Trip to the Cape in 2014

8/9/2019 Trip to the Cape in 2014

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Trip to the Cape in the Spring of 2014

Bill Cairns



Barberspan



Monday 25th August 2014

Johannesburg to BarberspanWe were up shortly after 06h00 to say

goodbye to the family before they went off towork and school. After they were gone, wemade ourselves a nice breakfast of bacon andeggs, fought the alarm that went off by itself,

packed Juanita and set off about 09h00. Westopped briefly on the way to buy me a newtoothbrush because I had left mine at home.

We drove down Malibongwe whichchanges its name a number of times andeventually meets up with the N14 (which atthat point is the Krugersdorp Highway). Wedrove on through Tarlton as the N14 veeredaway from Krugersdorp to the west. The roadwas in good condition, but there was asurprising lot of traffic going both ways. I amnot sure where all the traffic was going to or coming from: surely they were not all going to

Barberspan? We passed one truck filled with

supermarket trolleys on the back looking like aload of cattle going off to market. Wewondered who was going to buy them.

On we drove through Ventersdorp,Coligny, Lichtenburg, and Sannieshof. WhyLichtenburg? It is not on the N14. Well, wewent off on the wrong road for a bit despitehaving our GPS position given to us by our phones, tablet and the GPS device itself. Onedoes need to look at these things to knowwhere one is and where one is going. Theproblem is that the N14 is not a road but aroute (or perhaps a state of mind) andfollowing the N14 frequently means turning off in new directions.

Past Sannieshof we found the turn off toBarberspan and then were immediatelyconfounded by some interesting sign-posting.There was a sign in the fork of the roadannouncing the hotel and the nature reserve.Unfortunately the sign did not indicate whichone was in which direction. We guessedwrongly and ended up at the hotel which,unsurprisingly, had never heard of us. The nicelady there seemed sorry that we were notgoing to stay with them and told us where togo.

Up the road a bit further and through a

closed gate, down over the vlei and we met abakkie coming the other way with some of theNature Reserve staff. They asked us if wewere the people coming to stay in theFlamingo, and then told us that they weregoing for lunch and that we should move in

and they would see us later. A friendly, if casual, welcome.

BarberspanThe Flamingo turned out to be a large

three-bedroomed house. There was a mixtureof equipment available: there was a necessaryminimum of furniture, the beds had some (butinadequate) bed clothes, and the kitchen hada stove and a fridge. On the other hand therewere no kitchen utensils, cutlery or crockery.The fireplace was blocked up and there wereno heaters so the house was cold. All the

plumbing and electricity worked, but thebathroom was stained and needed paint. Thegood news was that this huge house (with sixbeds and plenty of floor space for more peopleto sleep) costs the ridiculous amount of R80per person per night. We were not able to findany accommodation at even three times theprice at any other place we visited (unless onecounts staying with our children!).

Barberspan is a seasonal pan that has



been dammed to raise the water level andconvert it into permanent water. There is arecreational fishing area ('barber' is the Afrikaans for barbel) with a camp site, a hoteland a guest house, but the northern part of thepan and the surrounding grass-veld is aprovincial nature reserve run by the North

West Province. The nature reserve is wellknown for its bird life and Warwick Tarbotonhad promised us Goliath, Grey, and Black-headed herons, Shellduck, and all sorts of other avian riches.

After we had moved in, eaten somelunch, and paid our respects and fees to thestaff at reception, we drove about a kilometredown to the pan and were suitably impressedby the birds there: one Goliath heron (despite

Warwick's assurances, this was the onlyGoliath heron at Barberspan and in fact of our whole trip), many Egyptian geese and Yellow-billed duck, thousands of Red-knobbed coots,a mass of Flamingoes both Lesser andGreater, and some waders who probablyshould still be migrating from the north. Therewere no Shellduck, but there were someBlack-necked grebe which we don't get at

home. A good drive and then back home for a

nice chicken supper.

We learned that the newest Cairns,Kirsten Patricia, had arrived in Johannesburgat 16:50 that afternoon.

Tuesday 24th August 2914Yesterday had been a bit of a miserable

blustery day and the night was quite cold.Fortunately we had our nice electric blanketsand our sleeping bags (to use as duvets) and

so we slept warmly and comfortably. We woketo a beautiful warm and sunny day.

We had a nice breakfast and went for another explore down to the pan. This time wewent further to the east side of the pan, parkedthe car and walked along the water's edge.There was a nice hide next to the water, butthe trouble was that we chased all the birdsaway as we walked to it! We did get somesome good birds though including someGreen-backed herons and some and someswamp hens that looked just like Gallinules tome. There were still plenty of birds out in the

water: the flamingoes were still standing outthere with their heads upside down, the gipposwere still gipping and the thousands of cootsand Yellow-billed ducks were still swimmingaround. There were still no Shellduck.

After a good morning's birding we wentback to the house and had a one-pot meal of lamb and rice and veggies and rice and spicesand stuff. After that it was quite late, but we stillwent and had a nice little sleep. Jill slept even

better than me, so I went for a little walkwithout her. There was a little Slender mongoose in the garden and I chased himover the road in the hope of getting a decent

photograph, and took a few of his tailvanishing into the grass. I did manage somebetter pictures of some ground squirrels.

The mongoose and the squirrels took meright past the administrative buildings and itwas obvious that the staff had all vanished andthe place was deserted. We found out whathad happened a bit later when we went for alate afternoon drive and saw clouds of smokecoming from a veld fire on the south west sideof the pan. As we drove closer we could seethe huge flames and the army of peoplehanging around to make sure that the fire

burned itself out against the pan and did notspread in unwanted directions. I presumed thatall the Barberspan staff were among the firefighters.

We saw all the same birds again. Theywere far enough away from the fire not to betroubled. Perhaps the highlight was a Black-backed jackal that we saw foraging in the longgrass at the water's edge. It behaved just likea dog by sniffing around for small prey and



pouncing with all four legs when it thought ithad found something.

Eventually back to the house for a lightsupper and some packing.

Wednesday 27th August 2014We packed and took the keys back to

reception and said a cheerful goodbye. Warwickand Michèle had asked us to give their regards toSampie who works there, but we had kept onmissing him. This time he was at a meeting in townso we left a note for him.



Kuruman



Wednesday 27th August 2014

Barberspan to KurumanWe packed and took the

keys back to reception and said acheerful goodbye. Warwick andMichèle had asked us to give their regards to Sampie who worksthere, but we had kept on missinghim. This time he was at ameeting in town so we left a notefor him.

Jill drove as far as far asVryburg and I drove the laststretch to Kuruman. The road isgood, but there was a lot of trafficand the road planners havemanaged to organise the passinglanes so that every time onemeets a truck there is a solidwhite line and once the white lineends, there is another truck

coming in the opposite direction.

KurumanWe arrived at Kuruman

fairly early and decided to havea look at the Kuruman Eye, doour shopping, have lunch andthen find our accommodation.

The Eye was easy enoughto find as it is right on the mainroad through town. The troubleis that we could not find how toget into the area: the Eye isheavily protected by an ironfence. Fortunately we were rightnext to the Information Centreand there was a very helpfullady there who told us to turnthe car around and go to theother side of the Eye. Turningaround was not simple as wewere on the main road with

trucks and allgoing flat out from somewhere tosomewhere else: we ended upgoing around the block.

The Kuruman Eye (in Afrikaans, an eye, an “oog”, is aspring or fountain) is veryimpressive. It is a small oasis inthe middle of some prettydesolate semi-desert country.The water pours out (well dripsenthusiastically) from behind abig rock and creates a lovely

little lake about the size of anOlympic swimming pool. Thefence around the Eye creates apretty little park that is wellwooded (with mostly, but notexclusively, indigenous trees).The area is fairly wellmaintained although there wasperhaps a little too much litter that could have been picked up,

and the rocks and paving stones are allstained with bird droppings. The Eye is themain reason for the existence of Kuruman andthere have probably been human settlementshere from before there were humans (we werenot that far from Taung after all).

We enjoyed our visit to the Eye and thendrove on to Pick n Pay through some backroads to avoid the traffic on the main road.

That means we were able tostart looking for parking a bitearlier and that was not easy.We did a bit of basic shoppingand found a fairly decent littlerestaurant in the same shoppingcentre and had anunmemorable lunch that I didnot bother to record in my diary.

A bit more fighting of trafficand we found our accommodation at the SafariTravel Lodge to the north of the

city. As we were only spendingone night here, we had decidedon a straight forward Bed andBreakfast and that is what wegot. It was quite a larnie room(but why was there only onebedside table? Why did thebasin have two taps marked“Cold”? It would have been niceif there had been a shelf or

Above left: Robert Moffat Memorial

Left: The EyeTop: The Church

Above: The Printer



something in the bathroom to put toiletries …But all in all not too bad). I organised us someWiFi.

I could have done with a nice little sleep,but Jill said that we had better go and see theMoffat mission before it closed and so we did.The nice lady in reception gave us directionsand we followed them to the main gate of themission only to find it locked. We were not surewhat to do, but drove around to theConference Centre and they explained to usthat the main gate was no longer in use. Isuggested that a notice to that effect might be

helpful and they seemed to thing that mysuggestion was very unusual but that it mightbe worth considering.

Robert Moffat is probably most famousfor being David Livingston's father-in-law, buthe is much more interesting than that. Although he was not the first missionary atKuruman, he served there for more than fortyyears and had a huge influence on the wholemissionary movement in South Africa. He wasthe first person to capture Setswana as awritten language and translated the Biblehimself. Not only that, but he had an old flat-bed printing press sent to him from Englandand he then printed the Tswana bible as wellas a hymn book and numerous reading books

for children.We spent some time wandering around

the old mission. The printing press is still thereas is the church that Moffat built, the housesthat he lived in, the cemetery where two of hischildren were buried. The house is a museumand has some interesting items, but I felt that itcould have had a lot more about Moffathimself. Best of all perhaps is the fact that theplace is still a functioning church centre (of the

Congregational Church).

We left there about 17h00 and went backto our lodgings and simply chilled there for therest of the day. We had a light supper of cheese and biscuits in our room.

There are not too many nice things to sayabout Kuruman. It is crowded, the streets arenarrow and crowded, the traffic is heavy, the

place gives the impression of being dirty(although it probably isn't any worse than anyother platteland dorp taken at random). TheEye and the Moffatt Mission are worth seeing,but once they are seen, Kuruman canprobably be left to itself. I must say, though,that everyone we met was very friendly andcheerful!

Thursday 28th August 2014In the morning we had a decent enough

breakfast (but had to pay an extra R120 whichI thought was unusual for a Bed and Breakfast

establishment), packed and were out of thereabout 08h30.

Top left: The original house

Left: Pulpit

Above: Inside the church



Witsand



Kuruman to Witsand

Thursday 28th August2014

On we drove westwards onthe N14. There is a range of hills –the Kuruman Hills – just to thewest of the town. Presumably,

these hills are the catchment areafor the Eye. Over the hills and thecountry was flat again for a bitbefore we met up with theLangeberg which are proper hillseven if they are only berge bycourtesy. We drove past the hugeSishen mines where iron ore isdug out of the earth and shippedall the way to Saldahna Bay for export.

We stopped for petrol atKathu. The weather had been

quite pleasant at Kuruman buthere there was a nasty cold windblowing. The garage had one of those huge mining trucks parkedas an exhibit: Juanita came half

way up its wheel.

There was still a lot of trafficon the N14 both coming and goingand that meant that we werefrequently held up by slow truckswhich were difficult to get past.With the long straight road and theheat shimmer I found it verydifficult to gauge the distance of a

car coming in the oppositedirection and that made drivingquite stressful.

It was a relief to turn off at thelittle (but quite prosperous looking)town of Olifantshoek onto a dirtroad that took us south westtowards Witsand. It was a drive of 70 km, mostly on a good surfacebut with quite a lot of windy windyas the road wound through themountains. The traffic had certainlybeen left behind and we saw

exactly four bakkies during our whole drive.

The real fun of this drive wasthat we suddenly found ourselvesin Sociable weavers' country. The

Sociable weaver is asmall, sparrow-sizedbird that gets together with all its friends tobuild gigantic nests.When we first saw anest, we thought for amoment that someone

had decided to build athatch roof for atelephone pole. Thenest looked almostexactly like one of those thatchedumbrellas that oneoften finds in braaiareas in South Africa.We found that the

nests were not on anyof the trees as the treesare mostly small andshrub like, but that thebirds have welcomedthe artifacts of humanbeings and build therenests on telephonepoles, electric pylons,

windmills and justabout anything that ishigher than about 3metres. The nests arevery architecturallyattractive and some of them have shown greatartistic talent.

