Day 107 The Growcery, Vioolsdrift

A day rafting down the Orange River is scheduled so we were expecting to be on the water early.  We had booked a light breakfast at the camp bar to save us having to unpack our gear.  The light breakfast initially seemed to be very light as it appeared to consist of a bowl of cereal and cup of tea for 160 Rand.  Thankfully half an hour later one of the staff shouted across to us that the rest of our breakfast was now ready – a plate of 2 slices of toast and some cooked ham rolled around home grown herbs had appeared (much better value for our money!).

We hung around for an hour trying to be “cool” and finally at 10 am our guide appeared and we were driven 12 km back up river to the start of our day’s rafting.  We had a two man inflatable raft with a large cool box which Ian had filled with beer (and water) – not sure how long he thought we were going for!  Paddling down the river was beautiful and gave us a different view having driven both sides of it the previous day. 

We stopped for a fab lunch of pasta salad which G created in front of us – we will have to try to recreate it as it was delicious and neither of us normally like pasta salad.  I tried to go for a swim but found the water was actually too shallow so gave up for now (tiny speck in the distance in the photo).

We also spent an amusing half hour skimming stones whilst Ian went “diamond” hunting.  Our guide was an interesting guy who plans to kayak around the whole of the African coast starting next July – we were fascinated by the concept.

We arrived back at camp at 3 o’clock – we were not sure if we had paddled faster than normal or whether this was a normal day but it seemed a little short for a full day paddling on the river.  We chose to put the unexpected time to good use by swimming across the river to Namibia and back again!

By the evening the day’s exertion on top of severely dodgy tum had taken its toll and I was feeling pretty ropey so decided to take the local charcoal remedy which had been offered by the guys at the bar – kill or cure!  I went to bed to try to sleep off the bugs leaving Ian to frequent the bar for the night.