I must be a softy, because wading through meadows carpeted in myriad flowers is one of my favourite things so far. It’s hard to do justice to the display in photos, but we took hundreds (but only ten made the gallery!).
Namaqua is an arid region, baked to bare sand in the summer but exploding with flowers in the brief springtime. Well worth the visit.
Anyway, we’re in Cape Town now, in a spacious and spartan apartment that may have been a bargain or not – it’s hard to tell without shopping around, which just chews up time, but it’s certainly as good or better than the price of private double rooms in backpacker hostels (as researched online). And we have our own kitchen, bathroom, living room and even a garage for the car.
It’s opposite a building site, by the way. In theory this is no problem, as they start at 8AM and we’re expecting to be out exploring. I’ll keep you posted! 
So, a useful opportunity to reflect on the Northern Cape province as we’ve now driven right across it. Firstly: this is a place of giant geography. Valleys, plains, hills, everything is on an epic scale. I feel like an ant taking a driving tour through Sussex. It’s arid as hell, except for the couple of big rivers that wind their way through. You can drive for an hour without anything much changing.
Food and drink. The food is all beef, and portions enormous (many of the people are big too – coincidence?). The two big rivers support enormous wine industries, with vineyards sometimes stretching to the horizon, or bizarrely surrounded by barren desert. The wines are gnarly, but at £3+ for a bottle in a restaurant they’re pretty drinkable!
And people we’ve met have been very hospitable. Yeah, cliché for pretty much any country you visit. But I don’t mean smile-and-polite friendly, I mean go-out-of-your-way-to-help friendly. Random folks we met have been happy to phone guest houses for us, or detour on their route home to show us places to stay.
Anyway, I like the Northern Cape. But I’m thinking you need to be tough to live there.
Update! Hannes, who runs the apartment, has offered us a comfy room in his guesthouse at the same rate from Tuesday when the builders start. Another example of hospitality.
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