WitsandWe finally arrived at Witsand

and were greeted by a chap wholooked exactly like Thabo Mbeki.

There was a picture of ThaboMbeki with some of the staff behind the counter taken when hevisited here in 1999. I suggestedto the receptionist that ThaboMbeki looked just like him.

Left: Juanita and the Giant - KathuTop: Sociable weavers' nests on electricity pylons

Above: White dunes at Witsand



We have only ever heard good reviews of Witsand and I can see why and certainlyendorse their approval. We had a lovely threebedroomed house with a nice kitchen andcomfortable sitting room. Outside was a braaiarea and a bird bath and there was acontinuous stream of birds coming to drink: avery Familiar chat (who took the familiarity of following us into the kitchen), many Red-eyedbulbuls, some Crimson-vented tit-babblers,

canaries, doves …

We did some research on the naturereserve which is run by the Northern CapeDepartment of Environmental Affairs andNature Conservation. Here, in the middle of

the red brown arid Kalahari is thiscomparatively lush area with its range of whitedunes and decent sized trees. There is a hugewater bowl, which holds millions of litres, under the sands which has provided a reliable sourceof water for thousands of years. The whitedunes are caused by the wind and rain havingslowly leached out the iron colouring from thesand particles that have been blown in here.

The vegetation is very different from thedry Kalahari scrub that we have been drivingthrough and there are some fairly big acacias(A. melliflora apparently although they look

very like A. karoo). After moving in and having a compulsory

rest we went for a drive to the famousBrulsand – the Roaring Sands. Everybody(except most of the people that I have talked toabout it) have heard of the famous RoaringSands that growl and roar and hiss as youclimb the dune. Apparently though they onlygrowl and roar and hiss when the conditionsare just right and that means that the sand has

to be dry (which it was), clean (which I assume

it was) and hot (which it wasn't). So we sawthe Roaring Sands, walked on the RoaringSands, climbed the Roaring Sands but did nothear so much as a grunt. The internet explainsthe phenonemon:

The Witsand Nature Reserve is also home to theroaring dunes or "Brulsand" of the Kalahari. The dry air,uniform sand grains and lack of iron oxide coating maycarry the key to this phenomenon. Dunes, twenty tosixty metres high, 9 km long and 4 km wide, cover a



Part of the nest has fallen off and is lying on theground but that does not seem to have made thenest look any smaller.

There were good birds at the hide. We didnot see swarms of sand-grouse coming to drink,but there were a pair of them mooching aroundlooking for something to eat. A pair of Violet-earedwaxbills were very pretty. A small herd of springbokwandered past and did not even bother to stop for

a drink.We drove on a bit and then walked up the hill

to another lookout point from which we couldadmire the striking white sand dunes. Again therewas an interesting information board that explainedthe geology and ecology of the area. It also told usthat if we climbed the dune to the left we could seesome fortifications built by a party of Boer rebelswho were running to South West Africa in 1914. Sowe struggled up the hill-dune – and it was not easywalking with a ½ slide back for every step forward – and looked at a some rocks that were piled into asort of a wall. Exactly who and why the Boers were

fortifying themselves against in this area remains amystery, but I doubt the fortifications were veryeffective.

From the fortification we took a direct routeback to Juanita. This was a mistake as the shortcut meant climbing through, round and under anobstacle path of thorn bushes.

We went back to reception and tried to paythem some money that we still owed them. Whenwe booked, we had only paid a 50% deposit andwhen we checked in, the Thabo Mbeki receptionisthad said that their credit-card system was down.We found that their system was still down. The nicelady (Thabo was off duty) let us use her computer to make an Internet transfer, but it turned out thatthe local SMS system was also down so we couldnot get a one-time pin to complete the transaction.So Plan B did not work either. In the end weresorted to Plan C and came back in the afternoonand paid cash. (I tried to avoid paying cash asmuch as possible so as to reduce the number of times that we had to draw money on our trip).

We had a nice lunch of lamb chops andspent most of the afternoon (after a compulsory lie-down) watching the wild-life in the garden. Thesolitary monkey was still around looking a bitpathetic.

We took another quick trip to the hide in thehope of seeing the Double-banded sand-grousecoming to drink, but I think that we were too early.We did see lots of other birds though including

masses of Sociable weavers.Back at the house and we did a bit of

packing and had a light supper.

Saturday 30th August 2014The wind howled during the night and was

still blasting away when we dragged ourselves outof our nice warm beds. We ate the last of our hamwith eggs for breakfast.

We finished packing the car. I put out somecheese for the birds and the monkey came andsnaffled it. That made me feel bad as feeding

monkeys is a big no-no.We were away from Witsand by 08h00.

Top: Sociable weaversMiddle: Yellow mongooseBottom: Grey mongoose



Augrabies



Witsand to Augrabies

Saturday 30th August 2014We drove on south to meet up with the

N8 which is one of those mystery roads thatgoes from nowhere to join up with the N14 atUpington (which is also sort of nowhere). Itwas a good dirt road and a very empty one: wetravelled all the way to the N8 and only metone bakkie on the whole way. Not a good part

of the world to have a breakdown I shouldn'tthink. Not only the road but the wholecountry is very empty with a farm every 5km or so and no other signs of humanhabitation.

We went over an attractive pass throughthe Langeberg and came to a flat plainwhich appeared to be completely emptywith not even a farm house in sight. Whenwe came closer to the N8, there was moresign of human habitation with even a gamelodge off to the right. We drove past the

town of Volop – some of the towns have lovelynames – and on to the Orange River andsuddenly we were in the irrigation areas withvineyards after vineyards next to the river.

We crossed the river and filled up withpetrol at the little town of Grobblershoop. If anyplace can be worse than Kuruman it must beGrobblershoop. We went to the localsupermarket, a Foodzone franchise (Foodzone

is the bottom of the supermarket chains inSouth Africa) and bought some bread andsome very nice koeksusters. We also went tothe butcher which was run by two very friendlywomen and bought some lamb chops, someskilpadjies and some biltong.

We were travelling n a north westdirection now in the same direction as theOrange River although we only got occasionalglimpses of the river on the other side of thevineyards. The Orange may be South Africa'sbiggest river further upstream, but by the timethe irrigation schemes have had their share it

is not a big river at all. In fact, the Orange here

is a smaller river than the Vaal river (one of itstributaries) is way away in Vanderbijlpark.

We arrived in Upington which is a decentsized town although we saw almost none of it aswe just skirted the outskirts and pushed on towards Augrabies.

We stopped at a little town called Keimoesand had an excellent lunch at the De Welt Hotelthere. On we travelled through Kakamas, whichseemed to be a town that came in instalments: wewent through it and then went through it again. Weturned off the N14 and travelled north past thetown of Augrabies to the Augrabies National Park.

AugrabiesWe checked in at reception and managed to

change our booking so that we stayed in the samechalet for all three nights. When we made our original booking, they had only been able to giveus two nights in one chalet and one night inanother and that was not idea. Our new chalet wasslightly more expensive (because it had a better view), but the extra cost seemed justified toprevent a move.

We had a very comfortable chalet which didnot quite meet the standards of Witsand (very fewplaces would), but had everything that we needed.We immediately had a good lie down.

Off we went for a walk down to see the fallsand very impressive they are too. They are muchmore impressive than any pictures that I have seenof the falls and much more impressive than any of the pictures that I took. The main fall is perhapshigher than I expected and there is a fierce little

rapid above it to double the height. I am sure thatthe falls would be even more impressive when thewater is high, but even so they are impressiveenough. There is a problem in that the water fallcreates a gorge that runs straight away from thefalls and so there is no place where one can seethe actual fall head on (unlike the Victoria falls for example). The view points are platforms that havebeen stuck to the sides of the gorge and one isalways looking at the falls from an angle.

S a t u r d a y 3 0 t h A u g u s t 2 0 1 4

A pass through the Langeberg.



There were lots of birds all around with many Pale-winged starlings,Orange-river white-eyes, a Hammerkop, a Black-headed heron, plenty of Alpine swifts, White-throated swallows, Cape robin, Cape bunting. Therewere also rock rabbits everywhere and we saw the beautiful Augrabies flatlizards which seem to specialise in living in the gorge itself.

Not very nice meat balls for supper.

Sunday 31st August 2014We decreed that today would be a rest day and a no-drive day. We

were up late and had a leisurely breakfast and then went and had another look at the falls. The sun was in a better position for taking pictures exceptthat most of the gorge was still in shade and the contrasts were far toogreat.

We drove over to the camp ground and used the laundry to solve our problem of six days of dirty clothes. While the machine was going roundand round, we went for a walk to try and see the Short-toes rock-thrushwhich is a speciality of the Augrabies Camp Ground. It was not there todayalthough there was a Yellow mongoose for me to look at. It is a lovelycamp ground. (There was a real life Unimog there – I had never seen onebefore. The thought of driving one of those through Africa is both scaryand exciting. I bet is uses more petrol than Juanita!) I was able to walk tothe edge of the gorge – there were no barriers to stop tourists from fallingin and I did not go very close!

The lekker skilpadjies for lunch and a good rest afterwards. We wentfor another walk down to the falls and all the way back to the campground. We met a troop of baboons who thought that they owned theplace and some monkeys who didn't care as long as there was stuff for then to steal. The weather was very pleasant and we were walking aroundin shorts and shirt sleeves. Michele phoned from Kokanje and told us thatthey were freezing there and had had a bad frost last night. I suppose thatthe cold front that we had met in Witsand had reached there at last.

Monday 1st September 2014I said “Rabbits!” when I woke up. Perhaps, given the location, I

should have said “Rock Rabbits!” Jill said that she had woken up at03h00 and had said “Rabbits!” first, but that is like having a tree

falling over in the forest with nobody to hear it.

This was the day for a drive through the game reserve which is part

of the national park. Many people seem to come to Augrabies just to

see the waterfall. That is a pity because the national park is really

worth seeing too. We only drive 20 km through a small part of the



the gorge. We were a good 10 km below the

falls at this point, but the gorge is still deep and

the river was far below. A lovely place.

Then on to “Oranjekop”, a similar view site with

a fantastic view over the gorge. Here there

was a pleasant little building where we could

sit and have our morning coke and

koeksusters while admiring the OrangeRiver.

What was that bird? Perhaps a Desert

cisticola? We heard it calling and Jill played

the song of the Desert cisticola to check if

we had it right. The little bird flew right up to

us and said, “That's me! That's me!” We

had not meant to “call him up”, but just to

check his call. We apologised to him fot the

inconvenience caused.

The highlight of Oranjekop – and perhaps

of the whole trip so far – was a pair of Black

eagles circling over the gorge. We first

picked them up in our binoculars, but they

came straight towards us and circled just a

few metres over our heads. Really beautiful

birds.

From Oranjekop we drove on though the

“Swartrand” - Black Ridge – so named

because of all the black rocks and weirdshaped koppies. It is a harsh country but with

a real beauty. We came to the last of the view

points, “Echo Corner” which is in a gully that

goes right down to the river. We were now at

the end of the gorge that the river had started

cutting out at the falls themselves. Here the

w

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a

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fl

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a

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M o n d a y 1 s t

S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4

Left from top: Moon Rock. View from Moon Rock,Gorge from Moon Rock, Flower.Right: Gorge, Landscape, Gorge.



mooth with no sign that it had just been

plunging over rapids and waterfalls. We

tried shouting and clapping our hands but

got no echoes.

We drove back to the camp slowly looking

for flowers and birds. We did see quite a

few diffeerent birds but no signs of the twospecials that people come to see at

Augrabies: the Short-toed rock-thrush and

the Chestnut-breasted warbler. (Although I

would not doubt that they may have been

among some of the little birds that we saw

“over there” and which immediately dived

under a bush).

Back at the camp and we

had lunch and a good

rest. We went to the

filling station and put in

another 70 litres of petrol.

Petrol is certainly going

to be a major part of our costs this trip.

We had a braai for

supper and had a great

evening looking over the

falls.

Tuesday 2nd

September We had a long way to go

today so we were up with

the sun and had eaten

our breakfast, packed the

car, fetched our exit

permits, and were out of Augrabies by 08h15.

We are getting quite good at this although I

feel that we are still carrying far too much stuff forwards and backwards to the car.

M o n d a y 1 s t S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4 Verreaux eagle (Black eagle)

Augrabies sunset

Echo Corner



Some Augrabies flowers



Kamieskroon



Augrabies to Kamieskroon

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 A long day.

