Early in the morning it is time to leave the hostel for our first experience with the new group: a tour of one of Cape Town’s many Townships. These are parts of town where only black people live and were previously dangerous, but now things are slowly starting to change, and some visitors are now allowed in. First walking between the run-down buildings. and then through the sheds, there is a feeling that something is out of balance. These people don’t have bathrooms (rows of festival-tanks along the street serve this purpose), many don’t have their on bed, but they have 3G cellphones, dress nicely, and drive rather nice cars. Our guide tells us they don’t want to show that they are poor when they go to town or to work. One of the township’s streets has nice big houses with gardens and fences around, where the few townshippers who have prospered economically live, who still wish to stay with their neighbors.

Early in the afternoon we are picked up by the truck and we are ready to leave for our first camping site in Citrusdal. We quickly learn how to set up our tent (number 806 will be ours for the next 42 days!) and start a bonfire. The evenings are chilly, but nothing that a hot meal and a nice wooden fire cannot cure. Andreas goes for a wine tasting session, while I stay around the fire to chat with our new, mostly younger companions. Some will leave the tour in Windhoek, some in Livingstone, and only four of us will continue all the way to Nairobi…but it’s a long way to go! During the night, well…let’s admit it, this is Africa, but it was cold! The tent in the morning was kind of moist as well our shoes. It’s very early in the morning, and we take down the tent hoping to become more efficient during the trip, but we are not the worst so far! For breakfast we have oat meal, cereals, bread and jams and we also prepare some sandwiches for lunch which we’ll eat on the truck later on.

After breakfast we drive on to a camp site along the Orange River, on the Namibian border which we’ll cross tomorrow morning. The day is quickly getting hot and we decide to go canoeing on the Orange river, which is the natural border between South Africa and Namibia. The trip was about 8Km with some rapids here and there, but overall an absolutely pleasant afternoon. Being a bit hard on my arms I get slower and slower until me and Andreas are getting far behind the other three canoes and we are not able to see which path we are supposed to take so we just stay in the middle of the river until we get stranded because the water is very shallow, we need to get out of the canoe to pull it out of the rocks, but clumsy as I am, I fall in the water and cut my knee: unprofessional!

Back at the camp site I try to take a shower: they are outside, with the shower surrounded by rocks  and nothing else (picture from lovely Hannah). It’s really windy inside the shower and the water is freezing cold…not the best shower I ever had, but it will do for the day! An early wake up after one more chilly night and we are ready to leave: destination Fish river Canyon in Namibia. The road is bumpy and straight, the landscape is surreal, very dry and desert-like. It looks like the truck is having some problems, the noise it’s making is not reassuring, neither is the smoke coming out of the engine…

After few hours we reach a campsite in the middle of nowhere, Cañon Roadhouse, we have time to put down our tents and have a tea to warm up a little bit, but the air is crisp and we are all thinking that the night is going to be challenging. But for now we are ready for our excursion to the Fish river canyon, the second largest in the world (by some measure), and the first in Africa. It is indeed huge, about 150Km long, and 600 meters deep. It’s beautiful! We can walk on the high part of it looking down at the path the river has made over the years, absolutely charming at sunset. 

On the way back to the campsite it’s really cold even in the truck, which all of a sudden breaks down! We are only few Km from the camp, but it’s pitch dark. Riaan and Juliana, our guides/drivers have to spend a long time trying to fix it, but the situation is not looking bright…we make it back to the site before it overheats again, and start the fire before freezing to death…everybody is getting out their warmest clothes, but not everybody has winter clothes with them, so it’s time to layer up. I’ve seen (also on myself) up to 4 layers…now we know: the night it’s going to be a frozen hell! In the morning we look like icy survivors looking for hot coffee. We find out that it has been snowing in Cape Town (last time was more that 20 years ago) and in the camp it was -5C during the night. The tents were igloos! Better head towards the Equator!