Cape Town to Mariental
I would have loved to have started this trip with the words: “At the crack of dawn” but it was more like “just after midnight”. We left our house at 02h15 after managing to get a couple of hours of sleep after a good Christmas family lunch and headed off to pick up Trevor and Mags. As has now become the rule – Sion was packing the car in the rain. In fact the rain lasted through most of our journey through South Africa with some sections reduced to about 20m visibility. One quaint stop worth a mention was the book store/memorabilia/gem stone/restaurant in Springbok – not what you’d expect from the outside – we needed to find a book on tortoises in Namibia in the local café, so after driving up and down the main road found the little entrance to a memorabilia store of note with an incredible collection of precious stones and car number plates. We finally reached the border at 10am and passed through easily within 30min with a cost of R160 for the car. Now relieved to be in a new country it proved to still be a very long and hot drive to our first destination and seven hours later reached Mariental and the Anandi Guesthouse. This is definitely the right choice for overnight accommodation – lovely neat and spacious rooms with Tea/Coffee and fridge in the room and an amazing Jacuzzi type bath – bring your own bubbles!!Birds for the day included ticks for Sociable Weaver and Pygmy Falcon plus Bradfield’s Swift (br> Other birds seen and or photographed were Kori Bustard, House Sparrow ……
Anandi Guesthouse