We drove and we drove. We drove thesurprisingly long drive form Augrabies to the N14 (Ifelt sure that it had not been so far going the other way) and then through the flat and featurelessbarren Kalahari to Pofadder.

“Pofadder” is used as a bit of joke as beingas isolated and insignificant a place as one can

imagine in South Africa. This is probably true asthe place is more than 100 km from anywhere at alland those places are not exactly anywhere either.Yet Pofadder turned out to be quite a nice little

place being clean and tidy with broad streets andfairly modern buildings. It is not very big though!

On westwards. One does go past the littletown of Aggeneys (no, I don't know how topronounce it either) that is the home to the Redlark. If you are a twitcher and need to add the Redlark to your life list, then you have to go to Aggeneys. I suspect that the whole economy of thetown is built around the Red lark. I don't know thatthere is any other reason for going to Aggeneys.

Except for Aggeneys, there is 100 km of nothing between Pofadder and Springbok. There is

a very good tarred road. On either side of thetarred road is a fence. Along the south side of theroad is a row of telephone poles. On every secondtelephone pole is a Pied crow waiting for a smallmammal to cross the road at the same time as acar and to be converted to edible road kill. Awayfrom the road are small bushes stretching off to

Top: Country before Pofadder

Others: Wild flowers



infinity.

About 20 km from Springbok we started seeing some flowers on theside of the road. We stopped and took some pictures. We were to do a lotof that as we drove through Namaqualand. Down through a little pass andthere was the town of Springbok in front of us.

We went a little way into Springbok and found the local Shopritesupermarket where we did a bit of shopping. The place was very crowdedas it was the beginning of the month and it was obvious that people had just received their social grants. It was sad to see a long queue at the

Lotto counter.

We thought of getting lunch somewhere but decided on a picnic insteadso we drove south out of Springbok and stopped at a roadside stop-off point not far out of town and ate some cheese and biscuits. There wereflowers and flowers everywhere on the side of the road and all over thegolf course further away from the road.

After lunch – and lots of pictures – we droveon southwards. We could not resist stopping atthe weighbridge a few kilometres further onwhere the flowers were quite brilliant.

We were now driving on the N7 – the N14ends at Springbok and our main road was nowthe north-south N7 that goes from Cape Town upto the Namibia border. Not far south of Springbokwe travelled through Burke's Pass and

descended quite a lot before we reachedKamieskroon. We were now travelling through theKamiesberge, mountains which are a beautifuland dramatic range of mountains. Thepredominant rock is gneiss so the geology booktells me. (Nobody seems to know what “Kamies”means in this context: the “kroon”, crown, of

T u e s d a y 2 n d



Kam

ieskroon is a mountain near the town which has ahuge rock on its summit).

Kamieskroon is a funny little town in a valleysurrounded by the mountains. It has a big churchand a huge cross, which is illuminated at night, on

the hillside. We found our accommodation, CosyCottages, and met our hostess, Michelle. Thecottage was comfortable enough with a largebedroom, a sitting room / kitchen / dining area anda big bathroom properly equipped for handicappedpeople. It seems that Kamieskroon has water supply problems and we did have plenty of problems in that regard – not the fault of our accommodation though.

Michelle is a very helpful chatty person andshe organised our lives for us very effectively. Wewere not even allowed to have a nice sleep butwere sent off to go and see the Skilpad Loop in the

Namaqua National Park about 10 km away.This is really Africa and, like most of Africa,

the authorities seem to have a strong dislike of signposts. Getting to Skilpad from Kammieskroonis pretty simple if you know the way, but would beabsolutely impossible if you relied on road signs totell you how to get there and so it was a good thingthat we had detailed instructions from Michelle. Wehad a slow drive to the Namaqua National Park.The flowers along the road were fantastic and

became even more fantastic as we came closer tothe Skilpad Loop. There were fields of purple, of red, of yellow, of blue. For some reason, the fieldsall seem to be of one colour or another. There arelots of different flowers on the roadside. Often thefields seem to be layered with a blue field behind ared field.

We drove around the loop and were a bitgob-smacked by all the flowers. We met aJapanese Australian who said that he had never heard about the flowers before but had just metthem as he was driving from Namibia to CapeTown and had now stayed for two days to look atthem.

We have heard the secret of the SkilpadLoop – or is it a libel? – that every year theydeliberately disturb the ground here with some lightploughing. The wild flowers do best in disturbedground and so they deliberately disturb it to get

better flowers. If this story is true, they certainlyknow what they are doing.

We were back at the cottage about 17h30.Michelle's husband was valiantly trying to improvethe water supply and it seemed to get a bit better.We had a nice curry for supper and watched thenews on TV for the first time since leaving home.

T u e s d a y 2 n d

Top left: Church at Kamieskroom

Others: Skilpad scenes



Wednesday 3rd

September 2014We slept in a bit before having a nice

breakfast. We then set off on a drive thatMichelle recommended. 7 km south on theN7 and then right on the road toSoebatfontein.

A very nice drive on quite a good dirtroad. There were lots of flowers on the sideof the road and especially at a farmstead

called Grootvlei where we saw one of the bestdisplays of the trip. There were carpets of flowerson the fields, in the orchard, along a farm roadgoing to another farm. Not only flowers but flowersand guinea fowl.

We carried on over two passes: the first wasGrootvlei Pass and the second Kilian's Pass.Grootvlei Pass was particularly dramatic: the roadwound up a mountain and then went along a ridgewith a big drop on one side for a bit and thenaround a corner and a big drop on the other side,before winding down into the valley again. We

stopped at one stage to admire an agama sittingon a rock and at that point a combi came past;other than that there was no traffic and I was quiteglad about that. The road was not always wideenough to allow for comfortable passing.

“Turn left at the baboon,” Michelle had saidand sure enough there was a sort of a silhouettebaboon on a pole. “It looks like a private road, andgoes right past a farm house,” and it certainly didthat (with a couple of gates that had to be openedand closed). But then we came to a fork in the roadand, having a 50% chance of taking the right one,

T u e s d a y 2 n d



were 100% sure of taking the wrong turn. We hadGoogle Maps to refer to, but Google Maps seemedconvinced that we were on a farm track to nowherewhichever side of the fork we chose. So off wentand the road got smaller and smaller and steeper and 4x4 mode became more necessary and I evenconsidered low ratio. The highlight of the drive was

a Southern black korhaan which we put up andwhich shouted at us.

When it had become quite obvious that wewere on the wrong road (Google Maps nowrefused to even admit that we were on a road of any kind), we met up with some farm labourers and

asked them and they shook their heads at thesecrazy white people and sent us back the way wecame. So we did.

We drove back slowly enjoying the sceneryand the flowers. We even had a remote view of Skilpad – a splash of purple in the distance. Westopped at the butcher, the general dealer (another Foodzone), and the bottle store on the way backand were very glad of a nice little sleep. Michele

came along and apologised for not telling us to goright when we went left. No harm done.

Lamb chops for supper and early to bed.

Thursday 4th September2014

When we planned our trip, we had intendedto spend four nights in Kamieskroon, but Michellehad not been able to accommodate us for the fulltime. She had sent us a list of alternativeaccommodation and we had selected No Heep for the final two nights. It was a serendipitous change.

We woke up at about 07h30 and found thatthere was no water. Fortunately, there was a 20litre plastic container of rainwater that Michelle hadleft for us and that was enough for our immediateablution and breakfast needs. Soon we had noelectricity either. The chap from next door (thecottage has a double in the rear) came and askedif we also had no electricity and water and did weknow where the power board was and had a switchtripped? We did have the power board and Iassured him that there was no tripped switch.

We cooked our breakfast on our gas cooker and then found that the main switch had in fact

tripped. The difference between the “trip” and “on”positions was so small that it had fooled me. Bynow the chap next door had gone and so I couldnot even apologise for my incompetence.

We were gone by 08h30.

W e d n e

s d a y 3 r d



T h u r s d a y 4 t h

Above: View from Kilian's Pass,

Flowers

Right: Cosy Cottages

Below: View of Kamiesberge



Left (from top): Kamieskroon itself,Kamieskroon Pass, Mountains fromthe Kamieskroon Pass

Right: Getting lost in theKamiesberge, the road getting smaller,Juanita and flowers

N H



No Heep



Kamieskroon to No HeepThursday 4th September 2014

We set off eastwards on the road that goes over the Kamieskroon Passand on into the mountains. It was a lovely drive that climbed about 400metres and into some very attractive country. I said to Jill that I had knownthat there were mountains in this part of the world, but that I had not realisedthat this part of the world was only mountains. They are very similar to themountains that De Jongh painted and are not quite believable even when

they are sitting there in front of you. Add in the carpets of flowers on what hasto pass for flat country in the valleys, and the whole scenery is a bit painful tolook at.

“Turn left at the pink bicycle,” (actually it is a tricycle) to go to theTaaiboskraal tearoom and No Heep or we could carry on, on the Petroskloof road (which carries on to Leliefontein and eventually back to Garies), to lookat a dam and see some birds. So naturally we carried on and eventuallycame to a very nice dam nestling in a valley with lots of birds: Shellduck,Mountain wheatear, Egyptian geese, Coots, Herons and a single Spoonbill.Spoonbills don't come here? Well in the field guide there is a little “+” (toindicate an isolated range) just about exactly where we were. My theory isthat this one spoonbill got lost years ago and established himself here at thisdam and has made himself famous by justifying a “+” in the field guide.

A nice dam, good birds, lots of flowers, lots of quiver trees and wedecided that we had made a good stop. We drove on a little bit and turnedaround at a prosperous looking farm house (that advertised bed andbreakfast – next time?) which had fields of flowers around it. There was afairly strong stream and I suspect that water is not too much of a problemthere.

Back we drove to the pink tricycle and down a long narrow road. In thispart of the world there seems little difference between a private farm roadand public farm roads that connect farms to farms. In both cases there arefrequent gates that have to be opened and closed and cows looking over thegates at their mates.

Eventually we reached the Taaiboskraal Tea Shop and wereenthusiastically greeted by a big bull mastiff and our hostess, Sulene. She satus down in her little restaurant (with Afrikaans boeremusiek playing on her old 33 rpm record player) and told us that she did not have any skaapstertewhich was bad news. Michelle had told us that we must eat the skaapsterte. Another couple who arrived for lunch said that they had come just for theskaapsterte. I climbed on the bandwagon and said that we had come all theway from Limpopo just to eat her skaapsterte. She was very apologetic andsaid that we would have to come back some other time for the skaapsterte.So Jill had the bobotie and I had the chicken pie. Good boerekos and, soSulene claimed, proper Namaqua food.

We also shared a brandy tart pudding and so had a very good meal for a very good price.

There were some campers just leaving while we were there and one of The dam

Kamiesberg Pastoral



them wrote a long screed in the visitors' bookbefore they went. I could not resist reading whathe had written and it was a long and poetic paeanof praise about how this was the place for thosepeople who needed to appreciate the fullexperience of nature and the wonders of creationand were not like those (like me) who just came tolook at carpets of flowers. I was so impressed thatI felt that Biff McDoo also ought to write somethingand he was compelled to write “Lekker” in the

comments section.We got further directions from Sulene and

drove on towards No Heep. 17 km to a fork in theroad and take the left hand and drive another 5km. (Those were her numbers: the 17 wasprobably right, but I am sure it was less than 5).We went through some of the most beautiful anddramatic country that I have even driven through.The road goes through valley after valley and each

valley seems wilder than the one before. Hightowering mountains, huge granite boulders, sheer cliffs, and clear streams. And flowers, flowers,flowers. Jill got lots of exercise opening gates andonce I had to get out of Juanita to chase cowsaway or they would have taken advantage of theopen gate to merge with their mates on the other side of the fence. (One of the cows turned out tobe a very large bull. Fortunately he was a docileand friendly bull).

Eventually we arrived at No Heep and metour hosts – Pieter and Verencia Bernado – whogreeted us so enthusiastically that we wondered if they were old friends that we had forgotten about.We were shown to our little cottage and this wasfar and away the nicest accommodation of our whole trip. It was a small cottage but verycomfortable and equipped with everything thatone could possibly want. There is no Eskom

Above: Birds in the dam and a field of flowers

Right: Road to nowhere



electricity, but there is a solar panel that charges abattery and a very efficient 12 volt lighting system.

We had a nice little sleep and then went for alittle walk. We took a camera battery to the mainhouse and asked them to charge it for us andadmired the well-preserved antique farmmachinery on the way.

