Leaving the canyon behind we headed to some of the world's highest, and most recognised, sand dunes. Along the way we had a brief stop to visit a much smaller canyon which is known as the Sesriem. We were able to take a walk down to the bottom where it has run dry for the last few years due to poor rainfall. Siziba told us that about once every 20 years or so the rainfall is so high the canyon fills up again and runs with reasonable water levels for quite a ...

Today the trip starts to get a bit more interesting! Breakfast was at 8am which Siziba said is "a nice lie in" and then we headed to the Namibian border. Unfortunately this took a little bit longer than planned as one of the group members is from Hong Kong. She had previously confirmed with them that she didn't need a visa but the guys on duty didn't know the difference between China and Hong Kong so they tried to make her pay for a visa. After a lot of arg...

Breakfast at 7am! The deal is we all have to take our tents down and pack everything away before breakfast, bear this in mind when we have some really early starts on the trip! Anyway Vincent prepared some amazing fresh pancakes for breakfast. There is also always a supply of cereals and bread with various jams, etc. As soon as we were ready we were on the road once again heading for the Namibian border. The area is vast and desolate with very little veget...

Today's the day we say goodbye to my family after 10 weeks and move on to the next stage in our journey! We had to be at the Nomad Adventure office in central Cape Town for 8am and this meant getting up early to avoid the rush hour traffic. We left the farm at 6am but we were lucky, the early morning traffic was only just getting going and we managed to avoid most of it and arrived an hour early, time to drop off our bags and go for a Wimpy breakfast! Anthon...

Kromrivier literally means Crooked River in Afrikaans and is a very special hiking area Michelle was keen to take us to before leaving South Africa. It involves walking up a kloof (literally translates as "gap" but is actually a sort of valley) in the Cederberg Mountain Range behind Paarl. For the most part the mountains themselves look pretty samey. Don't get me wrong, they are certainly imposing and impressive and when the sunlight reflects off the rock at...