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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jul 18, 2013 - 04:12am PT
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More great photos! I'm with you til the end of the trip. Thanks again!
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2013 - 04:20am PT
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In an effort to catch up with the country I am in before actually leaving it, here is another post!
After the dunes we headed into Sesriem Canyon, which felt like a slightly less strong Maple Canyon.
It is a popular hike with 0 difficulty.
Quite the feature!
We spent a few hours in the canyon then continued our drive along random roads in the park. Then we stumbled on something we had previously spent almost an entire day trying to find, bat eared foxes!
The cuteness is nearly unbearable.
The next day we debated on stopping at an area called Fish River Canyon. Until we had seen the Travel Namibia book we had never even heard of it and how impressive could it be anyway? Well we decided to check it out and wow!
I had no idea the second largest canyon in the world was in Namibia.
This is a necessary image. Did you know that here in Africa they make cereal that is basically just choco squares filled with nutella?!
John, I made this image as an homage to our Grand Canyon trip. Although I can't find that image right now and will have to dig it up later.
Then I saw something really awesome to walk!
Thanks Shasta for snapping the images!
There is an 80km hike through the canyon that I am very much planning on doing next time!
This is where it starts.
We stayed at a campsite that was 10km away from the rim called Hoba Campsite.
That is a huge canyon.
The dragon.
Our plan was to continue on to a campground called Ai/Ais where they supposedly had hot springs to swim in. We got a flat on the way though and a nice family that stopped to help us told us the place was a real resort fest with way to many people. We decided to check it out and they were completely correct. We got our tire fixed there and drove right on out. The hot springs are swimming pools now. You couldn't tell they were hot springs any more then you could tell they were heated kiddie pools. What a shame. We did see this really cool armored cricket though while waiting for a ride.
We decided to push on through to Aussenkehr where the climbing guide had listed some fun looking stuff. The drive was also quite beautiful and our tire patch was holding up well.
We stayed at a lodge called Norotoshama Lodge. A totally awesome place! Really great priced camping, with internet, boats to use at no extra cost, and they provide a ride for you to get into the canyon and climb! They didn't even charge us for the ride! Definitely stay there if you get a chance, its right on the Orange River and the fishing is good.
The next day we headed into Aussenkehr Canyon for some climbing on the oldest rock I think I've ever climbed. It's said to be 2 billion years old.
The climbing routes are strictly enforced and you have to talk with the farm manager before any new routes go up. Thats because of the large amount of crappy rock that must be bypassed to find some good routes.
As you can see here, some of the routes look pretty darn scary! Those blocks are precarious!
But it was a really beautiful and quiet place with only two cars going by in the 6 hours we were there climbing.
We thoroughly exhausted ourselves by climbing 10 routes as fast as we could and then waited the 10 min we had left for our ride happy as could be.
Then headed back to Aussenkehr for our last night in the town.
I am going to end this post here because the next day we would be heading back into South Africa and toward more awesome climbing. We were still very much out of climbing shape and the next few days of fun would have our fingers fully tender!
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2013 - 10:04am PT
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Time to cross the border back into South Africa and, for he first time, head back in the direction we started.
We drove from Aussenkehr to the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa trying to get to Rocklands. We instead ended up 60km on a dirt road at a place called Cederberg Oasis, you see we were trying to get to rocklands but googled sport climbing. I'm not much of a boulderer. And it brought us to this area of the Cederberg. It all turned out though because the rock in this area was amazingly featured! We drove into a place called Truitjies Kraal where the sport climbing was and climbed about 8 really enjoyable routes.
We were still feeling tired from our climbing the other day at Aussenkehr but the routes had such large holds it didn't really matter!
After pulling the small roof, Shasta is glad to find the good holds.
Looks like she was holding on pretty tight!
The surrounding area. There is a huge amount of route potential. Unfortunately, the current program worked out with the park service and the mountain club goes as such "If you want to put a route in, you have to take one down."
After climbing most of the day we decided to explore around a bit. There are awesome caves all over the place.
Then I got a little artsy with it. As a photog I noticed the light in the caves was amazing with the angle of the sun. So heres me just appreciating the beauty of Shasta, and the caves.
I am pretty lucky to have this girl to travel and be with!
Awesome features.
Bushman paintings.
The landscape here is awesome! It's the first place in South Africa we really felt we could actually live, if we didn't already love Alaska.
This is the view from our campsite at Cederberg Oasis. If you are in the area definitely go there. Great place with super nice people and they have the biggest dinner of ribs I have seen yet. Over 900kg of ribs imported from France! You picked up the bone and they fell right off it....mmmmm....I would have a picture of it but neither Shasta nor myself were willing to go get it with those ribs in front of us. Plus it was only $11 US.
The roads are dirt and steep, but good quality.
Our tent surrounded in orange trees.
