31st January – 4th February 2013

The road along the coast was pretty wild and nothing like I had expected. My lack of geographical knowledge led me to believe that the majority of Africa was sand, dry barren land and absolutely NOT green…go on, admit that you thought the same!?

The Africa I have seen and learned about was famine, civil war, desert, droughts and dreadful disease…this was none of the above.

Green, lush and beautiful lands dotted with tiny villages with a splash of modernisation here and there, a random KFC, an Orange mobile shop and an amazing tarred road.

We drove along getting to know our vehicle and our surroundings. We barely saw another car on the road. We had luckily been driving quite a bit in England so were used to driving on the right (as in Correct) side of the road again and once we had gotten the hang of loosing all speed when we were climbing we were happy as clams. The scenery drew our attention outwards and as we sailed by low-lying bushes, farm land and grazing cattle we wondered what adventures these lands held for us.

Bobo-campers had allowed us to take the vehicle but we were sadly unable to take it out of South Africa as we had originally planned. We decided this would be fine as it would probably take us a month to explore this country of unexpected beauty and we smiled at our decision as we drove further along the coast.

We took an off road route through West Coast National park and ticked off the animals we spotted on route. We saw Ostrich, Eland, Bonteboks and even a mongoose and watched eagles sore above. As we drove I thought I could see a huge lake of water as blue as the ones that we saw in Canada but the hills kept dipping and I kept loosing sight of it but before long, there it was.
A beautiful milky blue lagoon stretching out before us.

We drove to the view point and made our way down to the beach. Birds ran cheeping around our feet as we clambered down the man made, dangerous steps to the edge. The water beckoned and we couldn’t help but dip our feet in, it was warm, still and crystal clear. We watched hermit crabs scuttle around under the low swell and picked shells out of the large cous-cous like white sand.

This was not the Africa I had imagined, all of the pictures in my head were so wrong…here at least anyway. We carried on in the park and within minutes of being at the calm lagoon we were at the wild Atlantic coastline. The waves smashed into the rocks and boulders scattering the pebble beach, they roared and crashed and filled the air with salt and an impossible wind complimented by ever screeching gulls. Was this the same place? Had we skipped through a worm hole? Here, again the colours were incredible. The ocean bright blue crested with white froth and rage against the clear blue sky and the purple grey pebbles. I felt like I had never seen in colour before (since the Exumas that is, but this was different). The colours were so vibrant, wild and alive in the sun.

The orange dirt led us around more veld and we watched Ibis methodically searching the ground for slimy treats and the horns of boks peeping out of the bush, I could have stayed forever but we weren’t in Peggy now. A roof tent was not suitable for wild camping so we had to find camp before dark. We signed out of the national park and wound our way along the peaceful road to Langebaan. We found a campsite that looked like an abandoned refugee camp, looked a little further and found another campsite right on the beach and set up camp next to the same wild Atlantic Ocean as we had seen at the national park.

The tent popped up with ease, we cooked up some food and enjoyed a bottle of wine as the sun set and fought off the seagulls as we ate.

We spent a rather sleepless night in the tent on the roof of the car…mainly I think because we were in a tent on the the roof of the car and the thundering waves did nothing to sooth us to sleep BUT we were warm and dry and surprisingly comfortable!

We set out the next day to go into the mountains and luckily stopped by tourist information at the seaside town for advice. The advice we were given was not to go to the mountains as it was too hot. The lady meant it when she said it and we took her word for it and decided to stay put by the breezy beach. We assured each other we would sleep better the second night on the beach as we would be used to the sounds of the ocean by now.

We tried to spend the day on the beach but the wind had picked up something incredible. We were sand blasted from all directions and gave up after a few minutes. We had been so prepared too, covered in sun cream (imagine the scene from Home Alone with the tar and feathers but with sun cream and sand!), a bag filled with water, books, snacks…(and within seconds…a tonne of sand), towels for after our ‘swim’ and chairs…all of this for a moment resulting in a scene worthy of a comedy sketch!Fighting the wind to get there, setting up the chairs, taking off our t-shirts, sitting down and trying to hold open a page in our books all the while our teeth filling with sand and our bodies immediately feeling like we had rolled down the beach to get there. A glance at each other (neither of us dare talk for fear of eating yet more sand) and we were putting away our books, trying to put our tops back on, packing away the chairs and fighting the wind back up the beach.

Of course a shower was pointless as our towels had been covered in sand in the expedition too and even wine doesn’t wash sand out of your teeth!

We sat outside the car in the wind for as long as we could take it and eventually retired to the roof tent and sat in what can only be described as severe turbulence in the tent all night long.

The wind didn’t give up, yet it didn’t seem to be putting people off. It was the weekend and the next day as we tried to build a shield for our gas cooker (our rice the night before had taken 2 hours to boil because of the wind) tents were fought up, campers of all shapes and sizes arrived and there were suddenly kids…everywhere. We watched all of these crazy weekend campers pull out their windsurfing kit and run onto the beach with joy and glee in their faces at the strength of the wind that pulled them up and down the surf all day long.

We watched, thankful that we were dry and had no such urge to engage in this crazy sport and instead watched the seals at play in the surf as we cooked our dinner. We ate it in the car to escape the addition of sand to our meal and wind burn to our faces…oh AND there was some kid with a recorder…can I just please point out that a recorder is NOT a solo instrument…it is percussion for a reason!

Anyway, we left Langebaan the next day with all of our cobwebs blown away and ready to get our wedding on. We had not had an amazing time but only because of the wind. The campsite was brilliant, the ablutions (as they are known here) ACTUALLY have baths, the roof tent is really comfortable and the beach was beautiful BUT we don’t windsurf! BUMMER!