There was no early morning game drive on the program now and we slept a bit later. Marianne quickly gathered some fine wood for a breakfast fire and soon the kettle was boiling. We had to face Upington today and neither of us felt like leaving our bush camp site. We passed the Monate Lodge where the other option for camping was, but it did look very organized and it was right next to the road. We had made the right choice to camp at the Kalahari bush camp. Soon we were driving into Upington. We decide to park at the Super Spar entrance at the Mall and Marianne ran quickly into the shop to get supplies which included a new milk tart! We filled up again at the Agrimark and then headed for Augrabies. We wanted to stop for coffee at the waterwheel at Keimoes, but there was no shade and the place looked untidy. We did eventually found a rather pleasant road side stop with good shade and enjoyed our newly acquired milk tart. Marianne had visited the grave site of 7 German soldiers who had died in a skirmish in the Battle of Kakamas in February 1915 with her tour group and we went to have a look. We had to drive through the Lutzburg township to get there and there was no sign posting. It is an interesting monument and should be better signposted. We bought some supplies at the well-stocked OK Foods and then headed for Augrabies. We were wondering about the monkey problem at the campsite and the friendly girl at the gate said that they would probably be there. We decided to take our chances. It was midweek and we got the pensioners rates. It cost us R171 to camp and since we had the Wild Card we did not have to pay entrance fees. This was a good option! We immediately went to the day visitor’s site for lunch and found it a bit neglected. But we had green grass and shade and it was peaceful. We had heard from a man from Kakamas at Nossob that there was now a game drive area and we decided to go and investigate. Several of the drifts were still full of water, but there were no problems crossing them. We passed all the normal turnoffs and headed for the game drive area which was beyond the Echo Corner turn off. The route was rough, but very attractive. At times the track became very steep and since this part was not a 4x4 route, they had concreted these steep stretches. As we descended one of these concreted tracks, we both heard a strange sound and I smelt the air coming out of a tube. We had a flat tyre! Oh dear. Not again! It was hellish hot out there. Stephen immediately got going to change the wheels. Marianne wandered about and got tangled in a branch with fine thorns that were not going to be easy to get rid of. Soon the tyre was changed and we continued with a bit of a sinking feeling. But the landscape was fascinating and we took many pictures. Since we now only had one spare tyre, we decided to take the short loop. At a waterhole we saw two giraffes and this was a surprise. We had not realized that there were giraffes at Augrabies. Where were the tall trees? On the way back, we turned off to Echo Corner where we had last been with Marianne’s parents many years ago. Next we went to Oranjekom and we both could not believe it when we heard the hiss of leaking air. Another flat tyre!! Stephen was getting quite good at changing wheels but twice in an hour is a bit much. This was also the tyre that Hendrik had fixed at Nossob. Had he done a bad job? We felt very disheartened as we drove back to find a camp site. The camping area was fairly empty and we decided on a pleasant spot a bit away from other campers. Baboons were about to do a raid and we produced the catapult. Unbelievably the baboons saw the catapult and ran away leaving a cloud of dust behind. We did not see them again. There was no sign of monkeys. We could now relax. Soon we had a fire going and were enjoying our braai, but we were wondering where we should go next now that we had a flat tyre pandemic! We had been thinking of doing the Namaqua 4x4 trail alongside the Orange River, but now we were not so confident. We Googled tyre fixing places and saw that there was one in Kakamas. This is where we would be going in the morning. As we sat pondering next to the fire, we heard the roar of the waterfall very close by, but this puzzled us. We went for a walk to the roaring main fall and realized that several new walkways had been erected since our last visit. The waterfall was thundering down the gorge in our torch light and we were looking forward to seeing this spectacle in daylight. The ablution facilities were still excellent. Marianne had the pleasure of coming face to face with a genet on her way back from showering. We went to sleep with the roar of the waterfall sounding very close to us. It was good to be at Augrabies again, even though we had the cloud of punctures hanging over us.

Geschreven door Leartravels