There were lots of good birds. Bokmakieriescalling continuously. Three Egyptian geese thatwere so tame that they hardly bothered to get outof the way. Lots of guinea fowl. Cape and Grey-headed sparrows. Pied and Cape crows. And of course hundreds of LBJs who like to tease for amoment by sitting on top of a bush and then divefor cover as soon as one points the binoculars intheir direction. We did manage to identify another Mountain wheatear and were pretty sure of aKaroo lark.

We were attacked by some mosquitoesbefore going to sleep. One does not expectmosquitoes in the arid regions!

No Heep

Friday 5th September 2014We declared this a no-drive day (to the

disappointment of Verencia who thought that we

should be going to see Goegap). It was very nicenot to go any further than our feet could take us.

It was past 08h00 when I woke up and eventhen I had to drag myself out of bed. We had EggsBenedictish for breakfast and then went for quite along walk through the lands and alongside themountain. It was amazing to see the flowers openup as the sun warmed them up; when we startedout, there were hardly any flowers to be seen, but

Scenes along the Road Less Travelled



soon there were flowers everywhere and thecountry became brighter and brighter.

Again we saw some nice birds, some niceflowers and some very nice quiver trees. We gotback to the cottage about 11h30 when it wasstarting to get quite hot. I walked to the main houseto fetch my battery and had a chat to Pieter abouthis electrical system. When they moved to the farmin 2000, Eskom had quoted them R300 000 for aconnection to the grid and that had not seemedfeasible. Instead, Pieter installed two wind turbinesand eight solar panels and twelve batteries. Fromthose he runs his whole house including a washingmachine, a microwave oven, his television and hiscomputer. He has a diesel generator for weldingand for emergencies, but said that he had only hadto run it twice in the past ten years when there wasno wind and no sun. The guest cottages have evensmaller electric systems with a single solar paneland a single battery with 12 volt strip lighting. Hesaid that it cost him less than R2000.

We had chicken legs done in the oven for

lunch. A nice sleep and then another walk alongthe road to a small stream that flows through thevalley.

There were signs that the flowers weregetting a bit tired in places and the yellow African

daisies are beginning to go to seed. No wonder Verencia wants us to go to Goegap as soon aspossible.

No Heep to Port Nolloth

Saturday 6th September 2014 Another driving day.

We were woken by the sun streaming in thewindow. That means that it was actually quite lateand it was nearly 08h30 by the time we werebreakfasted and packed.

We went via the main house to say goodbyeto Pieter and Verencia who made a big fuss over us. Verencia told us all the places that we muststop and see on our way to Port Nolloth. It wouldhave taken us two days to get there if we hadfollowed her instructions. They sent us on our waywith hugs and made us feel that we must comeback as soon as possible. Nice people.

8 km from the farm to the N7 and then the 60km to Springbok, past Springbok and Okiep. The

Some scenes around No Heep



countryside turned increasing flatter, barren andinhospitable as we travelled north to Steinkopf andaway from the mountains. There were few signs of people except for the road itself and very littletraffic.

Steinkopf seems a very isolated andimpoverished little town although it was clean andtidy. We have read that the Nama people are someof the most vulnerable communities in the country.

It is hard to see any politicians getting involved inimproving the lot of a small minority group like that.

The country was even more empty betweenSteinkopf and Port Nolloth. We went through the Anenous Pass shortly after Steinkopf when weturned off the N7 onto the R383. There are somespectacular views of the escarpment from the pass.The road follows the route of the old railway thatused to carry ore from Springbok to Port Nollothand one can still see some signs of the railway.

We drove into Port Nolloth and stopped at thesupermarket – quite a fancy Spar this time – to buysome groceries. Then we stopped at the hotel for

lunch. This was a mistake from the culinary point of view as the food was not very exciting, but luckyfrom the point of view that we were able to watchSouth Africa playing Australia in the rugbychampionship. It was quite a good game of rugbybut there was a very poor referee decision whenBrian Habana was sent off and a disastrous

Above: Anenous Pass

Left: Desert Scene at the bottom of the escarpment

Below: Port Nolloth



mistake by Morne Steyn who missed touch right atthe end and allowed Australia to score a winningtry.

We drove from Port Nolloth a few kilometresdown the coast to McDougall Bay which is a sort of detached suburb entirely given over to holiday

houses. We found the Beach Houses headquarterswhere a rather bored young lady managed to stayawake long enough to show us our beach house. Itis a very larnie house indeed with three bedroomsand two bathrooms and a huge lounge / dining /kitchen area. It was far too big for us but it was

nice to be able to spread ourselves. The house is

right on the beach and one just has to open thedoor to get one's feet into the sand.

We had television and I watched the final of the Zimbabwe triangular series where South Africamade up for the rugby by beating Australia.

We went for a walk on the beach. There wasquite a lot of bird life but rather a shortage of shorelife I thought. Perhaps this stretch of beach is tooheavily used.

Left: The Port Nolloth harbour with the diamond boats

Top: The museum and Nemo's Restaurant

Bottom: Kids on the beach



We had some lamb chops for supper. Theywere nice but were butterfly cut which seems astrange way to cut lamb chops. They were thechops that we bought in Kamieskroon and perhapsthat is the way they like them there.

Sunday 6th September 2014.It was a lovely morning when we woke up.

The tide was way out and so the surf was breakingfar away on the other side of the rocks. The rockshad lots of birds sitting on them and splashing awayin the tidal pools. Unfortunately it did not stay finefor long and by the time we had eaten our breakfasts the fog had rolled in and we could nolonger even see the breakers.

The first order of the day was to go to themuseum at Port Nolloth. Off we went and in wewent and were soon accosted by the owner,proprietor and official raconteur George Moyseswho does his best to come over as a retired hippiepirate. George has put together the museum as atourist attraction and to try and give some

perspective of what Port Nolloth was in previousyears. The museum is full of good memorabilia:pictures and books and all sorts of junk thataccumulates in places like that. We spent a coupleof hours there and came away with someappreciation of Port Nolloth's role as an active portin the high days of Springbok's mining boom.

We went to Nemo's, the restaurant next door to the museum, for lunch. Nemo's is like other restaurants in Port Nolloth and looks for all theworld like a badly converted shack. It is half open tothe air and is just a few tables with a kitchenattached. Jill had hake and chips and I had snoek

and chips and both were well cooked and tasty.Unfortunately, we find ourselves on the west coastat the wrong time: the season for the delicacieshere, like crayfish, has not started yet.

By now it had become colder and foggier andquite unpleasant so we decided to do what Sundayafternoons were designed for. So we went homeand spent the rest of a miserable day inside.

Monday 7th September 2014We woke to another magnificent day and this time it

promised to stay that way for a bit. So we declared today to bebeach day and set off up the coast for a walk. There were lots of good birds including many that I consider inland fresh-water birdsand not shore birds at all. There were Shellduck, all sorts of cormorants, oyster catchers, flamingoes (we thought only Lesser ones), gulls, Cape wagtails (that seem to be the common little birdaround here), Cape sparrows, Common (ie Pom) starlings and soon and on.

McDougall Bay is an interesting place in that it seems to beentirely made up of holiday homes. There is a big housingdevelopment with a wall around it but only two show houses. According to George at the museum the place failed to get anypermission for further development. It failed an environmental testrather badly: the ground is too sandy for building, it is too close tothe sea, it is a San archaeological site. (Actually George said thatall the houses in McDougall Bay, including the one we are stayingin and his house a bit further north, are too close to the sea andliable to be flooded by an extra high tide or even a baby tsunami).

We drove into town to get some more groceries and hadlunch at another restaurant, the Vespetti, on the same drag as themuseum, Nemo's and the hotel. Jill had her hake and chips again



Springbok and Goegap



Port Nolloth to Springbok

Tuesday 9th September 2014The fog went much further inland than I

would have expected and we drove in gloom (thedriving visibility was not too bad) for about 20 km.We noticed that as long as there was fog, so wasthe vegetation fairly green, but as we started upthe escarpment the fog lifted and the vegetation

became browner, smaller and more scraggly.There was a telephone line all

along the road (although the telephonewires were not there meaning thatwireless communication now rules) andmany of the poles had nests or birds

sitting there thinking about making a nest. Therewere Pied crows, Cape crows, and kestrels.

We saw another raptor – a big blackish bird –and stopped to see what it was. Perhaps animmature Black eagle I thought. While we weresitting watching it a flock of smaller birds flew over and landed in what looked like a donga off to theside of the road. Then another flock came over andafter a bit some flew away. We drove as close aswe could and finally worked out that we wereseeing Namaqua sand-grouse coming in for their daily drink at a small water hole in the donga(perhaps an old quarry). We stayed and watchedfor some time. Unfortunately we could not see intothe donga that well, but we could see flight after flight of birds arriving and leaving in all directions.One of the great sights of Africa.

We arrived at Steinkopf about 11h00 anddecided to stop and see the old Rhenish Mission

Station there. We drove into the little townand stopped and asked a couple of peopleon the road, but none of them had heard of it. We tried the library and the nice lady

suggested that we try the church. So we tried thechurch and the first lady we spoke to didn't knowanything, but the second lady knew that the churchhall was the old church and that the store roomswere the Old Pastorie.

Eventually we were joined by a gentlemancalled Amos who seemed to have some standingin the church and knew a bit about the history of the place. He took us inside the hall and showedus the National Monument plaque on the doorway.There was not much to see inside the hall. It wasobviously still in use as a church hall and there wasquite a lot of the normal church surplus junk lyingaround. Of interest was a very old organ – aharmonium with pedals to pump the air – that wasway past its playing life. Amos told us that they had

plans to fix up a room at the end of thehall as a museum where they could showsome old paintings that they had.Unfortunately, he did not have the key tobe able to show us.

Amos was impressed that we had taken thetrouble to come and see the old mission. Perhapswe inspired them to get on with their museum.

On we drove to Springbok and we stopped ata very nice Spar which had a little coffee shop andwhere we had a cool drink and a quiche and ascone for lunch. We bought some meat for supper.

We found our accommodation, the Old MillGuest House. We have a funny little cottage whichis cute and nice and which is set up for self catering. The only trouble is that it is right up a hilland it is not easy to nip forwards and backwards tothe car. Fortunately there was a helpful young man

to help us carry our stuff.We had a little lie down and went for

a walk. First we climbed a little way further up the hill behind us. The hill is actually ahuge granite rock that rises out behind our little cottage. I quickly decided thatclimbing here was absolutely crazy for a couple of 70 year olds as a slip would have meant hospital, if we were lucky, or more likely worse. So we

Above and below: views of the escarpment from Anenous Pass



climbed down and walked around the blockinstead.

Earlier I had arranged for a WiFi connection.We found that we could not get access from our room, but we could get it from the dining roomopposite the office. Except that we could notconnect for some reason: the tablet just sat there

saying “Authenticating”. So we ended up using our own local hot spot again.

Wednesday 10th September 2014

We were up at 07h00 and some nice ladiesfrom the laundry came and fetched our dirtywashing. We were happy to hand over a huge pileof stuff that had not been washed since we left

Kokanje and some of which we couldcertainly not wear for much longer.

Down we went to breakfast in thedining room. It was a fairly typical guesthouse sort of breakfast with cereal andyoghurt followed by bacon andscrambled eggs with sausages andtoast and some very nice marmalade. After we had sorted ourselves out, weset off to see Goegap.

We drove south on a road thatparallels the N7 for about 15 km anddrove into the park. Goegap is a Cape

Nature Reserve which has flowers as its mainattraction but it also has a good selection of thelocal fauna including Zebra and Gemsbuck. Wewere met by an extremely friendly gatekeeper whogreeted us enthusiastically and thanked us for visiting and hoped that we had a good time. On toreception through a large plain that was covered byflowers and full of birds. There were mountains onboth sides and on the left was a large miningoperation. I am nor sure what they are – or were –mining.

We came to reception and paid our entrancefee of R36 (R12 discount for pensioners. Did wewant to go on the 4x4 trails? A simultaneous, “No!”from me and a, “Yes!” from Jill. So that cost anextra R72. I would have been quite happy to bestaid and conservative, but Jill is the adventuroustype.

Before setting off, we had a look at thesucculent garden. I decided that it was a very goodthing that we did not have Peter Brunt with us as

we would never have got away if he had been. Iwas certainly impressed.

My camera battery gave out and I changed it.Then my SD card was full and I changed that for a16 GB card that was sitting in my Kodak camera.That did not seem to work: it looked like it wastaking pictures but it would not display them. In theend, I decided to just use the old camera.

We drove off on the nice and easy tourist

Above: Our cottage in Springbok Otheres: Views of Goegap

Springbok



route which is designed for sedan cars and goesup the mountains to a plateau. Then we had the

option of turning right and staying on the touristroute or turning left into the mountains which is the4x4 route for idiots like us.

