Under the presumption that N7 was a huge, traffic-clogged artery like N1, we were determined to avoid it at all costs and so, even though it was a longer route and we had taken it twice the day before, we headed for R27 along the coast. We made Veddril in two hours; finding nothing of much interest, or anything that approximated cheap, African food, we went to a riverside diner someone had recommended and got a very visually appealing plate of Bangers N' Mash for 40R. Intending to take smaller roads north along the beaches, we ended up on a particularly pothole-ridden country road going due east to N7.
The main highway turned out to be a wonderfully scenic mountain road and we had it mostly to ourselves. Our guidebook, which has a habit of providing just enough information to get us into trouble, highly recommended the Cederburg Recreation Area, but gave no further details than to exit at Citrusdal and make our way to Algeria. A long, often questionable dirt road, which ran alongside the highway and again intersected some twenty kilometers later, eventually got us to the park entrance. It was going to be 350R to camp and more for any hikes we wanted to do (but only 5R for donkey cart rides!), so we opted to stay at an organic mango farm down the street. The owner first quoted us the price of 140R but knocked 40 off after noticing our bikes, hearing our plans, and taking pity on us for the ludicrous venture ahead.
South Africans know a thing or two about camping; every other group in the campsite had a massive camper van with a fold-out barbecue and enough meat to put any UF tailgater to shame. We had a backpacker stove, pasta and beans in tomato sauce. From our streamside campsite, we hiked up to the rim of the canyon for the sunset, then stumbled down in the dark. Much to our surprise, the nighttime temperatures dropped to below 50 degrees and we were for the first time grateful for the 5 kilos of extraneous clothing we'd both packed.
German motorcyclists who were WWOOFing at the farm suggested that it was in fact possible to travel through Tanzania and Kenya without a carnet (a piece of paper that would cost more than our bikes), and I again began to entertain the notion of an overland trip to Cairo. We would never seriously discuss this option in the coming weeks, but it was always kicking around the back of my mind, and every time we opened our Southern/Central Africa map, I would glance up to Sudan and Ethiopia to again reflect on the possibility of pushing onward and upward to Egypt. As we travelled, other overlanders would contribute further details to bring us that much closer to such an expedition.
We went down the road to a citrus farm that purportedly held a trail to some Bushmen cave paintings. Matt inquired as to the age of the paintings, no doubt expecting to hear one of the typical wowing statistics like '40,000 years', but it turned out that they had likely been added in the mid-1800s by some gentleman that the farmer's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather knew personally (and likely personally shot for slitting the ankles of his cattle). The etchings depicted some antelope and women giving birth, and were generally of pretty low quality, especially when you consider that these artisans postdated the grand masters of the Renaissance by a few hundred years.
We arrived in Clanwilliam and I rushed into the town's general goods store to procure a pillow; regardless of the space it would consume in my already overloaded rigging, it would be essential if I were ever to hope for another sound night of sleep. I also picked up a two-liter bottle of Fanta, which would be the first of many water containers that I would attempt to strap into my bungee net.
At our next gas stop, we met a man by the name of Fain McGill who owned a hardware store and claimed to know everyone anywhere; he insisted that he should be our primary contact if we needed to find parts for our bikes and that he would buy us a beer in Springbok that night if we made it that far. With this as incentive, we pushed on for another few hundred kilometers and arrived in the town just after nightfall. We called up Fain to report in and inquire about lodging and he forwarded us to a guesthouse without any mention of getting in touch with him later for the promised drink; we ended up staying at the Caravan Park and eating at Titbits, which ended up having decent pizza but no readily discernable explanation for its provocative name.
One of our fellow campers was a white special education teacher who, like every white we had talked to before, was peeved by the new order of things. He informed us of a law requiring that 25% of all new companies be freely given to a black person (a Canadian company, opening up a South African wing, had given a quarter share to a black man, only to have that share immediately sold to the Chinese). His farm, which had been in his family for generations, was in jeopardy of being 'returned' to the blacks. And this was on top of heavy taxes to bolster the welfare state. The consensus among whites, even the exceptionally socially conscious ones, seems to be that apartheid has not so much been eliminated as it has been reversed.
The winds were a bit ridiculous on the ride to the border and each trailer that passed hit us with a wall of air that threatened to knock us over backwards. Namibian customs charged us nothing for the passport stamp but hit us with a whopping 140R each for a temporary vehicle import permit. The border town had a very frontier feel; dirt roads carried us between the one store, bank and gas station in search of a working ATM, but all three were out of order. Luckily, it so happened that Namibian dollars and South African Rand are completely interchangeable, and we had just enough in that currency for a few days in the desert before the next town came along.
