Yesterday was the start of the Dragoman overland trip from Cape Town to Gondar in Ethiopia. There's 22 passengers and 3 crew on the first leg of the trip up to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. It's a mixed group with the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Argentina, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Belize represented with ages ranging from 24 to 73. We headed out of Cape Town in our temporary truck - the Dragoman trucks are UK registered and in order to try and reduce illegal immigration South Africa has recently introduced a law that non South African buses are not allowed in the country. Therefore we've got a temporary South Africa truck for 2 days until we meet up with 'Neema' our Dragoman truck in Namibia. We headed north out of Cape Town heading up the west of South Africa. The further north we went the further we got away from civilisation - up towards the mountains and vast expanses of desert. Sand-like soil, with lots of little shrub bushes with the occasional tree somehow managing to survive.

Instead of staying in Citrusdal as the per the itinerary we headed further north to the Highlander Vineyard, complete with the Scottish Saltire flying from the flagpole. With rows of wines going down to the river and a mountain backdrop it was a spectacular site for my first ever night camping! The vineyard forms part of a co-operative which supplies grapes for Klawer Cellars, the third largest wine producer in the Southern Hemisphere, who produce 13m litres of wine per year. Sparky, the owner, gave us a wine tasting on the terrace overlooking the swimming pool and the river, before dinner, which was obviously accompanied by quite a bit more wine…! Having slept very soundly (probably as a result of the wine) my first night's camping was successfully completed!

This morning we continued North once again, towards the Namibian border. The stunning mountain and desert scenery continued. The border crossing was straight forward and mid afternoon saw us at our Camp Site on the banks of the Orange River. A stunning location, and a very nice camp site, complete with bar, restaurant, swimming pool etc all overlooking the river. Early evening saw me heading to the bar (just for a change) and finding that the Newcastle / Swansea game was live on TV. So, prior to the evening BBQ (sorry 'Braai' as it's called in South Africa), I sat in the bar, in the 37 degree heat (for those of you back home in the English winter, that's centigrade!) overlooking the river, watching the game… Surely the best way to watch a game as opposed to being back in a cold UK winter, although I'm still not sure how we didn't win the game…!

Tomorrow sees us having a lazy morning before heading off early afternoon for a 2 hour drive up to Fish River Canyon with the intention of getting there in time to watch the sunset over the canyon…