Actually, most of the 4x4 route was verygentle. There were two exceptions: first we met the“Klip Pass” which is aptly named as the roadclimbs the side of a steep hill mostly over bedrock.It was not a difficult obstacle, but I was glad of four wheel drive and low range. The other difficult part

was a descent from the highplateau to the reception. Notonly was the descent steep (lowrange again), but the track wasvery rough with anti erosion“walls” built across it. I managedto stall when I got stuck on oneof those walls.

All in all it was a greatdrive. The route goes from thefirst plateau up through the KlipPass to a higher plateau and themountain scenery waswonderful. The flowers wereprobably past their prime(Verencia was right, we shouldhave come earlier), but there

were enough flowers to have an impact.We stopped a number of times to snapaway with our cameras.

There were lots of birds includingLudwig's bustard and a Black eaglewalking on the ground as if he were aSecretary bird. There were many LBJswho refused to sit still long enough to beidentified although we did recognisesparrow larks and wheatears. We sawsome gemsbuck and some springbuckbut saw no zebras.

We had lunch at Kraaifonteinwhich is a spring right on top of themountains. It was a very pretty placewith plenty of flowers.

We left the park a bit after 13h00and drove back to Springbok. We stopped at Spar

to get some onions and found a “Photofirst” shopat a pharmacy and I was able to buy a new SDcard. We were pretty tired after all that intrepidpioneering and collapsed on our beds for a goodsleep.

Chicken curry for supper.

Thursday 11th September Another travel day and quite a long one as

we drove all the way to Lamberts Bay.

We were up at our normal time and wentdown to breakfast. This time our host was thereand he pointed out that we could order eggs as wewanted them. As yesterday's scrambled eggs hadbeen a bit dry, we ordered poached eggs insteadand had a very nice breakfast.

We paid our bill of R2200 which Ithought was a bit on the high side.The accommodation was comfortable

Above: 4x4 was essential in placesBelow: Juanita in the karoo Above: Ludwig's bustard

Below: Black eagle



L B



Lamberts Bay



Springbok to Lambert's Bay

Thursday 11th September 2014

It was cloudy and gloomy when we leftSpringbok and the cloud turned to mist as we wentthrough Burke's Pass. It made the drive verydramatic as we went through the mountainscovered and hidden in clouds and the valleys withlow lying mist. It was not hazardous driving in anyway as the mist did not really hinder visibilityalthough we did have to slow down at times. It wasvery different from the last two times that we haddriven here. One of the marked differences wasthat there were no flowers to be seen – all theseflowers only open when the sun is shining andwithout the sun they are just not there..

We drove in to have a look at the little townof Garies and it did seem a rather nice littleNamaqua dorp. There were certainly a whole stringof bed-and-breakfast places that we could havetaken our pick of had we been inclined to stayhere.

South of Garies we were away from themountains and the country became far flatter andalso bleaker and more desert-like. We were still inflower country of course, but there were none openas the skies remained overcast and heavy. Wedrove a little bit of the way into Vanrynsdorp for petrol, but there is little that I could say about it aswe only saw the outskirts.

On through some flat country and then wemet up with some road construction and were sentoff on a detour in the direction of Vredendal. I am

not sure exactly what went wrong, but I think that Imade the mistake of following the car in front of meand missed a turn that would have taken me backoff the detour. Whatever I did wrong, I did findmyself suddenly driving westward towardsVredendal. This was not really a problem, in fact itmight have been a good mistake. Instead of drivingthrough more of the dry Karoo-like flat, we foundourselves in some rather pleasant agricultural

country with lots of rather productive lookingvineyards.

We had a quick look at Vredendal, which

seemed quite a pleasant town and which waslarger than I expected. We stopped and had lunchat a little restaurant attached to a nursery just

Above: Driving into the mist Below: Vinyards near Vredendal



outside the town.

We took a dirt road from Vredendal to Lambert's Bay. It was 59 km of pretty good, although very dusty, gravel. This “short cut” actually saved usabout 50 km and we did get to see Vredendal. I doubt we saved any time.

We had the directions to our accommodation in Lambert's Bay from theInternet. They turned out to be completely useless because they explainedin detail how to get through Clanwilliam and on to Lambert's Bay. Thesewere not useful directions as we were already in Lambert's Bay by now. Butthen the directions told us to turn right onto Visser Street and then juststopped. So we turned right (easier said than done because there was notactually a sign saying Visser St and we had to believe the GPS) andstopped because we had no idea where to go now. We phoned the number

we had been given, but it turned out to be the number of the previousmanager who did give us another number and added the missing directions,turn left off Visser St onto Voortrekker, and the apartments were on the left.So we found the apartment and there was no sign of life at all. We phonedthe new number we had been given and it was the number of the daughter of the manager and she said that she would tell her mother that we werethere.

So we waited and eventually the manager arrived and let us in.Top: Seascape Lambert's Bay Middle: Cormorants

Bottom: PanoramaTop right: Seascape



The accommodation was not much better than the directions to get there or the welcomeonce we had got there. It was basically onelong room (perhaps a garage) that had beendivided into a sitting area, a kitchen area (withtwo beds) and then a tiny bedroom and abathroom. The only redeeming virtue was thatit was cheap.

We moved in, had a lie down and decided togo for a walk. We walked northwards towardsa big factory (which seemed to make potatoproducts as well as fish products) and couldsee the harbour and Bird Island. That was allfor tomorrow.

We went back to our apartment and droveback to the harbour for supper at a littlerestaurant called Isabella's in the harbour area.I had a very nice bowl of mussels (andconsequently stank of garlic) while Jill was allconservative and had some lamb chops.

Friday 12th September 2014

We slept well despite our funnyaccommodation. We had a filling breakfast of bacon, sausages and eggs and set off to go andsee the major attraction (to us) of Lambert's Bay,Bird Island with its colony of gannets.

It cost us R5 to drive into the harbour area(last night we had been allowed in for nothing) andit would have cost us another R40 each to go outto Bird Island. Fortunately, the nice lady asked if we had a Wild Card and so we were able to get infor nothing. We suddenly realised that we shouldhave tried our Wild Card at Goegap too.

Bird Island was a true island in the daysbefore Lambert's Bay was a port. They built acauseway breakwater sort of thing out to the islandso that the little harbour is protected from the

south. In those old days Bird Island was also a bigsource of guano and there was a major industrycollecting it and shipping it off as fertilizer tofarmers all over the country. I remember my father getting a shipment of guano to fertilize hispastures. Now, chemical fertilizers and chickenmanure have made the guano industry anhistorical memory.

We walked along the causeway to the island.

T h u r s d a y 1 1 t h S e p t e m b e r

Isabella's at sunsett

Above: GannetsRight: Cormorants



There is major construction going on and Isuspect that Cape Nature is expanding itsoffices on the island. There is a new cetaceanmuseum which we could peer into through thewindow and which looks like it will be veryinteresting. Unfortunately, it seems to bewaiting for some bigwig to come and make aspeech at it before plebs like me will be able tosee inside.

But the star of the show at Bird Island is thegannet colony. There is a lovely hide which isbuilt on two levels. The lower level is slightlysunken so that the gannets are at eye leveland there are big glass walls stopping the birdsfrom being disturbed by the people. The upper level lets one look down on the colony andright through to the other side of the island.

The gannets are certainly a very impressivesight. At this time of the year they are justbeginning to lay their eggs and are very activein the air and on the ground. We saw themdoing their sky pointing and their scissor dances and even saw a fairly vicious fightbetween two males.

There was a very helpful lady from CapeNature in the hide. I confess that at first I thoughtthat she was just a security guard, but she turnedout to be extremely informative about the habits of the birds. She said that there were 17 000 birds inthis colony and that this was one of six breedingsites for the African gannet. She told us that theyoungsters leave after fledging and stay out at seafor the next four years before becoming sexuallymature when they come back to one of thecolonies to find a mate and to breed. She told usthat the birds on the outside of the colony were

F r i d a y 1 2 t h S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4

Gannets, Swift tern, Harbour



2014Our third day in Lambert's Bay. There was

not much reason to stay another day here exceptthat New Zealand and South Africa were playing arugby test this morning and if we had moved on wewould have had to try and find a pub or somethingon the way. So we watched the rugby and a verygood game it was too. Both teams played verywell, South Africa could have won with a bit of luck

but the luck went the other way and so a very goodNew Zealand team pipped us again.

When the rugby was over it was time to goand see the museum. Seeing the museum took notime at all because it is closed on Saturdays (andSundays too, so we missed the museumcompletely). We did not have much of a Plan B, sowe went and got something for lunch at Spar andspent the rest of the morning on the beach lookingat the waves dousing a fisherman and at the birds:gannets flying to and from their colony, gullseverywhere and a heron fishing in a rock pool.

Chicken drumsticks for lunch and, after acompulsory rest, we set off for Jackalsvlei to seesome more birds. Jackalsvlei (it really is spelt likethat) is a river, lagoon, vlei area just to the north of the town. We found a road that went down to theriver (there are no signposts in Lambert's Bay andthe GPS did not have all the little tracks, so wefollowed our noses) and admired a collection of Red-knobbed coots and Cape teals, a solitaryWhite-fronted plover and, of course, lots of gulls.We could see more birds up the river including amass of flamingoes.

It was not obvious how to get closer but wedrove further always turning towards the river whenwe had a choice. Eventually we found a littleparking lot with a sign saying “Bird Hide” (the firstofficial recognition that there was anything to see).We parked and walked down to the river throughsome lovely fynbos. As we walked, the flamingoesrose up in mass and we had a beautiful display of flamingoes in flight as they circled around and thensettled in the same place again. There were atleast 200 flamingoes there. Most of them were

Above: Lambert's bay harbour. Below: Bird Island from the other side



Lesser flamingoes, but it did seem that here were quite afew Greater flamingoes too. It was fun to watch as theymarched up and down in military fashion, disturbing themud to flush whatever they were eating. They arestrangely ungainly birds to look at but very graceful intheir movements.

There were a lot of other birds there too: Egyptiangeese, Shellduck, Blacksmith plover, Red-knobbed Coot,gulls, Spoonbill, African oyster-catcher, Pied kingfisher,Cape teal …

I was not too happy about leaving Juanitaunattended for too long. Perhaps it is tourist angst, but Ifeel much less safe here than in Limpopo. So we did notstay long (and did not even enter the ruin that probablyused to be the hide). As we started moving off, a group of people came and joined us and at the same time theflamingoes took off and circled again. The newcomerswere very excited and took a lot of pictures.

We drove further eastwards as close as we couldto the river and into a fairly smart suburb. We foundanother place to park with a good view of the flamingoesand watched then some more. As we finally drove away

(straight into the sunset which was a bit unpleasant), theflamingoes finally decided that it was sleeping time andflew off southwards in a big mass.

We arrived back at the apartment in time to watchthe end of the Lions – Western Province Currie cupgame. The Lions had an unexpected win.

Sunday 14th September 2014We breakfasted and packed the car and we were

ready to leave not long after 08h00. I was accosted twiceby men walking past as I was packing. First they asked if they could wash my car, and when I said no thanks, theyasked me for some money anyway. When I complained

to the second chap that I could not stand anywhere intown without someone asking me for money, he said,“Maar daar is geen werk nie” (“But there is no work”).That made me feel bad.



FlamingoesRoadside Flowers

P



Paternoster



Lambert's Bay toPaternoster

Sunday 14th September 2014Off we set driving south out of Lambert's Bay.The road soon turned into a gravel road witha good surface. We drove along next to thecoast and had attractive views of the sea onone side and the sandveld on the other. After a bit we met up with the Sishen – Saldanharailway which we had driven next to wayaway up there just after Sishen but which had

gone off on its own. As we met the railway wehad a choice between driving straight oninland or of following the private railway roadthat goes along next to the tracks. Thisprivate road is a toll road despite a sign thatsaid that it was closed to the public sinceSeptember 2014. I think that this is the onlytoll road that I have ever heard of that is agravel road. (It was a good gravel road, and

there was nobody to collect the tolls, but a toll roadit was).

Eventually at about 09h45 we arrived at acrossroads just inland from the little town of ElandsBay. Instead of going straight into town we droveeastwards along a very attractive estuary which

contained plenty of birds. Unfortunately, there wasno allowance made for birders and the road did notgo very close to the vlei area and when it did therewas only a very narrow shoulder on the road topark on. Despite these handicaps we managed tosee some quite nice birds including Goliath heron,Little and Great egret, stilts, hadedas, Yellow-billedduck and so on.

