Closing the Loop: the last leg of Stanley's Travels, version 1.0

Nosy Be, December 1, 2016

Sociable weaver nest, Kalahari

When we crossed into South Africa from Botswana at Bokspits, a microscopic border crossing in the far northwest of the country, on Monday, October 3^rd, it was in one sense a homecoming for Stanley (a South African registered vehicle), and in another sense the end of the adventurous part of our big loop around Southern Africa.  We still had well over 1500 km to drive to the Johannesburg area, where we were going to store Stanley for a couple of months, but suddenly we were in a country full of shopping malls and sprawling suburbs and it felt as though we had left Africa behind at the border.

We drove south from Bokspits on perfect new tarmac, past big fenced-in ranches and huge communal nests built by sociable weaver birds on top of telephone poles.  Desert melons, the life-giving moisture source of the Kalahari, grew beside the road wherever fences prevented the cattle from eating them.  As we approached Upington, the regional centre, a structure oddly reminiscent of the Death Star appeared in the distance, glowing strangely.  It was a solar-thermal electricity plant, built by a Spanish company, in which a huge array of mirrors reflect sunlight upwards, concentrating the rays at the top of a high tower where the combined heat is used to generate electric power.  Apparently Upington has three of these structures nearby, although we only saw one, and hundreds of Spanish engineers live and work in Upington building and maintaining them. 

Kalahari desert melons

Upington was a culture shock after the emptiness of the Botswanan Kalahari.  We drove through fancy white suburbs to an immense Pick’n’Pay supermarket and shopping mall.  We refilled Stanley’s fridge (working well since its repair in Maun a few days before), changed our leftover Botswanan pula for South African rand, ate some meat pies (our favourite southern African quick lunch), bought Terri a new pair of binoculars, and then drove west towards Augrabies Falls National Park.  It was a pretty drive along the Orange River, past a long series of irrigated vineyards that contrasted sharply with the dusty Kalahari scrubland beside them. 

The Upington Death Star

There was no camping available at Augrabies Falls National Park, so we found a place to stay a few kilometres outside the gate at the Augrabies Falls Lodge and Campground.  It was well maintained, with pretty grounds and good facilities, but a bit close to the noise of the main road.  We finished up the huge pot of lentil and pea soup that we had been carrying around and slept soundly inside Stanley.

We set off for Augrabies National Park the next morning on our trusty folding bicycles after some fresh scones for breakfast courtesy of Terri.  We went first to see the waterfalls, an impressive sight of crashing waters even in the dry season.  The canyon into which the river hurtles is deep, steep and made of beautiful slabs of reddish sandstone.  We set off on the Dassie Hike, but turned back when Terri’s leg, still sore from her tumble at Tsodilo Hills a few weeks earlier, complained about the steep river crossings.  We opted for the shorter but more scenic hike out to Arrowhead Point, where two side canyons join the main river.  One of those tributaries has Twin Falls on it, another beautiful waterfall.

Terri at Arrowhead Point

We had a picnic lunch seated in the scanty shade of a small tree (it was properly hot by midday) and watched a pair of rock kestrels nesting on the sheer cliff on the opposite bank of the canyon.  Pale-winged starlings, a characteristic species of Augrabies Falls, flew by in small groups.  As we walked back to the lodge, more new species appeared:  acacia pied barbets and southern masked weavers, along with dozens of fat, contented rock hyraxes (dassies, if you’re South African).  We rode back to our campground, then returned shortly before sunset for a night safari.  We were hoping to see aardwolves (a secretive type of hyena) but had no luck, although our spotlights picked out fleeting glimpses of the eyes of genets, African wild cats and spotted eagle owls.  We had more substantial views of eland, springbok, steenbok and klipspringer, as well as Cape hare, scrub hare and red rock rabbit.  We cycled home in the pitch black under clear starry skies and went to bed immediately.

Twin Falls

The next day was less productive, although we did manage to do some laundry, bake brownies and catch up on e-mail, as well as getting in a long run, some yoga and broiling some delicious lamb for dinner. 

