It was cloudy during the night, but we woke up to a clear sky. The sun did not take long to get to our campsite. I made oats porridge from my purchase at the Alexander Bay shop. Paul and Petra now went for a walk following the track, but they also did not get to the river. By 9h30 we were ready to tackle the passes ahead of us. In the lovely Halfmens Pass we find our first Halfmense (a rare Euphorbia which looks like a person gazing northwards). The ground is very loose and we had to be careful not to slip. The French people who shared Block B ablution facility with us, were also following our route and we kept on passing each other. At the famous Hand of God imprint on the rocks, we explored a bit and scrambled up the hill. We had coffee here and I did a quick “plant survey”. Now the Penkop and Akkedis Pass waited for us. Stephen and I drove up the first steep hill and we waited there for Paul and Petra. I was standing all ready to video SSyril coming up, but they did not come. I decided to walk down to investigate and discovered that Paul had a puncture. Stephen drove down and the men immediately proceeded to change the tyre and we were now very worried because Paul did not have a second spare. I wandered off to explore one of the river beds and came across an old kraal and an old Electrolux gas fridge! A strange find in the wilderness! I noticed something else that was very worrying. Our left rear tyre had a cut which we knew about, but now that the vehicle was stationary and standing with the cut edge at the bottom, we realized that it had got worse and did not bode well with the rough roads that we had ahead of us. We later found that this was a new cut. The Akkedis Pass was steep and winding, but no challenge for our Cruisers. Beyond the passes lay the vast Koeroegab Plain and we found a good shade tree for lunch. Stephen decided to change our cut tyre for one of our spare tyres and proceeded to jack up the car. He did not put a solid surface under the jack and our heavy vehicle started to sink into the sand. Paul quickly got out his jack to support the car and his jack also sank into the sand! I was really panicking, because I still had vivid memories of our VW Combi falling off the jack at the Hardap Dam in Namibia. We quickly found some flat stones and now the jack could do its job. I was so relieved. After lunch we had a slow drive back to camp. It had been a lovely day despite the tyre mishaps. I did some washing and the men got the fire going again. It was such a luxury to have abundant firewood. This would not be the case for most of our camp sites. We had an invasion of goats who were trying to follow their route home through our campsite. We made way for them and they quickly passed through. We discussed the plans for the next day. Paul and Petra would drive to Sendelingsdrift and hoped to get hold of a tyre there. Otherwise they would have to take the long road back to Alexander Bay or even Port Nolloth. It was not a pleasant thought that our friends might have to drive so far for help. But Petra was pretty confident that they would come right at Sendelingsdrift. All we could do was go to sleep and think positively!

Geschreven door Leartravels