Cape Town to Cederburg Mountain Region6 Feb 2008
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bummer - just typed a load of this and then didn't press save quickly enough...oh well here goes again!
Well i nearly overslept this morning as there were people talking loudly on the balcony outside my window for a couple of hours in the night and then when I did fall back to sleep eventually I was so sound asleep I didn't hear my alarm! Fortunately I only woke 15 mins late and all was ok!
When i went to check-out and ask for a taxi I discovered that there was someone else going to Nomad's office. Tom turned out that Tom was to be on my tour so it will good to meet someone else to find the office with! We found the office and went and got registered and went in the main room to have coffee and meet our fellow travellers. There were two tours leaving this morning so it was interesting trying to work out who was going to be camping and who had opted for the accommodated version! Turns out there is 16 on our tour although a couple are only doing part of the tour and then others are joining us! The groups includes a good variety of people from England, Australia, Argentina, America, Austria, Germany, Japan and Italy (no moaning Belgians this time!!!).
Once everyone had checked in it was time to head out to the truck and load up our stuff. The trucks have been updated since my last tour and now incorporate individual lockers which is great especially as they are inside the truck so you can access your stuff whenever you like! Once loaded up we headed off for our first stop which was at Table View to look at Table Mountain! Then it was a quick supermarket run (various people needed to buy bits and pieces including me as i didn't have a sun hat and the guide nded to buy our food!) and then off towards our first nights campsite which was at Citrusdal in the Cederburg Mountains - beautiful! Tom, Penelope and I soon got chatting and it already seemed like this was going to be a good tour!
We arrived about 2pm at the campsite and Noel our driver gave us a demo on how to put up the tents! Penelope was to have a tent to herself so i asked another lady if she wanted to share. Sam is also from England and we immediately got on well so that was also lucky as we would share a tent for the next three weeks!
We got our tent up easily as Sam has also done a lot of camping before. Then it was lunch and free time until our guided walk at 4.30pm with a local bushman. I decided to sort out my stuff so that it was more user friendly packed for daily use and then it was time for a dip in the large paddling pool/swimming pool! It was extremely hot so this was great! It was also chance to get to know some of the others who had the same idea!
At 4.30pm it was still no cooler and i wasn't sure how i was going to cope with the walk but thought i would give it a go. Penelope decided to give it a miss s she was struggling to cope with the heat anyway. Skoppie arrived, our bushman guide and said that he wanted to give us a brief talk first. He started talking about the wildlife we might see on our walk and before we knew it he produced a tortoise and a scorpian from his pocket! Made us all laugh! He also had a second scorpian in a bucket to show us - this one was poisonous hence why it wasn't in his pocket!
We started the walk. Skoppie is a mind of information adn the surrounding area is beautiful! Unfortunately once we got a little way up the heat started to affect me and i decided i shouldn't go on and turned back towards the camp. I was gutted that i couldn't finsh the walk but two hours in the scorching heat just wasn't going to happen for me! When i got back i found Penelope in the bar adn downed a load of water having already drunk what i had with me! We then went and spent more time in the pool which was great! the owners kids were around so we talked to the little boy as well who was quite cute!
After dinner made by Ray it was the usual round of introductions for everyone in the group. Turns out I was the only one who had done an overland tour before - think the others had some interesting times ahead especially those that had never camped before!!
After dinner most headed to the bar where the England footie was on. It gave us a chance to continue to get to know each other as well. It was not long though before most headed off to bed shattered from the stresses of the first day!