The bouldering potential here is amazing. Lifetimes worth. This isn't even a climbing area in the photo.
This one is the size of a cabin.
Probably undeveloped walls.
The road up.
Well we knew had not yet been to Rocklands proper so we decided we had better do that. To do so we had to drive the 60km back up the dirt road, then into a different section of the park. We drove into Rocklands proper, which is all paved now by the way, and all the way to de Pakhuys campsite. de Pakhuys is the climbers camping area for the most part. They rent crashpads and sell climbing guides as well as gear. We found a somewhat slopey area to put up our tent and then headed into the park to check it. We checked out the other camping areas and found out that Klien Kliphuis is run by a really friendly elderly couple and was almost completely empty. They have nice campsites and really good tea so we decided to move there. The social life of climbers can often be a bit much for us since we prefer the quiet and don't drink. Then we went bouldering at an area next to Kliphuis Campsite around the Flagship Boulders.
We had rented a crashpad for $2 US per day.
And put it to use.
Awesome landings and amazingly featured boulders, its easy to see why this place is so well known.
Quick approaches too.
Also there's a few rocks out there.
A lot of them.
We climbed until our fingers were shredded and then headed back to our campsite.
I started a fire to cook and saw a big spider crawling around in our rock made cook area. It was just a harmless one though so I mostly ignored it. Then I looked again later and said "Oh the spiders crawled into the top now" as I saw him near my hand in a crack. Shasta made the note of pointing out that the original spider was still where we saw him before on the side of the bbq area. So I looked closer and noticed claws. Hmmm...
I lifted the rock that moved near the spider and dropped in on the ground in time to see a scorpion crawl out. First scorpion I had seen in Africa! Since he wasn't an especially deadly variety I threw him off into the woods.
We know we didn't give those climbing areas their proper time but alas, we were running low on time ourselves. So we continued south a few hours and drove into Cape Town. Cape Town is known as an area with tons of things to see and do. We were staying with friends but had only one full day there. What do you do in just one full day?! Well, I had never seen a penguin in the wild so that seemed like a good thing to do. Although in the wild may be a relative term...
Walking around and looking at penguins is like a continual moment of "ooooo's" and "aaaahhhh's" and "Their so cute!"
The babies are dark and fluffy.
Then they become regal.
Being a poser is actually a good thing in photography.
Word.
Whiny babies.
[img] http://www.kelseygrayphotography.com/Africa/South-Africa-May-2013/i-h7KfBrv/0/L/IMG_5073-2-L.jpg{{/img}}
The walkways to the viewpoints.
From Simonstown we drove through the mountains and along the coast back toward Cape Town. What a beautiful drive!
And we continued onto to Table Mountain, which is next.
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2013 - 12:36pm PT
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Were nearing the end!
Originally we had wanted to hike up Table Mountian. I actually wanted to do the climb but we didn't have any trad gear and that is what it takes. So we settled on the hike. Then we took our nice enjoyable drive and penguin viewing and ate up most of our day. So we had to settle even further on the tram.
Cape Town
We drove along this road earlier to get to Cape Town.
Table Mountain is a pretty awesome feature.
This is the trail we probably would have taken up if we had time.
Clouds were forming on this peak.
We were already running low on time when we took the tram but couldn't miss the opportunity to run over to the actual top of the peak which took about 30 min.
Oh and do some quick easy bouldering along the way! These rock formations were awesome with very sticky rock.
The beauty of being on the top when the sun went down was catching the most amazing sunset.
Beautiful.
Unfortunately that was the end of our cape town time and the next morning we drove toward Bloukrans, which touts itself as the highest commercial bungy jump in the world.
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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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Jul 20, 2013 - 01:25pm PT
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Now THAT is a vacation;...thanks for sharing and thanks for the inspiration;...it's a big beautiful world out there..
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
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Jul 20, 2013 - 01:43pm PT
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Kickass!
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Nohea
Trad climber
Living Outside the Statist Quo
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Jul 20, 2013 - 03:22pm PT
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Another great share, thanks for taking us along. That was quite a hump on that one seal, must have the rarely seen and never before photographed Mirounga horribillis
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Jul 20, 2013 - 04:20pm PT
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You sir, are an artist. I hope you make money taking photos, because your eye and skills are exquisite.
This has been a most excellent vicarious journey. Thank you. I hope we cross paths someday.
Again, thank you for sharing with us.
Brandon
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Jul 20, 2013 - 09:36pm PT
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Fantastic. Thank you.
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 21, 2013 - 10:50am PT
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Thank you for the replies Todd, eKat, goatboy,Nohea, Brandon, and Elcapinyoazz! Thank you everyone for coming along with the journey. It's been a really enjoyable one that has definitely opened my eyes up to Africa! I really appreciated all the excellent replies!
Mirounga horribillis - Is that a Elephant Seal Bear?
