It's been a mad few days. We've driven all the way from Cape Town to the Fish River Canyon making 3 stops and a border crossing in 4 days. First stop was the cederberg, a place I adore it's mind blowingly beautiful, the climbing and hiking is just brilliant, and add that to the fact that it feels so remote yet only a couple hours drive from Cape Town and that makes it one of my favorite places.
The three of us had an absolutely rocking time, we left Cape Town quite late and hit the dirt road turning into the cederberg at about midnight, from there we drove for about an hour until we had all had enough and pulled up for the night. It seems to be a bit of a theme so far on the trip that we've had spectacular campsites. That first one really set the standard. It was underneath the tafleberg mountain and just perfect, plenty of soft sand to make sleeping comfortable and two massive boulders at one end with a tree between them. It was so good we used it for the first and second night.
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We got up at about 7.30 on day two packed up and heading up the wolf berg cracks up to the Arch. If your into climbing this route is about as good as it gets. The rock faces are huge and dramatic and the climbing difficulty varies a massive amount. There's also caves with Khoi San rock art that's thousands of years old, plenty of buck and other wildlife and spectacular views. That day was a bit of a hard shunt, about 6 hours of hiking, 3 hours of climbing including some really scary free solos. We also put in a abseil off the top of the arch and then turned it into a massive rope swing. That rope swing was epic, equal parts exhiliration and pure craziness, it was terrifying. The walk down was hard work, we came down partly in the dark and were all totally exhausted by the time we made it back to camp.
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The next morning I woke up with an intense craving for a cup of tea, this is an englishmans affliction. Nothing will stop us, not even a half an hour walk througha bog in the freezing cols predawn. This walk had to be undertaken in order to get fresh water from the river. After a quick breakfast 3 unwashed smelly and dirty boys hot the road for the .ong drive to the Namibian border. Driving the length of SA N7 highway is a real treat its pretty much mountainous desert the entire way, beautiful.
We hit the border at about 8pm and as an international crossing its an absolutet joke and one we had a few laughs at. The SA side was pretty good, very formal and as you'd expect but the Namibian side was where the fun began. The border post is actually a construction site and its chaotic, you've got no real idea where to go and no signs telling you, we almost drove right around customs and through the post altogether, we actually stopped and turned around and drove back to customs after we'd realized we'd totally bypassed it and were through. I love border posts there always a little tense and exciting at the same time. I always put on my best smile and try to be as charming as I can, because who needs hassle. The Namibians were nice enough but a little ridiculous, most of our paperwork wasn't checked, all they seemed to be interested in was where Matt was from, how my camera could be so small and what I did for a living. As we were finishing up a customs official appeared and asked us "so where's the bottle of wine" implying that he was going to make it difficult for us if we didn't anti up. Unfortunately for our fat official friend we didn't have any wine so he had to settle for a couple bottles of beer. Yes I'm serious that really happened.
Anyway once all that was over with we headed up to the fish river and the Ai Ais national park. The next 24 hours were some of the most brilliant I've ever had. We didnt know exactly where we were going so just kind of headed up the highway, out of nowhere the tar road ended and we crashed off it onto a crappy dirt road. In a bid to find get directions we pulled into a little shanty town and while no one could really help us out with directions we did find a little shabeen and had a quick beer!
A sign that read 'Road Closed' seemed like perfectly good reason to us to drive down that road and what a brilliant move that was. It took us right along the side of the fish river in the lower stretches of the canyon. We pulled off the road at about 1am and made camp. When we woke up in the morning we found ourselves in a location beyond description. I'll let the photos tell that story. By this time it had been a few days since we'd all had a shower so we made good use of the river, I await the broke back mountain jokes.
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