Busy Doing Nothing...

To help us cope with the stress of 3 months on holiday in SA, we decided we needed a little time to relax so last week we headed north to the Cederberg - 230km to Clanwilliam and another 65km including about 45km of dirt road to Oudrif .

Completely off grid here - the only power is solar, the water is pumped up from the river and the nearest cellphone signal is about 7km away. A great place to leave the world and its worries - including Brexit - behind us.

There are only 5 cabins - just ourselves and a German couple while we were there. Despite the heat the cabins - which are built from straw bales coated in mud and cement - stayed pleasantly cool. We were advised to keep the cabin closed up during the day and then open all the doors and windows at night. While there was evidence of  Leopards in the area, we were told that if a Leopard came into the cabin at night the most important thing was to make sure we got a good photo!

The food was excellent - our hosts were both vegetarian and served us with an impressive variety of veggie dishes but gave us steak, chops and boerewors sausage from the braai at dinner time. They also provided a selection of local wines. All in all, it was a lovely place to spend a few days - I can only imagine how restful it would be for someone who was working in a stressful job since this is now beyond my memory.

Our German friends had used a travel agent to book their entire trip and it was clear that the agents had not considered the seasonal changes when they had recommended Oudrif as an ideal white-water rafting venue. While this is true during the winter months, there was not much rafting to be done on the Doring River when we were there.

Doring River bed

There were some deep pools - ideal for swimming and water extraction, but not much more.

We managed a hike for a couple of hours one morning to see the local rock art and took a trip the following day to investigate the Rooibos tea-making process - along with a little birdwatching. Other than that we did little more than sit in the shade and relax - with one of the dogs as our constant companion. As we loaded the car to head off, we were instructed to shut him inside the cabin so he wouldn't follow us home!