Saturday – Somerset East - Graaf Reinet

Saturday was a monster of a day.


Somerset East

First we drove up to the Mountain Zebra National Park which was excellent. The one thing that stood out was the vastness of the landscape we were within which was far different from anything near Cape Town. The temperature was rising.













We saw lot’s of wildlife In the park, Zebras as you can imagine, but also various antelope and the odd lizard, plus the biggest ants I think I’ve ever seen. Camping is defiantly for the brave round here.


Just in case we saw nothing the visitors centre laid on a bit of a display.










We then had a big drive to Graaf Reinet which is in the middle of the Karoo, essentially hit scrub and desert for miles. On the way we saw a wide range of road kill, most notably black and white striped tails belonging to we imagine some kind of mongoose. Baboons were around but having learnt our lesson last time we kept the doors locked and kept the foot to the floor at a steady 140km/hr – I’d like to see a baboon beat that. The road went through some amazing mountain passes.


Lots of straight roads and not a Roman in sight


Dead tree

Graf Rinet is a really nice town, very colonial. Once we got settled into the B&B we drove up to the Valley of Desolation, which is one of the towns main attractions. It was amazing to see the sun setting over these towing stone structures and then looking beyond to see miles and miles of absolutely nothing.