EWe left Augrabies National Park at 08:00 and went into ‘town’ to fill up with diesel.
The terrain from Augrabies to Pofadder is flat with with distant mountain ranges on both sides. The ground is covered with golden grass, as far as the eye can see, but on closer inspection, they are just tufts sprouting out of the red dry ground. From time to time, like a pop up shop in a mall, something exciting adds itself to the otherwise stark beauty of the area: beautiful little purple flowers carpeted the ground for a few kilometers and one of the mountains was filled with kokerbooms (Quiver trees), a tall branching species of Aloe that is indigenous to this Northern Cape area. Every now and then we see a few sheep grazing on the tufts of grass. We also saw a couple of Springbok.
The first town we drove through was one we often throw up in conversation, I'm not sure why…it must be the name because the town is certainly not memorable, Pofadder.
The scenery between Pofadder and Springbok was a variety of changes, the scrub bush was more sparse and grey green in color. Clearly a preferred diet of sheep in the area as the herds were more prolific here. It was great to see the wild flowers out and in patches we had carpets of beautiful orange flowers.
Last time we were in Springbok we had breakfast in a nice little coffee shop. We drove around the whole town (it took about 5 minutes) looking for it and eventually landed up at the Wimpy😝.
We have been pleasantly surprised by the great state of the roads in this area.
We passed through Steinkopf, luckily we didn't blink or we would have missed it. The flowers in this area are predominantly yellow but interspersed with white, purple and orange – they are beautiful.
Our turn off to Eksteenfontein took us onto a well maintained dirt road for 50km. Eksteenfontein is another ‘don't blink’ town, with a few brightly painted houses. Years ago we passed through the town and I remember it as being ‘brighter’; more colored houses and more people, more friendlier people. It kind of had a depressing feel to it now.
The next 50km over Vyfmylpoort took us the best part of the afternoon. At times we were only traveling a few kilometers an hour over mountains and through river beds on a rocky road. The scenery was spectacular, we have been so fortunate to capture the late wild flowers that pop out the ground once a year in the western and northern Cape. The side of the road, the mountains and rocky outcrops were adorned with the delicate and beautiful flowers.
We arrived at Helshoogte Gate, an entrance into the Richtersveld park around 5. We had seen two cars the whole afternoon and one was a wreck. The parks board employee said to Gray, “Meneer, jy is in die moeilikheid” (sir, you are in big trouble). We still had 25 km to go to book in at Sendlingsdritf, 25km back on rutted sandy roads and then another 40km to our tent site in the Richtersveld. Time was not on our side – Gray, our tour director had seriously misjudged how long the off-road trip would take. He did admit to us that the suggested and preferred route was via Port Nolloth to Sendlingsdrift. One thing I have learned after 25 years of marriage to Gray is that we will always take the road least travelled. Two years ago, our route home from East London, from one of Robs’ Waterpolo tournaments, took us 3 days via back roads and mountain passes – so we could see 6 different biomes in one area.
I have learned from him that life is about the journey – got to love the guy.
However, not so much at this point, we were already tired and travel weary, with darkness 2 hours away and lots of difficult roads to negotiate. Panda always makes a plan – he talked the office at Sendlingsdrift into letting us drive straight into the park to Gannakouriep, shaving 50km of rutted dirt roads off the trip. They were not keen as we had wavered our indemnity but he assured them he knew where we were going.
Yeh right. For those not familiar with the Richtersveld, it is a mountain desert region, stark in its beauty and an off-roaders paradise. Due to the mountainous region the GPS, all 3 of them, and our cell phone google maps, had no connection. We were traveling blind along tracks over mountain ranges, with no help from the maps in the car as we were traveling into such a remote place.
The first rocky track took us to Helshoogte pass an appropriate name but it was where we wanted to be). We had been down this pass a few times before and it is scary. Going up it was somehow less scary but then we had other problems ahead. We were traveling at about 15km/hour and on the other side of the pass we could get horribly lost in the mountains.
I was avidly watching 2 cell phones for a chance of some signal, knowing it was pretty useless. Eventually Panda had a brainwave – Tracks 4 Africa on my ‘low on battery’ iPad (no kids, I had not been playing games). Ipad charging on one of the 3 battery systems in the car (we could assist with load shedding from our vehicle) and Tracks 4 Africa showing us the route, we relaxed at last. Sort of – we had 40 km to go and it estimated it would take us 1 ½ hours. Arriving at our destination at 7:30. Driving at night in Africa has always been one of our no rules. Especially along Rocky Mountain tracks.
Luckily we hit a sandy track in the valley, made up time and arrived at 6:30, in the fading light.
Gannakouriep has 4 semi tent/building structures, they are very basic but comfortable. It is just the 4 of us here and it feels like we are the only people on earth; quiet, remote, surrounded by mountains and stars.
We had a braai and chatted about the day. The Purchase’s were blissfully unaware of the predicament going on in our car. They were under the incorrect assumption that we knew exactly where we were going. We could laugh at it then.
In bed at 9:30 after a bloody long day.
Eksteenfontein
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