We enjoyed that and then drove on into townand onto a beach where there was a bunch of surfers surfing and another bunch just finishedsurfing. The surfing looked rather good and thisbunch of fanatics was well equipped and looked

like they knew what they were doing.Elands Bay is an attractive town nestled on

the bay next to a mountain that runs right out as apeninsula called Baviansberg (Dutch for the Afrikaans Bobbejaansberg and English Baboonmountain) and which has the appearance of ababoon's head looking out to sea. We went intotown for lunch at the White Mussel Pot where I hadpaella and Jill had her normal hake and chips. The

Top: Eland's Bay with the baboon

Above: Surfers

Top right: The Wit Mossel Pot Restaurant



place had a pleasant enough atmosphere butwhen adding the quality of food to the level of service I don't think that it rated more than 6/10.

Over the estuary on a temporary causewaybecause the man road was under repair. I wanted

to go left, around the west side of the mountain,but Jill said no no, the road was to the right and wemust keep following the railway. The road soonturned to dirt despite the fact that we were still intown and the railway vanished into the mountainand the road we were on got smaller and smaller and looked like it was going to fall off the end of thepeninsula into the sea. We carried onapprehensively as the road went through (not nextto or around) a parking lot and then snuck betweenthe mountain and the surf when suddenly it turnedinto a decent gravel road heading in the rightdirection.

Quite a nice drive through country thatgradually became more agricultural and lesssandveld. We stopped and admired a pair of Secretary birds striding through a field.

We drove on it to a little town called Velddrif (which had some interesting looking wetlands thatwe did not have time to investigate) where we metup with the main tarred road from Piketberg to

Vredenburg. We turned right there to and throughVredenburg to Paternoster.

We found our accommodation easily enough.It seemed to have two names: it was either theMosselbank (being the northernmost suburb of

Paternoster) B&B or the Schonerklip B&B. I didn'ttry to understand that. We met our hostess, Petro,who showed us our room and very pleasant it istoo. We also met some fellow guests who arrivedat the same time as we did. They were two pairs of middle aged bikers (which means not as old as usbut pushing it) who had driven all the way herefrom Port Elizabeth, although one pair had earlier driven all the way from the Natal Midlands. Weconfirmed that they were absolutely crazy and hada good chat.

After a little sleep we took a walk down to thebeach which is just a house away from the B&B.The weather was great and the beach waspleasant. Mosselbank is at the northernmostcorner of the Paternoster bay which sweeps awayin a huge arc. At the corner of the bay are somerocks where we paddled around. On the beach andon the rocks is a huge pile of mussel shells. I amnot sure of the explanation but suspect that it wascreated by a trick of the ocean and the tides.

The B&B had a WiFi connection and thatwas useful for us to get some contact with theworld.

Monday 15th September 2014Today was to be our last day of

independence before we drove on to Cape Town tospend some time with Patrick and Grace.

We slept even later than usual and had agood breakfast in the dining room. (Fruit, yoghurt,muesli, bacon, poached eggs, mushrooms,tomatoes, coffee and toast. I learned that apoached egg is a geposjeerde eier in Afrikaans).

We did not really know what to do withourselves: we could go north or south and as wewere going southerly tomorrow, we decided onnorth. First we did a drive through Paternoster to

see what it was all about and found that it was notreally about anything very much. It is a pretty littlefishing village that has grown (and not necessarilybeen improved by growing) into a holiday resort for Capetonians. It is still a pretty little town and I cansee why Capetonians like to holiday here.

Paternoster is on the west cost of the WestCoast Peninsula which is a large lump of landsticking out into the Atlantic. Vredenburg is the



largest town on the peninsula and the whole areais pretty good farming country. It is also within fairlyeasy driving distance of Cape Town and hasbecome full of holiday resorts.

We drove back out of town towards

Vredenburg and then soon turned north along a dirtroad through fairly prosperous farmlands growingwheat. We stopped a couple of times to admireflowers and birds on the way. About 15 km up theroad we came to the northern coast of the

peninsula and a confusing mess of towns includingShelley Point and Stompneus Bay. It was a strangepart of the world full of housing estates withimmaculate looking white pseudo fishermen'scottages all about six times the size that anyfisherman could afford. To me the whole place wassterile and completely characterless despite itsattempts to be authentic. To make the place evenmore confusing we found it difficult to find our wayanywhere and if we had been prospective buyers

we would have left without finding anyone to buyfrom.

South African law does not allow the privateownership of land closer to the sea than the“Admiralty Line” which is a certain distance fromthe high tide mark. This means that all beachesare, theoretically, open to anyone. However, it iseasy for private owners to build in such a way thataccess to the beach is blocked unless one passesthrough private property and here the beach hadbeen effectively privatised by a row of houses thanprevented access.

So we were not impressed.

A bit further down the coast became a bitmore interesting. At St Helena Bay there is an oldwhaling station and a number of offshore rockscovered in cormorants. There is a monument toVasco da Gama who landed here in 1497 anderected one of his famous crosses. The monumentwas erected in 1969 to celebrate the 500th

anniversary of da Gama's birth. In 1969 Portugal

Scenes from Skatkis restaurant

The waitress was a chatty lady and told us



was an ally of the apartheid South Africangovernment. There were also lots of very prettyflowers for us to photograph.

We drove further along the coast andstopped at a little “Farm Deli” where we boughtsome odds and ends for presents. We startedthinking that it was lunch time, but naturally once

we started looking for somewhere to eat therewasn't. We found one nice little restaurant that wasclosed and another that didn't look like it had ever been open. We drove through a little town calledLaingville, but it turned out to be a pre-1994impoverished Coloured township with no sign of aneatery that I would want to patronise.

So we decided to continue on throughVredenburg and back to Paternoster for lunch. Wedid stop at a small farm dam that wasdisproportionally full of birds including avocets,flamingoes, Shellduck and lots of littlies that wereunidentifiable at the distance.

Back in Paternoster we found another restaurant that was not open and considered

eating at the hotel but eventually settled onSkatkis, a guest house with a restaurant attached.It was a good choice as it had a magnificent viewover the bay and we sat and watched fishermenfishing with their nets just beyond the breakers,tourists walking their dogs, and schoolkids trying tosabotage a rubbish bin. The food was good too – Ihad oven roasted snoek and Jill did not have hakebut a chicken curry instead.

The waitress was a chatty lady and told usthat less than a month ago two fishermen, friendsof hers, had been lost at sea when a sudden stormcame up. Their bodies had not been foundalthough some of their clothes and bits of their boat had been washed ashore. To add to thetragedies, another fisherman had hanged himself at about the same time and the whole communitywas still in a bit of a state of shock.

It was quite late by the time we had finished

lunch but we still had time for a little sleep beforegoing for another walk on the beach.

Tuesday 16th SeptemberWe had another good breakfast, said

goodbye to Petro, packed the car and off we set.

Paternoster to Cape TownFirst we drove back to Vredendal. We filled

up at one of the service stations there and I had along chat with the pump jockey who told me that hecame from Mount Frere (although he was Sotho

speaking) and that he had not been home for morethan a year. We have little idea how some peoplestruggle to survive.

We drove on to Saldanha and decided thatwe wanted to go and see the penguins and,looking at the map, that seemed to require drivingwest towards the ocean through what was calledthe “Small Boat Harbour”. So we drove into theharbour – the standard charge of R5 – and pastthe large Sea Harvest fish factory, which ispresumably where all our frozen Sea Harvest fishcomes from. There was a fish shop there which wedid not visit. On we drove a bit and came to

another harbour gate that said Permit HoldersOnly. That was the end of our attempt to see thepenguins. I tried negotiating with the gate keeper who was very friendly, but non-negotiable. He saidthat there were no penguins in Saldanha(contradicting all the ornithological authorities) andthat if we wanted to see penguins we must go toLambert's Bay. We knew better. Actually a bit morestudy shows that the penguins are a long way

Top: Whaling station Above: Cormorants nesting

further out on a rocky peninsula at the very end of



further out on a rocky peninsula at the very end of the bay. To get to see them I suspect that one hasto take a boat trip. Or perhaps a helicopter.

So we turned around and went past the SeaHarvest factory again and a large dry dock. It wasinteresting to see some fairly large ships sitting upin the air having their bottoms scraped and weldedand whatever happens to ships in the air. We founda little restaurant called Slipways and had a cup of coffee and looked at the harbour and the boats and

the rotting wreck of a fishing boat tied up to the pier which has become the home for a whole mess of cormorants.

That was a fun cup of coffee. Back we drovethrough the little town of Saldanha and past the oreterminus. Saldanha Bay is a very impressive largenatural harbour although I suspect that it needs alot off dredging to keep it accessible to large orecarriers.

A big hold up at some major construction andthen we drove on into the West Coast NationalPark. We used our Wild Card to get in.

We stopped almost immediately we got intothe park at the Seeberg Bird Hide. The was a bit of a walk from the car park to the hide through thevery attractive sandveld fynbos which has anincredible number of very attractive flowers and anequal number of little birds singing and fluttering

around in all directions. Mostly the little birds werequite unidentifiable, but we did spot our new friend,the Karoo Prinia. Eventually, after much ditheringand snapping away, we did get to the hide. Therewe immediately found three lifers: Whimbrel,Greenshank and Grey plover. (There was a smartcouple in the hide who knew their waders and whohelped us with the Whimbrel and theGreenshank). There were also Swift terns,gulls, flamingoes, gippos, ducks … I can wellunderstand why twitchers get all excitedabout Langebaan.

We spent some time at the hide andthen wandered our way south to Geelbekwhich is the park Headquarters at the south

Left: Wreck with cormorantsTop: saldahna

Above left: West Coast national Park

Above Right: Geelbeck Right: Cape francolin

end of the bay We had lunch at the



end of the bay. We had lunch at therestaurant there – I had a snoek pieand Jill had the quiche of the day whichwas a quiche made of anything that canbe found in a restaurant kitchen. It wasnot a bad lunch although the servicewas, at the best, lackadaisical. There

were some Cape francolins in the garden and animpressive Yellow-billed kite came swoopingoverhead. There is also an interesting little

museum that has a cast of the earliest humanfootprint ever found and which was discovered inthe area.

We skipped the hides there and carried onout of the park through the south entrance. I amsorry that we did not stay longer in the West CoastPark. Like all our National Parks it is a high qualitydestination, well managed and cared for with lotsto see.

We drove down the R27 for a bit and then turned off on the road to Darling and almostimmediately found the tiny Tinie Versveld Nature Reserve. This reserve is not much more than a largefarm field and tries to preserve a pristine example of renosterveld which is an ecozone very different tothe strandveld that we have been driving through. Here the dominant flowers are bulbs of various kinds

and we found ourselves surrounded by arum lilies and chincherichees by the millions. Beautiful and verydifferent.

Through Darling and Malmesbury to join up with the N7 that we had left way up north. South toEdgemead and we found the house and our son Patrick and his lovely wife Grace. It was not a goodfeeling to be back in civilization and the rush hour traffic, but it was good to see Patrick and Grace againand it was nice to look forward to a time of not driving.

C T



Cape Town

t



Saturday 20th September 2014

Biscuit FactoryGrace had to go to a conference at the St

Vincent hospital and the rest of us dropped her off

t

here on our way to the Saturday Morning Market at

the Biscuit factory in Salt River.I suppose that the Biscuit Factory was once a

biscuit factory. Now it is a rather attractive buildingwith some permanent arty-type shops and an areathat is given over to the morning market onSaturdays. Being Cape Town there was no formalparking available and so there was a whole cottageindustry of selling parking in the streets around themarket.

We did not know quite what to expect at themarket and so it is easy to say that it was not whatI expected. I had seen the market on a TV show

(Siba's table) and it had looked like a nice producemarket with lots of stalls selling veggies, preserves,specialist foods, cheese, and meat. It rather turnedout to be a sort of food hall with options of eatingfood from Thailand, Korea, Germany, Japan andeven South Africa plus some beer stalls, a cheesestall, an olive stall, some breads, and onevegetable stall. Most of that was good stuff, butthere is only a limited amount of food one can eat

on a Saturday morning and after one has eaten agood breakfast there (as we did) and bought some

olives and beer for later consumption the place sortof loses its attraction.

So we did not spend as much time there asthe whole morning that we had budgeted beforewe had to pick up Grace. So we killed some timevisiting Fargo's Trading which is a sort of wholesale Indian spice shop owned and run by thefather of a friend of Patrick (and the father-in-law of one of Grace's colleagues). We bought somespices there and would have bought more exceptthat the minimum quantities were often too big for us. We went on to a local nursery which had a teashop and had something to drink.

