Day 14 – Fish River Canyon

Today we had a bit more of a relaxed morning. I tried the crappy wifi again before breakfast with not a lot of luck. Hard to complain though, we are in the middle of nowhere with everyone sharing a tiny satellite connection. 
Breakfast was decent. I’m becoming addicted to the muesli and Greek yoghurt that they serve everywhere for breakfast. I’ve had it before when I travel and love it but somehow it never occurs to me to eat it at home!

We headed out to spend most of the morning taking in the spectacular Fish River Canyon. We visited the main viewing area and then hiked a little bit along the rim of fish canyon – about 3km in total? Wonderful scenery. Wish I knew how to do a panorama shot with my camera!(discovered two days later how to do one with my phone. Too late!)

Some of group managed up spot the tiny elusive klipspringer antelope – but I was too slow and missed the sighting! Too bad, this was our last chance to see them. We did see some of the local zebras that apparently only inhabit this region, though.

We had lunch at the roadhouse. This is a lodge owned by the same company that runs ours. It was very cool – they had old vehicles and motorcycles everywhere. Jess and I had a decent lunch. I ordered the lasagne and was told I would have to have a beef pie instead today. So that’s what I had and it was lovely. Grant ordered the burger… And forgot to ask for it well done. It arrived at the table very rare. He skipped lunch!

Back at our extremely charming lodge, Jess and Grant had a quick swim in the afternoon while I finished laundry. They had a laundry service but there are a few expensive merino items that I don’t trust in a tumble dryer! (Not to mention some more personal stuff I don’t like to send to the laundry)

The lodge offered a free hike up the boulders to watch the sunset. I decided to go for it but Jess and Grant were comfortably lounging in big leather chairs in the lounge area playing chess and didn’t feel like moving. The Australian family in our group joined me and another South African couple we didn’t know came along. 

Amazingly, there was a small bar at the top! We stayed up there about 45 minutes until the sun had gone completely behind the edge of the valley. It was pretty underwhelming as sunsets go, but we got a few cool shots of the evening light on the boulders nearby. Getting bored and a bit chilly in the wind, we headed back.

Turns out we didn’t stay long enough!! As we walked back to the lodge the entire sky painted itself delicate shades of purple and pink. I asked the guide why we left so early and he said: “I thought you wanted to leave!” I’m not really sure why they run the tour so early in the evening. We’d have to sit up on those boulders for well over an hour to see the whole sunset – and our tour left ten min late! Ah well. We were back in plenty of time to get cleaned up for dinner.

Got the laundry back that I had the lodge do $14.50 is a bargain for all those clothes!!! Very happy Tammy – clean clothes for everybody!

We had dinner and I spent some time catching up on my blog and trying to upload a single post with the crappy wifi – ended up loading many times I think! Then back to room to pack so we could be ready for a very early morning drive the next day.