Thursday, October 6^th found us backtracking to Upington.  We had originally planned to head further west to see the desert flowers around Springbok, but a phone call there revealed that in fact the flower season had peaked a month earlier and there were almost no flowers to be seen.  Rather than drive 400 km on a wild goose chase, we started the long retreat to Johannesburg instead.  It was a short, pleasant drive back to Upington, once again through the vineyards and orchards along the river, and we picked a big municipal campsite, Die Eiland, as our base for the next few days.  It was pleasantly situated on the banks of the Orange River, even if it did look a bit past its prime.  We set up our table and camp chairs to claim a spot, then drove back downtown to get some work done on Stanley.  An auto-electrician fixed the malfunctioning door switch that had been setting off our car alarm intermittently for the past two weeks (for the princely sum of US$ 18), and then while Terri went shopping for some new clothes, I dropped off the car at a garage to replace a blown front shock and to replace a worn-out and leaking tire, and dropped off my malfunctioning watch to get repaired.  By 5:00 I was picking up Terri to head back to Die Eiland.

Some desert vegetation

When we drove into the campsite, it was immediately obvious that our camp table, chairs and our dish drying rack were all gone.  We asked around, both the three locals sitting around having a braai, and the campground employees, but nobody (of course) had seen anything.  Infuriated at the pointless vandalism of such a theft, we went back to reception, demanded (and received) our money back and called the police to report the theft.  The police were spectacularly unhelpful, much to Terri’s disgust, and we eventually gave up and moved across the river to a tiny private campground, Sakkie se Arkie, where we stayed for the next 4 nights.  It was safe and friendly and well-run, very unlike Die Eiland.  We were annoyed about losing our chairs and table, but we heard that we had gotten off lucky; other campers who have stayed the night have had far more stolen, and one couple staying indoors at Die Eiland’s bungalows had thieves break in while they were in the bungalow and clean them out of all their valuables.  Everyone in town agreed that Die Eiland had fallen apart over the past 15 years under dubious municipal management, having once been rated the top municipal campground in the country back in the apartheid era.

Lovely rock face, Augrabies Falls

The next day we went to the Kalahari Mall to buy me a few new clothes, and to replace our table, chairs and dishrack.  The chairs were expensive, but were so comfortable that we didn’t really begrudge the money.  We headed back to our campground and I spent a while trying my luck at fishing; although others were getting bites, I got nothing but snags, and had to cut off three hooks in a row. 

Terminally relaxed hyrax, Augrabies Falls

Saturday, October 8^th found us ready to head off, but when I went over to pick up my watch, the watch repair shop was unexpectedly closed.  Since I had specifically asked if they would be open Saturday morning, I was quite annoyed, especially since they didn’t answer their various phones.  We had lunch, then cycled off to the big tourist sight in Upington, the Orange River Winery, for some wine tasting.  We were surprised to find that something relying on the tourist trade closed at 3 pm on a Saturday, so we were out of luck.  We retreated to town, frustrated, and found an Irish pub to have a huge meal and watch the New Zealand-South Africa rugby match.  It was a massacre, with the All Blacks running in 9 tries to humiliate the Springboks.  Strangely, Terri wasn’t the only person cheering the All Blacks; a number of non-white South Africans were cheering for the visitors as well.  Apparently the Springboks are still viewed as the team of the apartheid-era Boers, and don’t enjoy universal support among coloured and black South Africans. 

Augrabies Falls scenery

Sunday, October 9^th was another fairly lazy day, spent doing a few exercises, writing a blog post, having a long lunch, taking a long bird-watching stroll along the river with Terri, running and then having sundowner drinks with an interesting older couple, Ros and Anthony, both white East Africans (one from Kenya, the other from Tanzania) who are keen sailors and bird watchers.  We sat listening to some of their stories, then retreated to our campsite for a late dinner.  I stayed up late taking advantage of having good internet for once to post some photos from Botswana and upload my blog post.

Augrabies sunset light

Monday, October 10^th saw us finally break free of Upington, not without resistance.  The watch repair guy was open, but the watch wasn’t yet fixed.  We went to the grocery store to stock up, then returned to find the watch not repaired, but at least physically present.  Muttering imprecations, I took the watch and drove us out of town towards Johannesburg.  It was a long day of driving, most of it through not very interesting countryside (a mix of bleak desert, grim mining areas, rough towns and commercial farms), ending up at sundown in the small town of Delareyville, where we spent the night camped at the Pigmy Lodge, a small campground attached to a cheese farm.  We sampled some of their excellent goat cheeses with some wine before dinner, ate some leftovers and were in bed early, tired from driving.

