We had quite a long trip today (Monday) so we wanted to get a reasonably early start. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the waitress forgot to order, or the cook forgot to cook our breakfast so we left in a huff!

200km of tar roads and then onto gravel for the next 250km. The roads are very quiet - even the main B1 had sparse traffic once out of the city and that wasn’t busy anyway! We stopped for a coffee break and a fuel top up at the junction with the gravel road. In the next hour and a half we passed one car. In the whole of the 250km we saw 10 cars, two road building machines and two horse and carts. A bit different to home!!

Desert Homestead Lodge is 5 miles from the road in the middle of nowhere - there is no town or village for miles around. Our ‘room’ i.e. cabin has a wood plank floor, is set up looking over a flat, arid valley to a ridge of rocks on the other side (photos to follow when wifi improves). The rooms are so spaced out that our room 9 is a 5 minute walk from reception! But a man does bring the bags on a trolley.

We have 3 decks including a veranda where we sat after dinner and saw an amazing array of stars - no ambient light (not even moonlight) for many miles.

Dinner was a 5 course affair which included a slice of quiche and a large chunk of meat. We passed on the dessert however!

And so to bed so that we would be ready for our 05.30 alarm.

ADO & LMA xx