So this is it, this is my last post of Africa (for now). Although I do still have about 40 panoramas I shot here that I won't stitch until later where I have a better program for it.
We drove to Bloukrans Bridge from Cape Town which was about a 6-7 hour drive. Bloukrans Bridge bills itself as the highest commercial bungy in the world, at 216 meters. Regardless of its current status it was awesome!
Heres the Bridge.
The next day we drove over 900km into the small mountain kingdom of Lesotho. We figured that, since we had 3 days left, we should drove an extra 600km or so through Lesotho just to get in another country. It was a very long drive but quite the beautiful place! The next day we drove 300km through the countryside on what has to be the most windey paved roads in all of Southern Africa. That morning we woke in Malealea Lodge, a great place to stay!
And the views were amazing.
Poor Bluebear, feeling the strain!
On our drive we stopped by the house of a famous missionary. We really just wanted to see this house built in a cave. Cool place!
More awesome views. You can see the road on the right side of the mountain cutting across the landscape.
Some climbing potential.
We continued our drive and arrived in a town on the border of Lesotho and South Africa called Qachas Nek. The next day we drove back to Durban and after a few nights at Nomadic Backpackers we flew out of South Africa saying some sad goodbyes to our kit and car from the trip. An 8 hour flight put us into Dubai and then a 14 hour flight over the north pole and were back in Seattle. I'm spending a few days here with my brother before heading back to Alaska. Then it's time to grab he rack and some running shoes. We've got some travel pounds to work off and some climbing to do!
Thank you all once again for joining on this journey. John (coldclimb) can also be thanked for hounding me to make sure I write this as I travel and not just when I return.
Here are some facts about the trip.
Time in the Middle East: 7 days
Time in Africa : 67 days
Countries Visited: 8 - United Arab Emirates, Oman, South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho
Driving in Middle East: 2026km or 1258mi
Driving in Africa: 16496.9 or 10250mi
Total Driving: 11,508 miles
Highlights: Was in a wedding with friends, Saw the big 5, Climbed in Namibia and South Africa, Saw the stars brighter than I can ever remember, no muggings, no robbings, only hit one other car with ours (we shook hands and continued on our way), Learned to drove on the other side of the car and road, first bungy jump, saw Dead Vlei, Saw the dunes meet the sand, no gear was broken or lost, WE LIVED.
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 21, 2013 - 11:26am PT
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As a friendly thank you to everyone who followed this post I'd like to share my photos with everyone.
So if anyone is interested -
If you really liked like one specific photo out of all of them just let me know. I'll give everyone here one full resolution, un-watermarked, image from my trip that you can use as a background or print or whatever you would like. :) You can also look on my website where there are even more images, since I didn't post every image on here, and just let me know which one you would like.
My website is http://www.kelseygrayphotography.com/
Thanks again!
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 22, 2013 - 12:34pm PT
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Heres a few pano's
Cederberg, SA
and Table Mountain,SA
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Jul 22, 2013 - 01:33pm PT
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Wow!
I last looked at this when there were just a few pics of Dubai, interesting but nothing special.
But now....the wealth of really top-quality wildlife photos is incredible!
Inspiring! Love the sand dunes and all the photos of wild, out-of-the-way places.
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 23, 2013 - 11:21pm PT
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Thanks crunch! and thank you for coming back and checking it out. Its been awesome!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jul 24, 2013 - 07:02am PT
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Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Thank you so much for taking the time to post all these. I really enjoyed this thread.
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Prezwoodz
climber
Anchorage
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2013 - 07:37pm PT
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QITNL - Thanks for checking the pics and replying as the post went on!
Jan - Thank you for reading as well! Always great to know they are being looked at. :)
I don't know if you guys read my last post at all on the previous page but I offered a full size image of any that I took, if you are interest for a background or print. It's up to you!
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John M
climber
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Aug 10, 2013 - 08:51pm PT
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Thanks for taking us along on your trip! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lots of places that I will probably not get to see this lifetime.
You definitely found a special lady.
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MH2
climber
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Aug 10, 2013 - 11:23pm PT
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WHOA!
Not only do these photos look great, they say something, too. There are quite a few people who can take good-looking photos, but these have LIFE in them, and they tell many stories.
My estimate of the value of Supertopo has gone up a full 50% on the strength of this thread. I didn't look earlier because I thought it was a previous thread bumped to the front. It was good to be wrong this time.
We saw some of the same things during 5 months based in South Africa. Especially evocative was the Table Mountain sunset, bringing back the feel of a few days spent climbing and sleeping up there.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Aug 11, 2013 - 01:50am PT
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so like!
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cupton
climber
Where the past and future meet
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Aug 11, 2013 - 06:08am PT
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Wow mate. Just wow. Phenomenal photos... you have killer eye. Thanks for taking us on such a grand adventure.
To answer a question from way back in the thread, wadi literally translates to valley in arabic.
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