Tuesday, July 22nd, Vergelegen Guest House, Augrabies Falls National Park, South Africa

Greetings!
Each day, we rotate seat placements to partly get to know each other better, assure some equity of window photo opportunity (though most times lately we get out), and because most of us want to have a full two-seat position – possible for all but one of us with the current load.  It’ll get near impossible on the weekend when we have 14 people and 16 seats.

Five hundred kilometers went by quickly today (fewer road blocks), and we transitioned from deep agricultural lands to marginally possible to raise sheep.  The McCooks have been fun to be around during this time especially because they raise sheep in Australia, and he (Cookie) is the guy who sizes up the quality and weights of sheep back home when they are being sold to buyers (bound for China these days).  They are great to talk with, and we hope to visit them when we take our great Australian travel about.

Those strange looking grass balls perched in the top of telephone poles are the colonies of nests of social weavers.  They even invite small potential prey (kestrel falcons) to the colony because the falcons protect them from snakes.

After lunch, we arrived at Augrabies Falls National Park, where if we'd been here a couple of years ago, we'd have been drenched in the parking lot from the flood of water coming over the falls.  As it was today, we watched much less water spill down the Orange River over a really gorgeous canyon.  

And we were joined by a beautiful gecko named after the park,

and a baboon who kept a very close eye on us.  These locals have learned to open car doors, slip inside narrow windows, and appear to be well on their way to hijacking ATM machines.

For the next few days, we head into Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park on the border between South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana.  We'll be at the Vergelegen Guest House, !Xaus Lodge, and the Fish River Canyon Lodge, and we'll be game hunting again, and operating off generators and salt-water desalination.  Back again posting by the weekend.

To see the photos we took today, click on Tuesday, July 22nd, Vergelegen Guest House, Augrabies National Park, South Africa.