Kalahari, a dog and 3 empty skulls

Whilst Carol and Luke were in the UK for a month I packed Noah and myself off to the Kalahari Desert for a camping trip. We left Cape Town early on the morning of Sunday 2nd July 2006, the morning after England were knocked out of the world cup at the hands of Portugal. Although to be fair most people agreed that the manager of Portugal had cheated by picking players with footballing skill.

We travelled up the N7 along the west coast of South Africa to our first destination, Springbok, 596 kilometers and 5 hours 30 mins from Cape Town. We stopped at the Springbok Restaurant and Lodge, clean and tidy, a little strange and clearly never heard of a star rating, but more importantly at R160 per night for a self catering unit, it was cheap. Noah slept with me in the unit, it was a disaster, he snored louder than Carol and barked at every little sound he heard, and he heard loads of things.

The next morning we took a side trip to Port Nolloth, which is famous for its marine diamond mining. Here there a lots of little boats with divers that spend the day on the sea bed dragging a large pipe around that sucks up the sea bed to the boat above, where it is filtered looking for diamonds. The town is very wild west and a bit run down, except for a very posh building on the harbour which is the offices of the diamond dealers, De Beers.

Below you can see the diamond boats in the harbour with the pipe used for sucking up the sea bed floating behind them.

Port Nolloth is 144 kilometers from Springbok and the drive out there takes you through areas famous for their wild flowers that really put on a fantastic show in September. That said they were pretty impresive in July, so a visit in September would be a must do.

Below on the trip out to Port Nolloth there are plenty of reminders of times gone by, buildings and cars abandoned to the Karoo.

On Tuesday the 4th July at 7am Noah and I set off in the dark for Upington and the Kalahari. We were on a large dead flat plain when the sun came up in a spectacular style.

The sky was really this colour and as you can see the road was very busy at this time of the day and the hair pin bends were a nightmare with the sun in your face.

We continued to drive into the sun and the heat until we hit Upington, 386 Kilometers and 3 hours and 30 mins later. Here we stopped for lunch and some last minute supplies from Pick and Pay.

Then we were back on the road to the small town of Kathu, 226 kilometers and 1 hour and 40 mins from Upington. Here we turned north and promptly run out of tramac. We were now in the kalahari proper and our destination was a guest fram called Springbokpan, a few kilometers before the border post between South Africa and Botswana, known as McCarthy's Rest. On the way we went through an aptly named town, Hotazel.

Once at Springbokpan we were made very welcome by the owners and in particular Fernando the owners son. However once we had set up camp it was down to the more important stuff and for Noah that was eating.

The next day Fernando gave me one of the farms Land Rovers and a guide Ryan, so that Noah and I could drive over the farm and look at the animals and explore the border with Botswana.

Here the Molopo River forms the border between South Africa and Botswana, but unlike most other rivers I know, the Molopo runs about 2 meters under ground only breaking the surface during exceptional heavy rain, which is just about never. However further along, about 150 kilometers the river does break surface and flows for some distance as you would expect above ground. Here we are driving on the river, South Africa is everything to the left and Botswana everything to the right.

They farmed cattle on the land and also game to be shipped to game parks around South Africa and some for hunting. The land is littered with skulls of animals that had died naturally and they collect the skulls to prevent other animals eating them and becoming ill. Back at the farm they have a great pile of them and Fernando insisted I took some as a keepsake of my visit. So I selected three good looking skulls, not that I knew anything about selecting skulls, and packed them into the Toyota.

In the area where we camped were Springbok and Hemsbok, Noah enjoyed our long walks in the long grass and chasing Springbok, needless to say he was spectacular but totally useless at it. But he was becoming a farm dog and it suited him. The people on the farm made us very welcome and indeed on the last morning we had breakfast with them. Now around these parts a Kalahari farmers breakfast is something else, all steaks and eggs. The farmers wife was busy feeding Noah with steaks whilst I sat and chatted with Fernando.

The next day Noah and I set off across the Kalahari Desert, we timed it right so that we were right in the middle by mid day so that we did not appear to be whimps, remember the song mad dogs and Englishmen, must also apply to the Welsh. We passed through Van Zylsrus and Askham before arriving at the Molopo Kalahari Lodge, 344 kilometers and 4 hours and 45 mins from Springbokpan and not a scrap of tarmac to be seen all the way.

At 6am on Friday 7th July 2006 Noah and I set off from the Molopo Kalahari Lodge and headed south to Upington, 196 kilometers and 1 hour and 35 mins from the lodge. After a brief pit stop for fuel and a coffee we were off again further south to the town of Calvinia, 412 kilometers and 3 hours and 23 mins from Upington. About 140 kilometers south of Upington we came to an area known as Verneukpan, which is a large salt pan. In the motoring world this is famous, for it has a 10 mile straight track across the salt pan and in 1929 Malcolm Campbell broke the world land speed record in Bluebird 1, when he achieved 212 mph over a 5 mile course. The track is still used today, not always so successfully, in June 2006 South African Johan Jacobs a former jet fighter pilot was killed in his jet powered car, Edge, when it crashed at 500 KPH.

After rolling into Calvinia with no fuel at all and running on vapour we refuelled, and Noah and I enjoyed a meat pie each, then we headed out to the West Coast crossing the 812 meter high Vanrhns Pass with superb views and 120 kilometers later hit the N7 again, and turned south towards Cape Town 331 kilometers away.

As we headed south along the N7 we passed the dam at Clanwilliam which in the early afternoon sun looked very attractive, so attractive I lost consentration and set of a speed camera, flash bang another R100 fine for doing 112 kph in a 100 kph zone.

Further south we crossed the spectacular Piekenaarskloof, before hitting the traffic of Cape Town and the slow journey over Table Mountain to Camps Bay and back home to Hout Bay.