Pronounced “titties”, yes. We have landed here on the official first night of our long awaited two -year journey, bearing north from Cape Town. Tietiesbaii is on the western coast with a picturesque shore-line of rocks and sandy camping at the water’s edge. The land around the shore is blanketed with fynbos – thorny shrubs and stunted succulents and there is always something colorful. Our route to Tietiesbaii goes through the West Coast National Park which is famous for its flowers during the season. Once again, SANS Park wows us with its interpretative signage – we learn  White Pelicans, beautiful birds, have become a menace to nesting gulls, terns and others. Pelicans arrived at the Cape to eat the offal from large-format chicken processing plants. Those plants were closed down for public health reasons (imagine that) and the ever-adapting pelicans found another protein source in the eggs and chicks of nesting sea birds. People are now hired to keep the pelicans away from nests – job creation in the new world.

South Africans do love to camp. They have a t-shirt that says “Australians call it Survivor, in South African we call it camping.” And it is a Saturday afternoon so there is a battalion of people at one end of the long beach. On the distant end, we can’t hear anything from them except the occasional bottle rocket going off. We wander over after dinner to examine their vehicles. These are serious campers – the amount of gear and gadgets would impress a five-star general. Packed in tent to tent, kids running everywhere, men tending the braai. I’m thinking, these kids (and some adults) are barefoot – in a place where everything is armed with thorns. As kids, we would have been barefoot too. No problem, right? Until as dusk comes on and we are returning to the Beagle, we nearly step on a scorpion. It was huge. I reach for a stick to see if it would move off the road and Jim says, you aren’t going to poke him with that stick?! You gonna need one a lot longer! I abandon the attempt; the scorpion moves. . . a little bit. Ok, now every shadowy mound looks suspicious and Jim spots another ugly one under a branch. We remember to be careful shaking out the sand mat in the morning and not to leave our shoes out for a scorpion hotel.

SANS Park interpretative signage warns that smaller claws and a larger tail means a more venomous bite from these primitive creatures. You’d be in trouble if bitten not to mention in considerable pain. People worry about lion and elephant and some friends and family asked us if we would be armed on this journey. I’m laughing, thinking of having a gun and shooting a scorpion . . . on my foot. That sounds about right. Thankfully, no, we have no weapons.