Week 1 Part 1
Week 1 Part 2
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 Part 1
Week 6 Part 2
Week 6 Part 3
Week 7 Part 1
Week 7 Part 2
Week 8
Week 9 Part 1
Week 9 Part 2
Week 10 Part 1
Week 10 Part 2
Saturday (Orange River Tour)
2008/11/01
2008/11/01
Today I had again a nice example for South African punctuality. Our secretary at school had advised me to order a taxi for this morning, because I had to go to Long Street at 7 AM for the pick-up. Not knowing if there would be a minibus, I had ordered an Excite Taxi. Unfortunately this Taxi never arrived, or at least not in time to pick me up. That's why I decided to take a minibus to long street. Having arrived there, I wasn't sure in which way the long street cafe, which our meeting point was, was situated. That's why I went to the nearest street seller, who was selling cigarettes and drinks. I asked him about the Long Street Cafe but he hadn't ever heard of it. So I went with a big backpack and several other bags along the lonely Long Street in the Saturday morning. Actually I would have been a easy goal for a mugger. Nevertheless, nothing happened and I arrived at Long Street Cafe without any problems (in spite of some back problems because of the heavy luggage :-) )
Then I arrived at the meeting point, our guides were already waiting. Nevertheless, I wasn't the last one. Two other participants, also tourists from Germany joined our group. These tourists had booked a charity work and where working at a after school social institution.
Orange River Tour
2008/11/01 - 2008/11/05
2008/11/01 - 2008/11/05
For this weekend and the next following days until Wednesday I'd booked a canoeing trip along the Orange River through the Richterveld National Park. I also booked the transport to the Orange River and back to Cape Town, so that the whole Saturday and Wednesday were travelling days whilst the canoeing was taking part from Sunday to Tuesday.
On this trip I also took my camcorder with, so that you'll be able to see the landscape from there:
The Orange River is the river which forms the natural boarder between South Africa and Namibia. As the Orange River is several hundred kilometres long, it crosses a lot of different landscapes. One of them is the Kalahari Desert, which is situated at the South of Namibia and continues partly in South Africa. The Richterveld National Park, founded in the 1990's, is one of the youngest of South Africa.
Our whole day was more or less a long travel. We went along the West Coast and were able to see the landscape changing from the green areas of Cape Town and the Southern Capes to the semi desert of the Kalahari. We stopped at every bigger village and so we went to Springbok and other desert cities. Late in the afternoon we reached the boarder to Namibia. First think we did was leaving South Africa and officially entering Namibia. The reason was we were going to spent part of our time on the Namibian river bank. That's why we needed a valid visa.
Afterwards we went back to the South African side and continued our trip to the Base Camp in which we were having our first dinner, which was a braai. The rest of the participants had arrived during the one or two hours before, so that we had had some time left to explore the area. The camp was consisting of several
separated areas for tents, groups or even camping cars. The only problem was, we hadn't had any tent with us; therefore we slept under the stars. Our guide informed us, that we could choose every place at the camp we like.
The days before I'd phoned the organization and double-checked that they understood what gluten free was. At the phone call the person was quite sure, that everything would be alright and advised me not to take more bread than necessary with. Otherwise the bread wouldn't survive in the desert. That's why I didn't take any bread with me. And this was a big mistake because, of cause, they had bought some rye bread! Having had double-checked twice I was so angry with them. That was when they decided to drive back to the next city and trying to get some bread. Of
course, they hadn't any chance to get some bread. Instead they brought some tined peaches and promised to solve the problem on the way.
Well, after a nice braai, we went to "bed", actually, without a bed. At first I'd chosen a place under a tree but than I was laying in my sleeping bag and looked up, I wondered what kind of animals could fall down on me at night. Earlier in the evening I had been on the loo and had seen a 20 centimetre long reptilian animal, showing me his tongue. So I decided to change the place again. We had a really fantastic sky full of stars and under them I fell asleep nearly at once.
Actually the week is not at its end but my website requires a new site. So lets continue there.