Tuesday, October 11^th was the end of the road for the first leg of Stanley’s Travels.  We had a leisurely bacon and avocado breakfast and set off by 9 o’clock, carrying a couple of packets of the farm’s goat cheese.  Terri drove the first 100 km before I took over for the final 325 km.  We cruised into Johannesburg past the endless mining towns of the Witwatersrand.  We made it most of the way through the Johannesburg suburban sprawl without incident before hitting a traffic jam that saw us take an hour to cover 3 km.  Then, as suddenly as it had started, the traffic jam was over and we were flying out of town headed east towards the tiny town of Delmas, the headquarters of Blinkgat, the small camper manufacturer who had made Stanley’s camper insert.  We stopped off for meat pies at Pick’n’Pay, then followed directions out of town, past a dismal looking township of corrugated iron shacks, to a small farm just outside town where Sarel and Elize de Klerk, the owners of Blinkgat, live and run their workshop.

Maree and Stanley with Stanley's creator, Sarel de Klerk

We had thought about taking Stanley camping for the few days before our flight to Athens on Oct. 17^th, but Sarel and Elize urged us to camp in their garden, an offer which we gladly accepted.  We spent a few hours the next day going over Stanley, detailing the modifications and repairs that we wanted to have done in our absence.  A sliding drawer for our fridge, a new awning and some changes to the food and dish storage system, along with some much-needed rainproofing, were the main items, along with a general servicing of the pickup truck. We figured that since we had spent so long living in Stanley, we had figured out what we most wanted to make him even more user-friendly. 

The days slipped by easily, cleaning our stuff out of Stanley in preparation for the workshop and storing them in one of the farm’s outbuildings.  We had a lot of interesting discussions with Sarel and Elize, both of them keen explorers of southern Africa’s wild spaces, ate lots of good food, did some exercise and running and generally relaxed after five and a half months on the go. 

On Saturday we drove into Johannesburg to have lunch with my friend Angelo and his family.  We stayed overnight in The Birches, the small backpackers’ lodge where we had stayed when we had first bought Stanley back in April; Ian, the friendly owner, was curious to hear our stories from the road.  We also heard from one of our fellow guests that he had been mugged on the street in downtown Johannesburg that very day; we were glad that we had avoided the worse of South Africa's crime frenzy.  On Sunday we had brunch with my fellow Thunder Bay-ite Erin Conway-Smith (the southern Africa correspondent for the Economist) before heading back to Delmas. 

On Monday, October 17^th we bid Stanley a fond farewell for two months and caught a lift with Elize to OR Tambo Airport for a flight to Athens.  We won’t see Stanley again until December 21^st, when we return from Madagascar.  It will be good to see him fixed up and looking spic and span, and it will be good to resume our nomadic lifestyle on our own 4 wheels.  We have both really enjoyed how well we have lived, and how much unforgettable wildlife and scenery we have seen, since late April.  Our final tally for the first leg of Stanley’s Travels is something like this:

Total time since leaving Johannesburg:        5 months and 19 days

Total distance covered:                                 20,558 km

Number of countries visited:                        6

Number of national parks visited:               17

Number of flat tires:                                     2

Number of sunsets viewed:                          at least 130

Number of bottles of wine consumed:        probably too many

Number of amazing campsites:                   a large number

Favourite country:                                       Botswana

It really was a life-altering sort of trip, seeing so much of the beauty of the African bush up close and personal.  It would have been nice to get in more hiking and physical exercise (I feel a lot flabbier than would be the case after a bicycle trip of this duration!) but that is a minor quibble given the amazing time we had on a consistent basis for months on end.  Sitting around the campfire in so many beautiful locations, watching the sun set in a blaze of orange, gazing up at the stars, listening to the sounds of hyenas and nightjars and owls and lions in the distance:  all these experiences were made possible by us having bought Stanley. 

We look forward to lap two of Stanley’s Travels around Africa starting in December and continuing until…..we don’t know.  The plan is to head through South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, then head north into Namibia (the favourite country of almost everyone who explores southern Africa), cross into Zambia again and then drive further north into Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.  If the security situation and visas permit, I’d like to head through Ethiopia (currently in the midst of serious unrest) and Sudan, but I’m not sure that will happen this time.  If we do make it to Sudan, it’s a bit of a dead end:  Egypt is a bureaucratic and monetary and security nightmare, and the other ways out are to take a ferry to Saudi Arabia (then Kuwait, Iran and Turkey to get to Europe), to return south to South Africa, or to ship Stanley out of Sudan somewhere else in the world.  We have not yet come to any final conclusion what the end game will be, but I am sure that the next leg of Stanley’s Travels will be as rewarding as the first one was.

Yet another African sunset at Augrabies Falls