We picked up Grace who had had asuccessful conference and swapped our tour guides. Patrick went off to play in a bowlstournament and we went off with Grace toBlumenthal's for lunch with Claire and Di, her CapeTown sisters and Andrew, her Johannesburgbrother. Add in Claude, Claire's husband, andClaudie, her son, and we had a fairly raucousgroup of Griffiths with whom to have a good lunch.

Above: Biscuit Factory Below: Tasting Olives

Right: View from de Grendel

It was a pleasant location for a lunch the wine was



It was a pleasant location for a lunch, the wine wasgood, the company was great and so the indifferentfood was not really a problem.

Lunch took most of the afternoon and thenwe all (except for Claire and her family) went on tode Grendel (the Graaff estate) and did some winetasting. Again, the environment was pleasant – deGrendel has a magnificent view of Table Mountain – and the company was good. I thought that thewine was pretty ordinary, but what do I know about

wine?I lent Andrew my pensioner's card which got

him a discount so that he was able to buy a fewbottles of wine. In return he bought me a bottle of Late Harvest which was very generous of him.

Kirstenbosch

Sunday 21st September 2014 After all yesterday's partying and late to bed

we had two choices today: we could go and visitKirstenbosch or go and play bowls. Kirstenbosch

won because it was the one day that all four of uscould go and do something together.

So we had some Eggs Benedict for breakfastand then packed a picnic lunch together with chairsand table and rug but no beer because one is notallowed to take beer. It turned out that one isallowed to take beer but not chairs and tables. Jawell no fine.

Off we went to Kirstenbosch against the sideof Table Mountain. Kirstenbosch is one of theoldest of South Africa's (six or seven?) botanicalgardens and is regarded as the flagship of the fleetI am a great fan of botanical gardens anywhere in

the world, but do have a special place in my heartfor Kirstenbosch. All our National BotanicalGardens, like our National Parks, are real credits toSouth Africa. They are well managed, beautifullykept, and proper scientific institutions as well ashaving fantastic public facilities. Be proud of them.

We spent the whole morning there and hadour lunch underneath a huge oak tree. (Yes,Kirstenbosch is almost exclusively an indigenous

garden, but they have left some of the huge oaksstill growing). The spring flowers were still verymuch out in their glory and Jill remarked that wehad not needed to go to remote places likeKamieskroon and Goegap to see flowers, all wehad to do was go to Kirstenbosch. Of course,Kirstenbosch is also pretty remote for us and,impressive as Table Mountain is, it is not quite asauthentic as the Kamiesberge as a backdrop for Namaqualand flowers.

We had to take a walk on the Boomslang , the

tree top walk. It is a bit of a hike up the gardens toget to but worth the effort. It starts as a proper treetop walk and a notice says that Boomslangs (verybeautiful and extremely poisonous tree snakes) areoften to be seen there (but don't be scaredbecause they are extremely shy). Then thewalkway leaves the forest canopy and takes a loopout over the gardens and gives one a tremendousview right across the Cape Flats to the HottentotsHolland Mountains. We could see some snow inthe distance and that meant that we might not bequite rid of winter yet.

Scenes of Kirstenbosch - Patrick and Grace

I suppose that the only problem with Kirstenbosch was that it was



I suppose that the only problem with Kirstenbosch was that it wasquite crowded especially with today being Sunday and perhaps the firstdecent weather after a week of misery. (But Capetonians should be usedto miserable weather as it is what they have most of the year).

We had a good lunch of some left over roast chicken, some homemade Patrick humus, some olive paste and Ciabatta bread from theBiscuit Factory.

Intaka IslandMonday 22nd September 2014Intaka Island (“Intaka” means bird in Xhosa) is actually a collection

of a lot of “sort of“ islands that are formed by a canal (that goes all aroundthe islands making all the islands an island) and a group of artificial lakes.It is a combination of Bird Sanctuary, Water Purification Scheme(associated with a sewage works), and Education Centre. It is a goodplace. It is also right next to the huge and very kitsch Canal Walk or Century City Mall shopping centre. (I don't know why it has two nameseither).

Getting there was difficult – onto the N7, onto the N1, off the N1,round and around more traffic circles than I have seen since England. I

would never have made it by myself but Jill had listened to Patrick'sdirections and also had the GPS. Eventually we arrived at twolocomotives at the entry to Intaka island at the same time as a mass of school children who had come to be educated about water purification.Some of them were taken off on a boat trip, some were marched off on awalking tour and we were left to pay our admission and to go on a self-guided tour.

It is a fun place and quite impressive. There are eight stretches of water with successive levels of purification: the first receives water fromthe sewage treatment plant and then releases water to the next pondafter it has undergone natural purification and filtration from the plantsgrowing in the water. As the water passes through the whole range of ponds, it becomes cleaner and cleaner and can finally be released into

the city water ways. All those ponds full of nutrition naturally attract anumber of water birds and there certainly were a lot for us to see as wewalked around. Perhaps there were slightly fewer than I expected, but Iam sure that there are a lot more at the height of the breeding season.

There is an artificial heronry on the penultimate pond (the ultimatepond is really just an artificial wetland). The egrets and cormorants havebeen encouraged to nest on wooden structures that look more like pilesof sticks than anything. Although it was still early for them to be breeding,we did see a lot of birds checking the structures out and booking

Scenes of Kirstenbosch



themselves some nesting real estate.

There were good birds, if not anythingparticularly exciting: Greater flamingoes (the firsttime we have seen the Greater without the Lesser),Red-knobbed coots, Cape, Reed and White-breasted cormorants, moorhens, Cape robins,

Cape white-eyes, Cape sparrows, prinias, gullsand masses of little LBJs ducking for cover.

We wandered around past ponds One,Three, Six, Seven and Eight and visited a little lapawhere they educated the little darlings whom wespent a lot of our walk ducking and dodging. Eachbunch of kids had one of the island's educationofficers, their own teacher and a couple of poor suffering parents who had come to help control theuncontrollable. It was amusing to me that some of the trainers had perfect control of their rabbles

while others seemed all at sea and whose attemptsat discipline were being ignored by the kids.

We left the centre after noon and wentaround more lots of round and around-aboutsbefore finding our way home.

Stellenbosch

Tuesday 23rd September 2013

Off we went to see Johan and Ode Krige, thecustodians of the Krige Bond in Stellenbosch. It isnecessary to explain that Jill's maiden name wasKrige; the Kriges are one of the very old Afrikaner families which owes its origins to the stamvader ,Willem Adolf Krige, who arrived in Cape Town inthe 17th Century; that there have been manyimportant Kriges in South Africa's history (includingrugby players and poets and, even worse,politicians); some famous people have marriedKriges including Jan Smuts, Bram Fisher and BillCairns. Every Afrikaner family that has beenaround for more than three hundred years hascreated and maintains a register of every member of that family and, sure enough, the Kriges havetheir own stud book which is maintained by Johan

Inkata Island Birds

Krige in Stellenbosch. Jill has been in contact with might have been Kuils River but might not, through garden which seems far more dedicated to exotic



gJohan off and on over the years, and she arrangedfor us to go to Stellenbosch to meet him.

Getting to Stellenbosch is probably fairlysimple for those who know what they are doing,but we didn't and it wasn't. We went north on theN1 and east on the R300 through somewhere that

g g , gsome road construction and eventually into DorpStreet, Stellenbosch.

Stellenbosch is an attractive little town full of oak trees and white buildings that look like theywere built in the 19th century and perhaps some of them were. It is a university town and most of thebuildings seem to do their best to pretend that theyare part of the university and perhaps some of them are. Our instructions from Johan were to go

right to the top of Dorp Street, do a zig and a zaginto a street called Laan. (Laan means avenue andit seemed an unoriginal name for a street). Thenturn into Neethling and look for Caledon Villa. Wewere screamingly early though and so we stoppedat the information centre in town and got a map of Stellenbosch (which turned out to be animpressionist view of the town rather than a usablemap).

Off we went to Neethling St and there wemet Johan and Ode. They are lovely people andare very enthusiastic about the Krige family andabout maintaining the stud book and developing

the museum. He publishes a Krige Newsletter inwhich he (or a guest writer) documents all sorts of details about the various branches of the Krigefamily. He gave us the four newsletters about theLibertas Parva side of the family, the descendantsof Tottie Krige, Jill's grandfather.

We had a cup of tea and talked about Krigesand also a bit about the Cairns family. Johan knewmy Aunt Meg who was a well known genealogist.Johan gave us a tour of Caledon House, whichwas his grandfather's residence many years agoand which Johan had managed to buy back intothe family and has now turned into a very

comfortable guest house. We saw the museumwhich has a huge collection of Krige memorabiliaand also Ode's fantastic collection of quiteexquisite German porcelain dolls.

A good visit. We said goodbye to Johan andOde and then went and had lunch at the Universityof Stellenbosch's Botanical Gardens which werewalking distance away. It is an attractive little

gplants than the National Botanic Gardens. We hada decent lunch of chicken mayonnaise sandwicheson tasty whole wheat bread.

We would have liked to have stopped atLibertas (which is now an art museum), but our map let us down badly and we missed it entirely.So we drove west to the N1 on the R304 and thensouth to Edgemead.

The Waterfront

Sunday 28th September 2014Patrick went off to play bowls and Grace

took us off to the Waterfront for lunch. TheWaterfront is that part of the old Cape Towndocklands that has been gentrified and convertedinto touristy shopping centres and restaurants. Wehad an easy enough drive there by just followingthe N1 until it stops being the N1 abruptly at theedge of the city centre. (One might imagine thatthe N1, which runs from Beit Bridge on theZimbabwe border all the way south, would end atthe sea somewhere, but it doesn't. It just sort of peters out close to the Waterfront).

We found parking in a multi level parkingbuilding and went over the road to the foodmarket. The food market is not a larnie slickexpensive touristy place but a good mixture of afood hall and a food market. It is a bit what theBiscuit Factory should have been. The problemremains that one can really only eat one lunch andhere there were about ten places that I would haveliked to have tried. In the end we all had someexcellent Indian vegetarian food and I had anexcellent “Craft Beer'. I had to reject Thai food,the African Kitchen, another Indian restaurant,Seafood (a fantastic looking paella), a sandwichbar.

“Craft Beer” is a big thing in Cape Town atthe moment. (Perhaps it is in Joeys too – I justhave not been following the scene). The craftbeers come from what we used to call micro

Above: Jill with Ode and Johan Krige

Below: Caledon Villa

The Fugard Theatre



breweries and the ones that I drank were verygood indeed. There are some disadvantages inliving in the bushveld and the shortage of goodbeer is one of them.

Next to the food market is the “Nobel Corner”which celebrates South Africa's four Nobel Peace

Prize winners. The artist has sculpted them withheads slightly large in proportion to their bodiesand this gives the four of them a rather unfortunatedwarfish appearance.

The Fugard TheatreIn the evening we went into town again to

the Fugard Theatre (which is Stix Galloway's littleempire) to see two English magicians (“Illusionists”they called themselves) Morris and West. I thoughtthat they were pretty good and I could not seethrough their tricks.

Their patter was good too: I enjoyed the onewhere a paper ball was either in the person's

pocket or under a cup. If he said “Cup” it would bein the pocket, but if he said “Pocket” it would beunder the cup. So the position of the ball was notdetermined until he said where it was which meantthat it was both in the pocket and the cupsimultaneously. In fact it was a Schröder's paper ball. I don't know how many of the people in theaudience got the joke.

After the show we went and had supper inan Indian food court bazaar sort of place. Goodfood – I had a chicken breyani which was a hugemeal but very tasty.

The Vineyard HotelMonday 29th September

Grace needed the car on Monday andPatrick had an interview at the Vineyard Hotel sowe took him in and had lunch there while heinterviewed his interviewees. The only reason tomention this (despite the fact that the Vineyard is alarnie place and the food was good) is that, after the meal, while we were waiting for Patrick in thefoyer and I took a quick trip to the gents, John(number 2 son) appeared, said hello to Jill, andvanished. We had no idea that John was even in

Cape Town.John actually came around to Patrick and

Grace in the evening for supper.

Top: The Mountain from the Waterfront Left: Food stalls

Above: Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk,Nelson Mandela



Di, Andr e w, Cla

ir , Gr ace

P a t r i c k B o w l i n g

Clair, Claudie, Grace

Bill and Jill

Stix and Elizabeth

J i l l a n d G r a c e

E r n i e



Sutherland

lots of prosperous looking farms and attractiveTh i l l d h ll

that we were not able to do that. Unfortunately theyh i f M ji f i d



Tuesday 30th September 2014

Cape Town to SutherlandWe were up early so that we could say

goodbye to Grace before she went to work. Then a

nice breakfast, we packed the car, said goodbye toPatrick, Ernie and Lexie and off we set. It was amiserable Cape Town day – the sort of day that isdesigned to stop one feeling regrets over leavingCape Town. It was miserable enough for trucks tobe throwing up spray, for the visibility to be poor,and for us to use 'intermittent' windscreen wipersintermiiently.

