Wednesday 23 December 2015

Day 108 McDougall’s Bay Campsite, Port Nolloth,

Watched a large group preparing for their 4-day rafting trip.  When they finally set off we realised that maybe we had paddled quite fast yesterday as they were all over the place and seemed to have no idea about timing or direction.

For once we had no idea of where we would camp for the night.  Initially we had planned to stay in the Richtersveld Park but on reflection we thought it was perhaps better to head further south and camp somewhere on the coast.  The first part of the drive took us through the Richtersveld World Heritage Reserve where we passed some large rocks with San painting (and graffiti!) and a field of more recent rock sculptures (pile after pile of rocks balanced on top of each other).  We added our own pathetic little attempts but were interrupted from making bigger ones by a car needing to get past us. 




The colours of the plants we beautiful with red and mauve succulents as well as lots of plants in flower.  We stopped at Eksteenfontein briefly to pay for our concession pass and then headed deeper into the reserve  The views of the Richtersveld mountains were very stark and barren and the road seemed to go up endlessly with always another summit ahead of us.  Finally we decided that we had perhaps better head back and found the views going down were much more impressive!





We drove to Port Nolloth on the Atlantic Coast and were surprised to find a thriving tourist hub with hundreds of South African’s descending for Christmas.  We found a campsite a few miles further south right next to the beach.  The South African’s idea of camping is slightly different to ours – we were surrounded by camps with Christmas lights, car ports, wind breaks, mobile washing machines, whirly gigs and one family even had a full size fridge freezer!!  We put up our roof tent and sat by our little table in the wind to potje our lamb shanks watching the antics of the SAs in their vast camps.


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