around some of the area with our guide explaining pointing out things of interest and also about their life, how they still made poison darts for hunting with bows and arrows, which animals they hunted and communal life. We were shown how the ostrich egg was used for a water bottle while the men were out hunting and if they dropped it the women then used the fragments for jewellery – nothing is wasted.

Our San guide with an ostrich egg

 



Different types of animal prints to identify food for the day



San village



I thought our lunch here was described as a typical meal for them but as it was a curried mince with rice, accompanied by a pappadam, I might have misheard!

I’ve heard about Africa’s  Big Five but today I learnt that there is also a Little Five and we saw our first example – a Leopard Turtle, so named because of the pattern on its shell. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo, not that the turtle was moving that fast, but it was a poor angle to take from the bus.

Speaking of the bus, the interior has twelve seats, four rows made up of a single seat by the left hand side window and two seats by the right. I chose the rear single seat as I could stow my carry-on behind the back row. Wrong!  As the day got longer and the roads became more ‘unreliable’, the ride in the back became one of bone-juddering endurance with loud sounds similar to rifle fire. We suspect that the shock absorbers might be gone!

Sunday Sept 4 2011 Cape Town

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

I sailed home from England via Cape Town after my first venture overseas and I found Cape Town at that time very confronting as it was at the height of apartheid with ‘whites only’ and ‘blacks only’ taxis, shops, entrances to buildings etc. I was very uncomfortable and was glad to get back on the ship.

Today the city has a different feel with most people very friendly and welcoming and I had no qualms about wandering around by myself.  I didn’t even realise until I was finishing lunch that I was the only Caucasian there and didn’t think twice about it.

I started off my day of sightseeing by walking to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (yes, it is called after Alfred, Queen Victoria’s son, and not her husband Albert). The city sightseeing bus began from here and skirted the harbour before heading through the downtown area. I alighted at the Castle of Good Hope, a pentagon shaped fortress built around 1666 and the oldest surviving building in South Africa. I found it very interesting to poke around here, visiting the three museums and walking around the parapets.

Looking back out at the main entrance to the Castle of Good Hope

The Dolphin Pool in the Csstle

Looking out at the city centre

I then walked back through the city centre, with its native craft markets, beautiful old architecture and quirky buildings.

Back on the bus, we went up to Tabletop Mountain but as it had its tablecloth on today (cloud cover) I didn’t bother getting off. The view from the base of the cable car station was still pretty impressive looking back down over the city and harbour.

Tabletop Mountain - from the base of the cable car station

We then drove along the coastline past a number of beaches, each with boulder strewn headlands and masses of kelp. The seas were pretty rough so no-one was in the water, even though, we were told, the water is warmer in winter than in summer because of the currents.

Back at the V&A Waterfront I had a look around and took lots of photos. This is obviously the place to come to as it was packed with people – no wonder the city centre seemed deserted. It's made up of expensive apartments, shopping arcades and restaurants.

Seals share the expensive V&A Waterfront neighbourhood

 



This evening we had our tour briefing and I met up with those I’ll be travelling with over the next eighteen days – our two Zimbabwean tour guides and eleven fellow passengers. We were even introduced to our transport – a custom-built 4WD vehicle for twelve people plus crew. It’s quite impressive – I’m just not sure if there will be enough space for my hand luggage!

Saturday Sept 3 2011 Sydney to Cape Town

ON THE ROAD PLANE AGAIN

As I had a mid-morning flight I organised a taxi in plenty of time. It turns out that Saturday is THE day that half of Sydney flies out on holidays so there was a bottleneck getting into the airport and my taxi fare was 180% of what it normally should be! I made up time, though, by having checked in online last night and now Qantas has a special online check-in queue for international flights. It was obvious that hundreds of passengers haven’t caught on to this yet as they were in a long line snaking back and forth to check-in while my queue had 3 people in front of me.

I had a great seat, as far as economy goes, by the window near the rear of the plane with only an aisle seat beside me and interesting company. My neighbour, from Monash University, is going to Cape Town for a science convention before continuing onto Namibia for a field trip looking for fossils.

My main gripe with Qantas is that this flight was a codeshare with South African Airlines and if you went on a SA ticket the fare was $300 cheaper than the QF ticket plus those on the SA ticket didn’t have to pay to select their seat while Qantas has now brought in a $20 per sector booking fee to pick a seat! To top that off, during the actual flight we found that the reading lamps, attendant call buttons and the on demand entertainment system weren’t working. We could, though, watch some limited movies which went through on a set cycle. If I wasn’t accumulating frequent flyer points for my next trip ….  

Our flight plan took us from Sydney down south over the snowfields and out across the Southern Ocean before turning right and flying not far from Antarctica across to Africa. There was a lot of cloud cover but once we turned north to South Africa the clouds cleared and I could make out countless icebergs. Unfortunately my cameras were in the overhead locker so I couldn’t get to them to take photos.

As we neared Johannesburg the landscape changed from rather barren countryside to agricultural land, parched greens and ruddy browns. I felt as though I should be landing in rural New South Wales.

At Johannesburg I went through immigration and customs before boarding a two hour flight to Cape Town, where I was met at the airport for a transfer to my hotel in Green Point. This is the starting point for my tour to Namibia, Botswana and Zambia, as set out below.

All up, a very long day with the long flight sector being flown completely in daylight.

Tuesday, 28 June 2011 - Next Trip

INTO AFRICA

It’s hard to settle down after such a fantastic holiday earlier this year to Antarctica and South America where I so enjoyed seeing and photographing the wildlife and landscapes, so I am now booked to go to Southern Africa in September on a small group tour with Peregrine Adventures.

The tour starts in Cape Town then heads up the west coast through wine country on its way to Namibia, with its photographic orange sand dunes, outstanding games reserves and the Himba people. We’ll be visiting several game reserves there, including Etosha where we will spend each of the three nights there at different watering holes (animal watering holes that is, not pubs or bars).

It wasn’t until I started researching that I found that the best time for game viewing in this area is before the rains come as the animals have to come into the waterholes.

Then it’s on into Botswana and the Okavango Delta and Chobe before finishing up the tour in Livingstone, Zambia. I’ve already visited Niagara Falls some years ago, Iguazu Falls in January and now I will conclude this tour by seeing Victoria Falls (I’m obviously going for the trifecta when it comes to seeing these amazing natural wonders!).

I’m not sure what internet access will be like, probably non-existent in most areas, but I intend to blog this journey too.