It was still windy when we woke up, but the sky was clear. After breakfast we drove along the continuation of the track we had come in on. On old maps it seemed to go on to the river, but it was now very blocked by big drop offs. Paul and Petra did not appear, but luckily had taken a wrong turning and radioed us to say that they had found some “Halfmense”. They drove down to us and we then stopped and walked to the kloof in which the “Halfmense” were hidden. There were some wonderful specimens and a number were flowering. One was about 3m tall. Given that they grow only 3mm per year, it meant that it was over 1000 years old. Then it was sadly time to head out of the Park. We said goodbye to “Die Toon” but decided to make a coffee stop at the Rosyntjieberge viewpoint nearby. The light was now excellent and we wondered what lay beyond the distant mountains. Our route retraced our previous days driving until we got to the Abiekwas River, where we turned left and followed its course for a while, a sandy sections interspersed with rocks. A good reason not to have low tyre pressures. (After our disastrous efforts on the first day Paul and I were both on 2.5 bar as recommended by the Parks staff.) We decided that it would be fun to have lunch on the Domorogh Pass. It proved a bit tricky to drive up, but a Cruiser’s low range works wonders when driving up steep and difficult places. We found a place to pull off almost at the top. It was cold and windy, but the views were great. Then it was a case of crawling down the pass and heading for the Hellskloof Pass. Before getting to the pass we stopped at the lonely graves of Susanna and Gloudina Avenant who died in the early 1950s at the ages of five and two. Then it was on to the pass that would take us to the exit gate. The pass is very scenic and there are wonderful vistas, but it is long and quite rough. It was terribly disappointing to see the great numbers of dead Aloe pearsonii. Pieter van Wyk had prepared us for it, but the scale of the devastation took us by surprise. What is particularly sad is that the entire population is confined to a tiny area near this pass in the Richtersveld and the seed is only viable for about two years in the wild. This means that the species will probably soon be extinct. At the gate we chatted to a group of three vehicles all with off-road caravans. They were very concerned about the Akkedis Pass and Paul warned them not to try the Domorogh Pass. We asked the Parks ranger at the gate about the state of the road towards Eksteenfontein and he said “laat ek so se, Mevrou, die pad is net rybaar” (let me just say, the road is only just drivable”. So we were in for a shaky ride! Then we were off to the Tierkop campsite, which was 36km along the corrugated road. At first we were able to drive next to the corrugated road, but from the Kuboes intersection the road was fenced and we had to drive on the corrugations. They were horrendous and our speed was seldom above 40 km/h. When we got to the track that led to the campsite we waited almost 15 minutes for Paul to catch up. He was a bit shocked by the road, but we have much more experience of bad corrugations. Marianne had suggested going back to look for him as there was too much road noise for the radios to be heard. I replied that I would go to the campsite and have a good night’s sleep and worry about him in the morning rather than drive back over those corrugations! Things improved on the track (tracks are always better than roads) and we soon got to the campsite. It was reasonably sheltered by enormous boulders that formed a big cave, but the “facilities” had died a long time before. We had an omelette and toast for supper – it had to be quick as we were very late, levelled the cars and did our best to keep out of the wind that seemed to be getting stronger. Just before going to bed there was a strange metallic noise. I went to see if anyone was snooping around and scared Petra who for once made sure their car was locked. We later realised that it was tin cans blowing around in one of the empty concrete water tanks that were at the centre of the campsite. The wind got stronger during the night, but we were partly sheltered and slept well after a rather long day.

Geschreven door Leartravels