This was our last morning of waking up together as Paul and Petra had to get home on Saturday (tomorrow) whereas we could have a more leisurely drive and get home on Sunday. One of the pleasures of being retired! We left the Growcery at 8h30 after saying goodbye to Lucy the Australian cattle dog. It was quite sad to drive along the Orange River for the last time, but it was noticeable how much more agriculture, mostly grapes and some olives, there was than when we were there three years earlier. At Vioolsdrift we turned south and drove onto a strange surface. We seemed to remember that it was called tarmac! It was certainly smooth with no corrugations or dust! The kilometres slipped away and we passed the white building where we had emerged from the Orange River 4x4 trail some months before and the trees where we had stopped for lunch. We stopped just beyond Steinkopf to allow Paul to catch up. It was quite a long wait, but we eventually got to talk to Petra on the radio. They had had to stop for Paul to tighten the roof rack. The drive to Springbok was uneventful and we pulled into the first service station after going to the Agri and discovering that it was slightly more expensive. We filled both tanks although there would be cheaper diesel further south as I wanted to compare Troopy’s fuel consumption with Ssyril’s. They were very similar with Ssyril having used 6 litres more over the 1030 kilometre distance. Our consumption, with lots of 4x4 and sand was 6.7 km/l. Marianne and Petra rushed off to do some shopping at what I thought was Shoprite. Paul and I waited as long as we could in the forecourt, but were asked to leave. Th ere was no parking at the service station so we parked on the side of the road waiting for the girls, but were really blocking the traffic – it was Friday morning and very busy in town – when Paul saw that we were opposite a tyre shop. We turned in and Paul went to ask about having his tyre fixed while I went back to the service station to look for Marianne. As I locked the car, I saw she had left her phone behind. There was no sign of either of them there or at Shoprite, but I found Petra at the tyre shop quite annoyed because we had moved the cars. And they had gone to Checkers! But at the service station there was again no sign of Marianne. We found each about ten minutes later – she had been going up and down the street and we had somehow missed each other! Paul’s tyre could not be fixed so he ended up putting on the tyre we had collected at Sendelingsdrift as a spare and he would be driving home on the scrap tyre that he had been given. We said goodbye at that point and headed out of town on the R355 gravel road to Loeriesfontein. It started going past the Goegab nature reserve that was full of flowers and then headed through hills before becoming flat and rather desolate although it improved towards Kliprand. We passed some strange names such as Gamoep and Platbakkies and turnoffs to Pofadder and some unknown settlements. The road was mostly freshly graded and generally in very good condition. We stopped for morning coffee at a lovely spot with carpets of pink daisies, but finding a scenic lunch stop was harder. It was bleak, cold and windy, but we still found some pretty flowers! Kliprand was a surprise, a proper little town with a shop, Agri garage with cheap diesel, a post office and quite substantial houses. We did some shopping and took pictures, the very old Firestone flag sign being most interesting. Marianne chatted to the lady in the shop about the expensive toys the obviously poor coloured children were playing with. She said that the shop was a Sassa payout point, and the toys had been her sons. He was now grown up so she let the kids play with the toys when they came and waited with their parents to collect their money. Just past Kliprand we got to the road we had travelled on the previous year’s flower trip. It was fun to pass familiar sights, but we were shocked to see that our Trekpad now had a locked gate. We turned left at the tar and 10 km later drove straight through Loeriesfontein and onto a most beautiful gravel road to Calvinia. We went past quiver tree forests, mountains and hidden valleys. The sad thing was that it was getting too dark to take decent photographs. We were close to Calvinia before we could get a signal to phone for a campsite. The Kleinplasie site just out of town was full, but we were lucky to get a cancellation place at Klipwerf in town. It did not have good reviews so we were pleasantly surprised. Each site had its own facilities and we were able to reverse into our site and be sheltered from the wind. The owner, Albert, had a butchery in town and sold his own wors. We bought a pack for later and decided to braai the wors we had bought at Kliprand using the last of the Sendelingsdrift wood. We had a pleasant supper and sat around the fire for a bit keeping our feet warm. After showering we dived into bed. It promised to be a cold night. We had travelled on the gravel R355 for 336 km and the road had been excellent.

Geschreven door Leartravels