27 April: Kuruman to Augrabies Falls to Noordoewer

We were up early and on our way before 8. Unfortunately the local Kuruman Wimpy doesn't seem to open at that time so it was off to a Maxi's for some breakfast toasted sarmies (ham, cheese & tomato ... spot on!). And then right into our first stop-go that was literally at the Petrol Station exit as we left the town. #sigh

We managed to hit about 5 or 6 of these on the road to Upington, but other than that it was smooth sailing. We laughed at the turn-off to Deben. And we took a 25km detour by missing a turn-off (we had the gps on and everything, who knows how that happened!).

And then we arrived in Upington for lunch. Well, more for a refuel and to buy lunch for our intended lunch-time stop-off at the Augrabies Falls. Wow. Upington: what a total waste of time. We drive around trying to hunt down some ready-made sarmies. Not a Woolies Food, a Kauai (okay so that might've been too much of a stretch), a Sandwich Baron ... nothing. We left annoyed and hopeful because the GPS said there was a restaurant at the Augrabies Falls. Fingers crossed it wasn't too dodgy because it was our last hope.



It was spot on. We enjoyed giant footlong sandwiches which neither of us could finish. And then we got to wander down to the Falls viewpoints. Some are unfortunately closed for repairs after last year's flooding (it must be quite spectacular to see when it gets so high! Lovely stuff.

And then we headed North to the Border. But, we couldn't resist a quick photo stop in Pofadder! Haha.

The drive gets quite last-man-on-earth for a while there ... no cellphone signal, barely any other cars on the road, nothing for miles. And then, just before Springbok, we came across an accident that had just happened. Was pretty hectic. A guy (who luckily survived but had a pretty bad head wound), his bakkie (totalled) and his trailer (everything he was transporting was strewn across the road) ... we don't know what happened, but we called the emergency number and luckily they were there super fast, being so close to Springbok (like 20km outside). I was impressed at how many people stopped to help ... at least the first 5 cars who came across the accident. Poor guy. His whole life was flung far and wide on that roadside - they had to search for his wallet in the debri.

We got to the Vioolsdrift border after dark, along with a car who'd also stopped to help at the accident and queued in a very long queue to get out of South Africa. Thankfully they opened the Departures side to process us too. Guess that's why it's a 24hour border post. And then we were over in Nam doing the border crossing there. And then we were off. We got to the Felix Unite Camp at about 8pm and everyone in our crew were already there - oops.

We had a quick dinner and pitched our tent and re-packed all our stuff into 4 buckets for our trip. *Excited*