Saturday, September 22, 2018
In the morning, we returned to the
KWIKSPAR grocery store that had given me anxiety the evening before.
SPAR was a chain store we saw throughout the country, and it actually refers to a
Dutch multinational group that manages independently owned and operated food retail stores. SPAR has shops of different types and sub-brands. Kwikspar is the smallest type of shop that was designed for small sites and filling stations.
It was still a bustling store, but it wasn't quite as bad as it had been the previous day, so we snagged a few breakfast pastries for the road.
Our original plan was to skirt around the part of Addo that we had visited yesterday to avoid some of the headache-inducing roads, but that route seemed to want to take us down another bumpy road anyway, so we decided we would just drive through the park again.
The warthogs were a lot bigger than we had imagined.
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| I sure loved those dung beetles lol |
One of the most magical things about all the safaris we did is that we always saw something new each day. Today we saw our first Cape Buffalo!
The
African buffalo or Cape buffalo is the only member of the buffalo and cattle tribe that occurs naturally in Africa. That continuous bone shield across the top of their head is referred to as a "boss", and they are widely regarded as very dangerous animals. This was our second spotting of one of the
Big Five game animals!
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| Francisco with a Cape Buffalo outside the window |
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| Kudu |
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| Pale chanting goshawk |
We stopped at the Main Gate for souvenirs. This was my first time realizing how built up the camp areas were with full restaurants, shops, and lodging.
We stopped for lunch at a
Steers in Graaff-Reinet, the fourth-oldest town in South Africa. We tried the Veggie Burger this time, but there was some kind of sauce on it that I didn't love. Our Blueberry milkshake was good, but we should have skipped adding the cheese sauce and crispy onion bits to our hand-cut chips - they're delicious enough without toppings!
Surrounding the town is the breathtaking Valley of Desolation in the Camdeboo National Park.
Francisco took a little tumble and scratched the camera on our first hike. He was okay though.
The
Valley of Desolation is comprised of vertical cliffs and columns of dolerite, the product of volcanic and erosive forces. This
semi desert national region of South Africa is known as the Karoo.
As we walked the various trails, a man who was there with his family stopped to ask where we were from since he recognized our foreign accents. He said he was from a farm town about an hour away and he seemed pleased that we were visiting a part of South Africa that most tourists don't venture out to see. Many just stick to the Garden Route, but we were cutting through the country to take in as much as we could in our journey.
Stopping at the
Mountain Zebra National Park was a consideration, but there just wasn't enough time. We saw that it was possible to spot mountain zebras around this area, but I think all we saw were regular zebras.
Apparently,
Camdeboo’s population of Cape mountain zebra is rather elusive as they prefer the mountainous areas of the reserve.
There was a long dirt road leading to the
Witkrans Guest Farm where we would be staying for the night. Yet again, we wished we had had better instructions for check-in. So many times we showed up at our reserved lodging and had no idea what to do. We pulled up here and rang a doorbell on one of the houses.
Milda, the host, came out and directed us to where we would be staying. She asked our names and was surprised that I was *only* American. She asked where I was from and I said America; she followed up with 'what nationality are you?' She definitely thought my name was unfamiliar and surely I was from somewhere else. It was very amusing because usually Francisco is the one with the challenging name. 🤣
According to the listing, there are 3 rooms available at the Farm, and it looks like we stayed in Room 3. Which was really multiple rooms. The front room with two beds, a room with bunk beds, a bathroom, and the kitchen/playroom area. This place was huge! Dated but huge.
We met her dog (whom I named Duke), and he was the sweetest old pup that followed me around and repeatedly shook my hand. It seemed like he wanted to follow us inside our guest house lol!
It was a long drive back to any town, so we decided to avail ourselves of the containers of cereal set out in the kitchen area for dinner.
We made use of the ping-pong/pool table in the play area as well.
In the evening, we headed outside because Francisco was eager to try and get some starry-skied photos. Unfortunately, a big full moon was not going to let that happen.
This ended up being about the best we could do.
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