Up to Cape Leveque

Sunday 25^th May 2008

Naturally, Paul wasn’t feeling so great this morning so guess what.... another slow start. But we were out of the caravan park by pretty close to 10am. However, we did forget to tape up the back of the trailer and, boy, did I come to regret that...

The road up to Cape Leveque starts as an unsealed one and it was definitely the worst one we’ve encountered yet. We had to go at around 60km/h with constant swapping from side to side to find the flattest and least dirt covered parts of the road. To make matters worse we came up behind another trailer so had 50km or so of eating dirt – joy! There were some really bouncy bits and I had visions of doors flying open in the trailer and food and utensils going everywhere.

Just as we were starting to get really fed up with it, the bitumen appeared – seemingly in the middle of nowhere and for no particular reason. It was a very pleasant surprise. We heard a story this evening about a guy who’d come up the day before but decided he’d had enough and turned around at what must have been only 2km out from the bitumen!

Once we reached Kooljaman which is at the tip of the Cape we realised that we were by far the biggest trailer here – everyone else was in tents, small tent trailers or pop-up 4WDs rented from Britz. I reckon they use the dodgy road to put off people who aren’t really keen or maybe we are too intrepid for our trailer?!

On opening up we found a sea of red dust – and if that wasn’t bad enough, when Katie opened the fridge for a drink it was full of coffee grounds. One innocent little packet had been put in the shelf of the door and had a little hole in one corner and yet everything in the fridge was covered – it had got right into the cheese and the butter and had collected in the grooves of the door shelves. Needless to say, I wasn’t the happiest camper in town – and I had no one to blame!

Our allotted spot is fantastic – we got it by default because it was all that was left. It is without power which I was annoyed about when I booked it but in fact it is one of the best spots in the whole camp – sitting up above some small cliffs which look out to the west with only a couple of people beside us, nice big, open, grassed area, toilets and shower only 20m away (but also only used by three others) and a perfect view of the sunset.

It was pretty warm once we’d set up (with the camper facing straight into the sun – didn’t think that one through properly!) so we went to investigate the swimming beaches which are on the east side. It was pleasant enough but I think we’ve been spoiled by all the fantastic scenery we’ve witnessed and I was disappointed because there wasn’t really anything worth taking a photo of.

However, the weather stepped in to create the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. There was a lot of cloud around which had made the beach a little dull, but once the sun had gone below the horizon incredible colours appeared in the sky – for a while it actually got lighter because of the light reflecting down off the clouds. And, for once, I was really pleased with how some of my photos came out.

Another episode of the Young Ones was watched before the girls were shuffled into bed. The stars were really clear to the south (the clouds were still hanging around in the north) and I saw three shooting stars in half an hour but am still nowhere near Andrej’s record (of 9).