Camping in Africa
Camping near Upington
Let’s call this my first ‘real-time’ post. Although this is a recent event, it made me think of a past camping experience. This way back when camping experience is more interesting than this one night stand next to the Orange River. Just follow my train of thought. I went camping near Upington this past weekend. Living where the tarred road ends, means driving for everything one needs. What I needed this past weekend was to go fetch my new glasses from Upington. When I need to drive almost 500 km for something, I might as well make an outing of it.
I quickly searched for a cache or two in Upington but decided to not hang around town for too long. Driving to the campsite revealed how very dry it is at the moment. On the one side of the road, it might as well have been a landscape from the moon for how much nothing there was. Weirdly enough the other side could not be farther removed from this moon landscape. It is green with vineyards and other cultivated lands. This contrast is thanks to the Orange River which is the source of life in this area. The campsite turnoff luckily is on the green side of the road.
Green is the colour here. The campsite is under green trees and over green grass next to the river. In a place where the tar allegedly melts during the hottest months, there cannot be enough trees overhead. The campsite was very nice, but the proof of a campsite’s pudding is in the ablution facilities. The bathrooms were spotless, but I thought that come night, it will be a bug circus. As was the case camping in Botswana.
Camping near the Delta in Botswana
This memory is also from a December, but this time near the Delta in Botswana. Nice campsite and ablution facilities. Very funkily build, with fresco type paintings on the walls. Once one has established that the bathrooms are safe to use, camping can begin. That was the case during that very humid afternoon. And then night came. O my word! When the lights went on all sorts of live things flocked to it. These funky bathrooms had no doors to the outside, the showers were ‘outside’ and the walls did not go all the way to the roof or the floor. Therefore, lights on, meant all were welcome. It looked like some of the plagues of Egypt got lost and showed up here. The locusts and other bugs siren songed the delta frogs and the ablution facilities turned into a free for all.
I have issues with things behaving in an unpredictable manner. My fight or flight wanted me to run away from all the dive-bombers and jumpers. But the bathroom is there for reason, it cannot be bypassed. This was a tall order considering all the frogs and beetles in, on and around everything with water. I chose the least threatening area I could find. Got in and got out.
The next morning, when it was again time to do the rounds I was astounded to find no evidence of the critters that were there before. Either the frogs finished off all the rest of the bugs, or the campsite people got up very early. Everything was as spotless as the afternoon before. I could take my ‘outdoor’ shower in peace and did not have to duck and dodge.
That was my Botswana memory which I thought of as I took stock of the Oranjerus Campsite. Strangely enough, there were no bugs here. No moths, mosquitoes, flying things of any sorts, or frogs. Just the way I like my bathroom.
Follow me here
