After
staying only one night in Beaufort West there wasn't that much packing
to do. So we just threw our things together and went to have breakfast
before leaving. The breakfast of Die Herehuis was a standard affair with
toast, yoghurt, cereal (muesli, cornflakes), juice and coffee or tea.
They actually had cappuccino which wasn't very common in many of the
places, which we would come to realise later. Of course, there were also
some eggs, sausage and bacon. It was a good breakfast: nothing special
but it filled our stomachs. By the way, the wifi in Die Herehuis worked
well.
In
the morning we also checked which route we would like to take to the
north. I had done some planning already in Switzerland, but the final
decisions we made before or somethimes during the drive. Google told us
that the way over Carnarvon and Vanwyksvlei would be around 500 km and
would take about 7 hours so we chose that instead of the bigger roads 12
and 11 (time estimation 6h 45 min). We didn't realise that long
sections of the road wouldn't be tarred. The road was in good condition
but as I mentioned before we could not drive as fast as the speed limit
was and thus the travel took us something short of 10 hours. Of course
we also stopped for lunch and we also made photo stops.
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| Long, straight road |
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| This is the car we used. |
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| One of the tarred sections of the road |
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| Caution!! A tortoise crossing! |
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| A horse was wondering why we stopped. |
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| As you can see the road was very straight. |
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| Some green in the desert |
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| An African animal |
On
the way we saw many animals and had to stop hundred times to take
photos. I also got a new job added to those three other ones mentioned
in the last post: A tortoise watcher. Everytime we saw one I had to
shot: Achtung there's a tortoise!! ;D Maybe for Southafricans it's
normal to see tortoises crossing the road but for us it isn't so of
course we had to take photos. Luckily the road we chose was absolutely
not busy (we saw altogether maybe ten cars outside the villages), so we
had plenty of time for photos and nobody was wondering what are we
doing.
I'm
not quite sure anymore, but I think we arrived to Carnarvon around
midday, a small town in the middle of Karoo desert, so we decided to
stop to have a small bite. We saw a small cafe in the centre called
Lemon tree coffee shoop which turned out to be something of mix of
shop/coffee/restaurant/antique and handcraft store. We ordered some cold
drinks and warm toasts which were very tasty. I also needed some
coffee. When we arrived, the lady in the coffee shop placed an old LP
into the player...it almost felt like traveling back in time. The shop
itself was cute selling some old books, souvenirs, art and handcrafts.
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| In the centre of Carnarvon |
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| We had some light lunch in the Lemon tree coffee shop. |
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| The Lemon tree coffee shop. We found the Trivial Pursuit cards on each table a nice touch. |
We hadn't bought a Southafrican road atlas, but used the GPS and a map
of our guidebook. The guidebook map was really bad and often claimed
that there were tarred roads even though the roads turned out to be dirt
roads. After Carnarvon we decided to head back to the bigger road, the
road 10. So we drove to Prieska and from there all the way up to
Upington from where it's only abour 25 minutes ride to the guest house
on the Kanoneiland.
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| This time it was goats wondering why we stopped. |
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| Somewhere between Carnarvon and Prieska |
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| Springboks |
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| A huge birdhouse. Almost every power pole had one. |
The guest house for the next two nights was
African Vineyard guest house
on the middle of the Kanoneiland. We had booked a standard room for
2160 ZAR (about 143 EUR / 156 CHF) but because the guest house wasn't
full we got upgraded to a bigger room, which was huge and also very
beautiful. The hostess was very friendly and professional. The whole
place had a special kind of feel of the days gone. When we arrived it
was already getting late so the hostess asked if we would like to have
some dinner with the other guests. I had actually planned on having
dinner at the guest house because I had tought we might be arriving
late. I had also sent an email to them but unfortunately the hadn't
recieved it. Luckily this wasn't a problem and they were prepared to
feed two more guests.
The
food was great: homestyle south african and very tasty. To start we had
some salads and the main course was lamb (super good), vegetables,
squash and sweetpotato. There was also dessert, a melktart I think. The
dinner was 180 ZAR per person (about 12 EUR/ 13 CHF). All the guests sat
around the same table which was kind of fun. There was family from
Sweden, a couple from Germany and another couple from Holland. It was
fun to share travel stories and ideas. We did go to bed quite early
though because we had made plans to go hiking the next day.
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| The entrance to the African Vineyard guest house |
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| The path to the entrance |
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| Some of the rooms were next to the entrance door. |
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| Our room was the one on the right. |
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| Our room |
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| The pool is on the left and the patio where we had dinner on the right. |
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