Why we go to Namaqualand in week two

People ask when the flowers are best, and the honest answer is that it depends on the winter rain, the wind in August and a dozen things nobody controls. But after nine years I plan around the second week of the season, and I have not regretted it yet.

Week one is for the bees

The first fields open near Clanwilliam while the north is still bare. It looks spectacular in photographs and thin in person: one good field and a lot of driving. By the second week the bloom has moved up the Vanrhyns Pass to Nieuwoudtville and the Kamiesberg, and you can stand in orange to the horizon.

Mornings, always

Namaqualand daisies open with the sun and close by four. On a cloudy day they do not open at all. So we are in the fields by nine, and the afternoons are for driving north, farm lunches and the coast. It sounds like a constraint; it is the whole rhythm of the week.

And if the rain fails and the bloom is late, we move the route. The second week is a plan, not a promise.