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Day 3
I awaken at about 3am with the exhilarating sound of my fishing reel screeching! Stumbling in the dark as my eyes adjust, I find my rod and strike. The crab bait worked and I land a 3kg barble.
Our camp site is ill protected from the early morning sun, and at about 5:30 am everyone is awake from the already baking sun.
Once again we are treated to the magnificent rock formations as we row along. One of the teams capsize their canoe, and we find that the breakfast drum wasn't sealed properly. Two day's corn flakes are now soggy corn mush. But we have plenty of other food and eggs and bacon will have to do for breakfast.
The evening we are treated by our guides with a smul lekker lamb roast and potatoes.
Most of the other people are turned off by the barble, but I decide to braai it anyway. Some onions and tomatoes are handy, but I'm short on spices. Nonetheless it turns out delicious and after a bit of coaxing everyone tries and loves the fish.
Day 4
The fourth day is the first time we see any sign of habitation. We have lunch on a sand bank opposite a small worker settlement of the outstretched Aussenkehr farm. Here in the middle of the desert a huge investment in infrastructure allows year long harvests of the grape vineyards.
The whole day we had a breeze as our companion - which was pleasant to keep us cooler. But over lunch it steadily built up to a gale force strength wind, blowing straight upstream. Here where the mountains open we have little protection from the wind.
We are only a couple of kilometers away from our camp site, but the wind doesn't allow us to make much headway. Even the river current is not strong enough to move our canoes forward against this new force. We have to dig in and row 20 powerful strokes just to move a few meters.
Our tired aching muscles are stretched to their limits. In an effort to try a different approach, I swap with my dad for the front seat where my weight can hopefully keep the nose down deeper in the water to lower the wind resistance and waves.
I even turn around and row backwards, which initially seems to alleviate some muscle pain and provide more rowing power. We try to hug a reed bank for extra protection, but with rowing backwards we fumble our way straight into the reeds and a near meeting with a thorn tree and we capsize the canoe!
Off course not being close to a rapid and not expecting to fall out everything wasn't strapped down properly. Scrambling to prevent the canoe from taking any more water, we try to grab at items so we won't lose them. The water is too deep to stand, the canoe is filled to the rim with water and the reed bank prevents us from getting to shallower water.
A struggling swim allows us eventually to get closer to the side where we can lift the canoe high enough out of the water to enable us to scoop water out without more water running in.
Fortunately we haven't lost anything. With my dad also named Jurie, our team picks up the nickname of Russian Sub.