Our night in Bela Rosa came with breakfast the next morning, so at around 7:30am we headed for the dining room. We ate fresh pineapple and mango and guava juice before being served a full English breakfast, coffee and tea. Perfect start to the day! The man who served us had a long chat with us about what he thinks of the UK and the people there, and how he has yet to find a wife with blue hair, he was funny albeit a little strange. We settled out bill with him and set off for the town of Clarens, which I was interested in stopping in on the way past as they were having a festival. When we arrived, it was to find the cutest little town I have ever seen! Every shop we went into was really beautiful and quaint, the streets were half dirt and half tar, and their was a real charm to the town. Dad phoned as we got there and I learned from Mum that Jess and James spent their timeshare week here, In a resort called Kiara, just a few kms out of town, I am so jealous!!
We went into numerous shops which if I had have had my way I would have bought everything! Unfortunately Dan made sure I didn't. We stopped in a gallery and both fell in Le with the style of painting of an artist there, who was coincidentally at the gallery painting what easily looked like a canvas blow up of an image not an actual painting! We asked her for her contact details, as a few years down the line when we have our own little family we may contact her to do a commission for us much like the painting we have at the moment of just the two of us! I dragged Dan around as many stores as I could before he told em we should head back to the cat, which I strategically angled for us to walk back through the festival. There was a joker man behind a board a few metres away with a sign above his head, and you could pay R20 to throw three tomatoes at his head! I convinced Dan to have a go, he got one through the mans arm hole but none on his face, it was hilarious though! I bought a type of doughnut filled with caramel and we walked back to the car.
I'm still really disappointed that we did not push on a little bit longer yesterday and stay the night in this gorgeous town, and with hind sight I'm also disappointed that we didn't decided to just stay the night there in any case. Never mind, we continued on our journey and the road took us through the most stunning national park, called The Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Where if you didn't know better you would assume that you were in Scotland.
The road through the park was very twisting and we couldn't make very good time but the views made up for that. The park only lasted about 20km and when we arrived at the exit to the park a guard took down our registration plate and vehicle type (probably to make sure every vehicle in the park leaves before they close the gates) He even noticed the bullet casing I was wearing as a necklace, we told him I had shot a springbok and gave him some of the droewors. Soon after leaving the park we took a look in the rear view mirror and decided we needed to make good time to avoid the weather coming in behind us. The sky behind was black and the storm was headed this way. About 20 km after the park the road turned to gravel; a much worse type than we had encountered before. This time the road was made of fist-sized rocks and the whole car rattled and shook with an intensity that threatened to shed every accessory not nailed down. Going was slow and we weren't able to go any faster than 40 km/hr. The rattling was deafening. And then the inevitable happened, it started to rain.
The storm that was behind us leaving the park had caught up with us on the gravel road. Visibility in front of us was probably 10 km while behind us it was less than 500 meters. You could clearly see the wall of heavier rain approaching behind us. Running water on the road was cutting channels in the dirt that even after the rain stopped would not be easy to cross. We quickly realised that we would need to outrun the storm if we wanted to avoid being stranded in the quickly flooding plain. So for the next 5 minutes I put foot to the floor and sped along the rocky road in an attempt to avoid the worst of the rain.
Just as we managed to outrun the rain we found ourselves thrown onto our first paved road in 50 km, what a relief! A little while later we found our way to a petrol station where we filled the car. Despite all the rock and tumultuous roads we managed to get an amazing 27.5 mpg this time! I had found an accommodation in Piet Retief for R360 per night, and so I set the sat nav to take us there. Along the way I spotted a large sign saying that they had rooms for R250 per night, so I told Dan to pull up and ask at their door. Whilst he was out of the car I noticed a sign up ahead for A1 Accommodation advertising rooms for R150 for a night, so when Dan came back to the car having not been answered we drove there instead! Unfortunately the R150 rooms were taken, but as it was just for a single bed it was not too much of a hassle for us to stay in the twin room for R250. The woman was actually extremely kind and upgraded us to a double room (usually R350) for free!
We unpacked the car and Dan played around with the back seats and figured out that you can hinge them forwards towards the front seats, and basically turn the car into a two seated with a huge boot! We drove into Piet Retief to see if we could find any of the items on our list that we wanted for the rest of the trip, and managed to catch an open pharmacy for indigestion tablets and Pick and Pay for some juice and shampoo. We tried to find a map from one of the petrol stations in the town but none of them had any, so we went to KFC and bought a streetwise five poece chicken for our dinner and went home. I fell asleep pretty quickly after I'd finished eating but Dan very kindly stayed up to write this blog post, which we have now had to completely rewrite because I had a spaz moment coupled with the iPads stupidity and today's completed post was deleated! Its really not much fun to start all over again, I promise :D
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