Sat, Aug 15 - Exploring Augrabies Falls

Clear, lovely day, high in the 70s.  We walked over to the Lodge and I had an egg, tomato & bacon wrap and Bob had the Bushman's breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, mushroom and toast.  We spotted several Rock Dassies running over boulders and encountered many more through the day.  They resemble rodents but are, actually, closely related to the elephant. 
Rock Dassies

Bob and I started on the Gorge Trail along the deep Orange River gorge.  I spied a Vervet 
monkey hanging around the campground kitchen.
 We walked along a small stream, over huge polished mounds of granite, and the stream became wider and deeper until it joined another stream below  a splendid double waterfall coming off the plateau.  
We walked until we were stopped by the narrowing of the rocky peninsula we were on and overlooked our combined side stream joining the Orange River far below.   This is an amazingly beautiful area, and the accommodations are so nice, that we're very sorry we didn't allot more time here, burt Madeline can't stay at the Cat House Hotel forever!
Twin Falls

We returned and got our car and drove the unpaved main park road which runs along the south side of Orange River and has several side roads to overlooks and birding sites.  There was a water hole that in a dry year might bring more wildlife, but we saw quite a few birds drinking there.

We returned to the Park Center to buy cokes and got a couple of Maga ice cream bars, Nestle's version of Magnum, which weren't bad, but not the real thing.  When we got back to our cabin #58, we realized that we had forgotten to reserve a table for dinner, but figured we could do it later.  I washed some hand laundry and spread it out on the warm brick benches outside, hoping that a Baboon would not decided to run away with it (no joking matter here!)

At four we got our selves organized and got into the car to walk the Ebony Trail, but we had lost the map.  We went  to the Headquarters to pick up a new map (which must be requested individually) but the line of people checking in (on Sat) was hopelessly long...and when I tried to make a dinner reservation the only thing I could get was 7:30 outside, and as service will probably be pretty slow tonight we had better bring our warm sweaters and vests!
Chalet #58
The top of the Falls

Bob suggested that we walk the boardwalks overlooking the main Falls as we had only seen them at night so we set off watching the incredible force and roar of the water at various points, and then Bob saw a Black-chested Prinia, a new life bird, and our good humor was restored!   Shortly thereafter he spotted the amazing turquoise, red, yellow & green Cape Flat Lizard that is known around these parts; I tried to photograph it but the fading light dulled it somewhat.
Cape Flat Lizard


Back to the cabin where I got the brilliant idea of hauling my still very soggy laundry over to the campground dryer where I am right now...It's getting dark and if I want to get back to #58 without a flashlight, I'd better do so now!

We walked over to dinner and the dining room was packed and very noisy, so we were glad to get a table outside.  We had a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and yellow tail and butter fish with garlic butter.  our enormous salad arrived eventually and we had more than we could eat, but it was quite good.

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