The Windmill Game

Friday 4^th May 2012

Today was a big drive – 800kms on tarred roads from Oudtshoorn to Upington.    

We prepared well, with another cooked breakfast at the Gumtree Guest House, packed the car, took a few photos of the Guesthouse and set off.  We even managed to find our way out of Oudtshoorn this time without Tom's help.

We had an extreme day with directions and so had to keep on top of things.  Basically we had to make three left turns in the 800kms, and one of those was to get out of Oudtshoorn!

There wasn’t a lot of traffic, and when we came up to this 4WD and horse trailer, it did look quite comical.  There really didn’t even look like there was enough room for one Shetland Pony, so it would have been interesting to see the horses.

 

We made a couple of stops for petrol, and one in Beaufort West to buy a blanket.  The weather forecast for our time in the Kgalagadi is for hot sunny days, but cold nights, so we thought we'd best be prepared.

We carried on and were planning to have lunch at Three Sisters.  We came up to a Shell garage, quite large with lovely gardens and a playground attached.  There was also a Steers Burger cafe there as well.  It turned out that this Shell garage WAS Three Sisters! 

Now I know that it may seem this blog has a certain emphasis on the "ladies rooms" along the way.  Well, today was no exception.  At the entrance (to some of the cleanest & best kept ones I've been to in a garage) was a large piece of aluminium, presumably rescued from a building site.  Someone had done a lovely job with more metal and a solder iron to make a border, and various ditties were painted on in between some painted pictures:

...ooops ....  can't load images

The hours in the car go so quickly.  We're kept really busy, and it isn't talking about cameras and photoshop all day either.  Jen has introduced me to "The Windmill Game".  This started out as "The Santa Game" on a drive to Tamworth years ago, and we're now using the official African version. 

The rules are very complex:  as soon as you see a windmill that is in working order, you call out "Windmill". 

I told you it was complex! 

At first of course, this sounded quite odd.  How many windmills in working order can you see?  Well, the game is both very competitive but also excellent training for the animal spotting we'll need when we're in the parks.  It's amazing how far away you can spot a WOW (working order windmill) and yet almost miss one that's just about next to the road!

Some conversations run along the lines of "blah, blah, blah, WINDMILL, blah blah, blah" and at other times, when we're both quiet and in our own worlds, I've nearly had a heart attack when my eardrum nearly ruptures with WINDMILL!!!!

From tomorrow, the windmill game will be interrupted for a week because we'll be putting our skills into practice, and we'll hopefully be calling (or whispering) Lion! or Cheetah! or whatever it is we've spotted.

The drive is also interrupted by the "Stop/Go's" along the route.  This is the name given to the various roadworks that are dotted around.  They usually do roadworks in about 5-10km stretches, and at each end they have a few people - one waving a flag to warn drivers that a Stop/Go is coming up (quite often you haven't had a chance to notice the 16 or so signs they've also put up at intervals along the road for a couple of kms); one at the hut to listen in to the two way radio so they know when to remove the witches hat and a couple of extra people to keep them company.

One the radio this morning they commented that the drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town will take an extra 3 hours because of delays at the 15 Stop/Go's that are in place today.

Sometimes you can be lucky and you are waived straight through, other times you have to just wait patiently for up to about 10 minutes.

With our 3 left turns and spotting windmills, the day got busier when the social weaver birds nests started appearing.  These were usually built on top of telegraph poles, and ranged in size from a studio apartment to a full blown council estate in size!

Then we noticed that at times, the road was straight.  I mean when you looked as far ahead as you could see, you could still see the road - not a bend in sight!  So, being the multi tasking women we are, we decided to see how long it was before a bend.  The first time it was 21kms, but we realised that it must have been longer because we'd been going straight for some time before we took our reading.  Oh, and no - we didn't have time to retrace our steps to find the start of that particular straight stretch!

Anyway, we successfully negotiated the bend in the road, and then it was straight for 31kms - and at the end of the 31kms it was more like a lean than a bend!  The next stretch was 22kms and the bend in the road was because the township of Marydale was there.  We needed to refill the car, so we headed into to the township and filled up at the BP.

We joined the road again - at the bend! - and the next bend in the road was at Grobblershoop, the next township.  55 kms up the straight road!!!

We then had a 7km stretch, which we decided really wasn't worth measuring and then the road really went beserk and there were bends every couple of kilometres.

We had planned to spend the night at Upington. For a while we'd been seeing Namibia appearing on the road distance signs - it seemed strange and exciting to see the next country on the sign.  So we found a Guesthouse in Upington and they had 1 room available tonight - a family room (self catering).  We asked to have a look at the room, and it's enormous.

So we agreed to take it, and while Jen went to drive the car around to this side of the house complex, I was standing on the verandah with the lady owner.

Lady:  So where are you both from?

Me:     Sydney in Australia

Lady:  Ooohh.  Are you here for a holiday?

Me:     I am, yes.  Jen lives here now.

Lady:  Are you just staying in South Africa?

Me:     (A tad surprised since Namibia is literally just up the road, and I couldn't see a reason why you'd come to Upington on your holidays)  Actually, we're going to Namibia.

Lady:  (looking quite surprised) Really?  You're not driving to Johannesburg?

Me:      Actually, we are driving to Jo'burg but we're going via Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

By this time, Jen had driven the car around and was just switching the engine off.

Lady:  (by now looking totally stunned and gobsmacked)  oooohh, um, aaaah, ooooohhhhh, um - and figuring I probably wasn't joking - you're doing all of that, and in THAT? (pointing to Jen's car).

Me:     Yes.

While we were having our gourmet dinner, we tried to work out the history of the room by following the clues - two air conditioners, one half behind a cupboard that obviously doesn't work and hadn't been removed; the ugly print on the wall has been expensively framed but behind the print there has been a doorway (or two) in the wall judging by the clues in the stippled plastered wall and the missing skirting board in parts; the chandelier is something else! And so on.

I'm having trouble loading any more images, so am going to have to give it a miss.  Also from tomorrow we probably won't have internet access so it may be a few days before I can put any more posts up.  We'll be kept busy - we're camping in the Kgalagadi park, and should be having a wonderful time spotting and photographing a plethora of game, mostly cats!!!!!!  (of various sizes)

:-)