Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive - Stephen Fry

28 March 2019, Rosh Pinah to wild camp 99km from Aus
Wild camp R0

There is nothing romantic about wild camping after a too-long day on the bike. The setting in my photo looks romantic,the reality is something else entirely.
We climbed for almost 40km out of Rosh Pinah; I repeat, CLIMBED. Although the gradient was manageable, ranging from 1% through 3.8%, climbing it for endless hours was shattering. Despite the road dropping or being flat for the next 30km, we averaged only 7km per hour, which attests to how slow the ascent was.
We had been told there was “f#$%-all” on the road to Aus, but had read in a cyclist blog of an abandoned building at Witputz 50km outside town at which the cyclist had camped. We had hoped to do 85km today, leaving another 85km to Aus, but were so tired and hot by the time we reached Witputz, an old diamond company complex, that we considered calling it quits there. We pushed our bikes up the dirt road to the row of rooms, proprietary baboons barking at us from the hills, to find the rooms dusty and filled with animal poop and flies. So we ate something and rested in the shade for half an hour and got back on the road for what turned out to be another easy 20km.
A major problem, however… We had left Rosh Pinah carrying six litres of water each, assuming 12 litres total would get us through two days to Aus. By late afternoon, we were down almost to enough water to cook an evening meal only. Our saliva had shriveled and died under a merciless sun; despite drinking litres of water, it never seemed enough to quench our thirst. At one of the picnic spots, a covered table and benches found every 10km or so, offering shade in a shade-less world, I stood in the road, water bottle held aloft, hoping to purchase drinking water from a passing motorist. The first car (bear in mind there is not much traffic) passed us by. We assumed they had not understood the waved bottle request, did not have water on them, or did not want to share it. We were wrong. About a km down the road, we saw their brake lights go on; they made a U-turn and returned to give us about a litre of water (“plaas” (farm) water for which they refused payment) and two apples. We did not get their names, but thank them here nonetheless.
Then we set about finding somewhere to camp. We have never wild camped before and literally had no idea what would be best to do. Most bloggers talk of getting away from the road to camp invisibly, and finding somewhere protected from the wind if possible. The roads are lined with enormous farms, and fenced, making getting off the road rather difficult. For much of the day we had seen culverts under the roads. Having investigated one of these more closely, Charl had declared it ideal for camping. Hidden under the road and therefore from the road, flat cement surface, clean, protected. So we were on the lookout for a suitable culvert. But during the last 20km of our day, the road flattened out and the culverts disappeared, so we had to rethink our strategy. At yet another picnic stop spot, we saw that the farm fence was lying flat. Charl walked a little way into the veld where he found a dry “vlei” (small dam) just below the road surface. So we trespassed…
Before setting up our tent, we tried to cook a meal at the picnic spot, thinking cooking and eating at a table with seating preferable to doing so at ground level. Major problem: we had somehow managed to buy the wrong fuel for our stove, which turned out to be extremely flammable and uncontainable. While we did manage to partially heat water before setting the place on fire, we could not cook our pasta therefore, and snacked instead on lukewarm cup-a-soup, boiled eggs we had carried with us, and tinned fruit. And we were really grubby, but could not spare more water than that required for a quick hand and face splash.
On the upside, the vlei was pretty and flat enough to set up the tent, and the sunset a relief after the heat of the day. The moon was bright and the setting not as frightening as I had anticipated. If we kept our heads down and monitored the use of our lights, we were invisible from the nearby road. The broken fence spoke perhaps of an abandoned farm, so we were unlikely to be accosted by an irate landowner. And we were so exhausted we slept better than ever before on our blow-up mattresses.

For today's route see below photos 
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…