There was a surprising amount of traffic allthe way to Paarl and up through the Huguenottunnel when suddenly it vanished. I don't know howthere can be lots of cars on one side of the tunneland none at all on the other. Perhaps they got lost

inside. It is many years since I last went throughhere. I suspect that it is the longest motor vehicletunnel in South Africa and it is old enough now tolook rather dated and old-fashioned with only twonarrow lanes. But it is an impressive piece of engineering all the same and certainly cuts off many kilometres of wiggly wiggly up the mountainand down the other side.

Over the mountain the country is lovely with

towns. The mountains are lovely and the valleysare green. There are lots of grape vines and a fair amount of other fruit. So it was a nice drive toWorcester (where we filled up) and then throughthe Hex River gorge and on to the little town of HexRiver itself. Then suddenly one is in the semi-desert Karoo again with typical little Karoo bushescovering the veld and sheep instead of grapevines.

We stopped at Matjiesfontein for lunch. Our original plan had been to leave a day earlier and tospend the night in Matjiesfontein and I am sorry

were having a conference at Matjiesfontein andcould not accommodate us (neither could the localguest farm which was having a wedding).

From the Matjiesfontein website:“Matjiesfontein is a feast for the imagination asbetween these walls lie a colourful history thatincludes international cricketers, OliveSchreiner’s residency, fortification during theBoer war as headquarters of the Cape

Command, refuge for Jamieson Raidreformers, and controversial war crimeshearings. “ I don't know about all of that, but Ido know that the place was an importanttraining ground, provisioning, and forwardingstation during the Boer War and that it is nowfamous for the Lord Milner Hotel which used tobe the military headquarters. What I had notrealised is that the hotel, together with itsoutbuildings, and the railway station are allthere are all there to Matjiesfontein. In fact theentire “town” is a single road with the hotel onthe one side and the railway station on the

other. (We did not look for, nor found, OliveSchreiner's cottage. In fact I did not know thatOlive Schreiner had a cottage there until Iwrote this a long time later. Aunt Olive was aclose relative, being my grandmother'sbrother-in-law's aunt, so I ought to know moreabout her).

We stopped at the pub for lunch. Jill had her standard fish and chips while I had an excellent“ham sandwich” which was a sort of hybridploughman's lunch and a slice of ham. I enjoyed aGuinness with that. We were entertained by Johnwho came and had a chat and played us some

music on the piano. John also took us for a quicktour of the very larnie “Royal Lounge” in the hotelto prove to us that Lady Milner's ghost really hadbeen photographed there (in a cleverly tamperedphotograph). I wonder whether Lady Milner hadever been there.

We discovered that the conference at thehotel was a geophysical conference and that oneof the conferees was Jill's old colleague Ludwig

Mountains

Lord milner Hotel, Matjiesfontein

In the Pub for lunch

It was an interesting little break inM tji f t i I ld lik t b k d

a young lady appeared from the restaurant and leti t h A d h it t



Combrinck. We thought that it would be fun tosurprise Ludwig, but unfortunately we could notfind him and left a message saying that we weresorry to miss him.

Over the road to the station which is now acollection of museums and we spent some timewandering around looking at the very interesting

assortment of junk there. The railway line is stilloperational of course and apparently theoccasional tourist train still stops a the station. Idon't know who manages the points to shiftpassenger trains onto the side lines.

Matjiesfontein. I would like to come back one day.

Matjiesfontein lies on the junction of the N1and the R354 which is the road to Sutherland. Sowe left the N1 and headed north. I had not realisedthat the Karoo was quite as mountainous as thecountry that we drove through, and that we wouldhave to drive through two mountain passes andclimb about 700 metres. It is harsh but attractivecountry and we were glad to see that we were

back among the flowers. We stopped a couple of times to take pictures and once I counted ninedifferent species of flower in a small area of perhaps four metres radius.

SutherlandWe arrived in Sutherland about 15h00. It

seems like a fairly typical South African rural towndominated by a large NG Church, with a hotel thathas seen better days, a row of shops that look likethey are still in the1950s, and a lot of veryattractive old houses. We found our accommodation opposite the Perlman Restaurant

as advertised. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasclosed and nobody answered my banging on thedoor. We eventually found the manager's phonenumber (not so easily as Jill had taken so manypictures that her phone had run out if battery) and

us into our house. And a proper house it was too:two big bedrooms, bathroom, lounge, dining room,kitchen and even a huge pantry which wascompletely empty of anything including furniture.There was a huge garden behind the house and asecure parking area for Juanita. The fact that wedid not have a key to the back door limited our ability to use these facilities. All the same, wethought that for R600 a night we were getting abargain.

We unpacked a bit and had a nice lie down.Then we drove around the town, which does nottake long, to see the sights of which there are notmany. We had supper in the Perlman Restaurant:we both had the Springbok Schnitzel which was abit pricey but not at all bad. We went back over theroad and lit a nice fire and gazed at the flames untilwe went early to bed.

Wednesday 1st October 2014

Sutherland

Sutherland is infamous in South Africanmeteorological circles as having one of the mostextreme climates in the country. When the rest of the country is cold, Sutherland is invariably thecoldest and when the rest of the country is having

There are lots of telescopes on top of the hill



decent weather, Sutherland is still cold. However,the reason that they built an observatory inSutherland is that it is in the middle of the Karooand therefore has little rain and a very highpercentage of cloudless days (and nights) duringthe year.

So our chances of having good weather onthe day that we were due to visit the observatorywere good. It turned out that they were not goodenough. We woke up to the sort of cold, clouds,wind and misery that would have been moreappropriate in County Sutherland, Scotland.

Already, early in the morning, we could see thatour chances of seeing any stars in the eveningwere not good.

However, we first had to do the day tour of the observatory and that was not dependent on theweather. So we had a nice breakfast and drove the10 km and climbed another 250 metres to theobservatory east of the town. The observatory isbuilt on top of a hill with a steep road winding upfrom the main road below. The road takes you firstto the visitors' centre, administration offices,accommodation, and other support buildings. Wemet there and had a look around the visitors'

centre which was an interesting if slightly disjointedseries of displays.

The official tour started at 10h30 and therewas another couple and us with the tour guidecalled Karel. The show kicked off with a showing of the movie Powers of 10 which I must have seenthree or four times already and which Jill musthave seen (and shown) twenty times. All the same,

it is a pretty good movie and does show howcompletely incomprehensible the size of theuniverse actually is. After the movie we all set off up the hill to have a look at the telescopes.

There are not just one or two telescopes upthere but eleven or twelve. Six of them belong tothe South African SAAO – the South African Astronomical Observatory – and the rest belong to

Top: Driving up the hill

Above: South African Large Telescope - SALT

The 11 m mirror inside SALT

Springbuck and SALT



various other countries including Japan, Korea andPoland.

We saw inside two of the telescopes. Firstwe saw the old 1,9 m telescope that used to beSouth Africa's biggest and which is still prettyimpressive despite being nearly 60 years old. Wethen saw SALT, the South African Large Telescope,

which has an 11 metre mirror. The fascinatingthing is that one can actually see the mirror which“is made up of 91 1m hexagonal mirror segments,each one configured to have a spherical shape.Together these segments make up an 11m indiameter ... mirror”. (From the SALT website). Thisis all huge and exceedingly impressive.

Karel introduced us to a cleaning lady who isstudying to become a maintenance technician andexplained that SAAO tries to help uplift the localcommunities. I asked Karel a question about thecomputer system and he promised to introduce meto the IT chap. However, said IT chap was not in

the server room and Karel offered to go and findhim, but I said no, don't bother. I think that I made amistake there, Karel was being very helpful and Iam sure that the IT chap would have enjoyedshowing us what must be an interesting system.

On our way down the hill we met a poor young woman struggling to drive her car up the hill.She was obviously a beginner driver and hadstalled her car on the steep hill and could not get it

going again. We managed to get her going again,but whether she managed it all the way up the hillwithout stalling again I don't know.

We drove home slowly and stopped at theside of the road to photograph some flowers. Thesun had come out and so had the flowers althoughit was still blowing a nippy wind and there were still

lots of clouds. In Sutherland we stopped and had alook at the NGK church. It is a very attractive oldstone building.

To our house and a nice lunch of chickendrumsticks and lots of veggies. A nice lie down witha book and a little sleep.

By 17h00 it had clouded over again and our chances of seeing anything astronomical hadreturned to zero, but we ignored reality and thelaws of probability, put on our warm clothes, anddrove back to the observatory. There were a lot of people there waiting for their turn to look at thestars. Our guide, William, was very pessimistic

about our chances and said that the telescopes upthe hill had all decided to take the evening off. Apparently it is not just the cloud cover that wasthe problem, but they cannot even open thetelescopes when the humidity is too high becauseof possible damage to the mirrors.

We waited until the official start time of 19h30when William officially called the whole thing off.

Most people left, but we and a German couple andtheir son decided to watch a movie that we wereoffered in compensation. It was a very good moviemade by NASA and the European Space Agencyon the Hubble telescope and what had beenlearned from it.

A sandwich and latish to bed.



Karoo National Park



Thursday 2nd October 2014

Sutherland to the KarooNational Park

Goodbye Sutherland. When we woke up itwas a beautiful sunny day and it looked like it wasideal for deep space objects through telescopes.But that was not to be.

We packed up and set off back the way wecame south from Sutherland on the road back toMatjiesfontein and over the pass again. It alwayssurprises me how different a road looks when youdrive it the other way. Naturally we stopped andlooked at some flowers and took more pictures.

We drove almost all the way to Matjiesfonteinbut saved a bit of driving by cutting off two sides of a triangle through cutting south east at one pointand joining up with the N1 further east. This was aninteresting little detour off the tar. There had been

some recent flooding and in places the (otherwiseexcellent gravel) road hadbeen washed away. I canimagine how dangerous flashfloods can be in this area.

We had our last stop onthis road at a place where theN1 is visible in the middle

distance and we could see the tops of big trucksmoving past. We had a wonderful view of theWitberg on the horizon.

West by north west to Laingsburg where wefilled up with petrol. Laingsburg was the victim of the terrible floods in 1981 when 104 people werekilled and 180 houses were destroyed. It was

perhaps the worst natural disaster in South Africa'shistory. 425 mm rainfall (for the metricallychallenged that is 16.7 inches) was recorded inone week-end whereas the normal annual rainfallis 175 mm. However, there are no signs of it nowand Laingsburg seems a normal and quiteprosperous little town as one drives through.

On and on to Beaufort West. We stopped ata rest area on the side of the road for lunch,sharing it with a big truck that had stopped for asnooze, and were amazed how many flowers therewere in the little picnic area.

We saw the Karoo National Park on our left

just before Beaufort West, but we carried on intotown and found a Pick 'n' Pay where we boughtsome bits and pieces. Back we went and into thePark. A friendly chap at the entrance welcomed usenthusiastically and did the basics and then on wedrove to the main camp.

The Karoo National Park is on the edge of the escarpment (or perhaps, more accurately, on

the edge of one of the manyescarpments that one drives over between Cape Town and theinterior). We could see themountains in front of us as wedrove the few kilometres to thecamp. The N1 does not actuallyclimb this escarpment until Three

Sisters.The camp is built to look like Cape Dutch

architecture. There are chalets built in a longstraight stripe and a central office block andrestaurant all in white and thatch.

We checked in, found our chalet (onedesigned for handicapped people again and closeto the restaurant), had a lie down and perhaps adoze.

We then went for a walk down to the FossilGarden which is a sort of an outside museumfeaturing the fossils that have been found in the

area. It is very well done and informative.We had some nice boerewors

for supper.

Friday 3rd October 2014

We did not get up early. In fact Ithink that we would have got up much

The Wittenberge

from muesli, fruit juice and toast, through one eggand bacon through to a full farmer's breakfast of



later than we did had the sun not managed to peepover the windowsill straight into my eyes.

The Karoo National Park gives one breakfastwith a chalet. No other National Park (that I knowof anyway) does this and I assume that it does sobecause the park is situated next to the main Cape

Town to Zimbabwe trunk road and a significantnumber of people use it for convenientaccommodation on the way.

I tried not to be confused by the menu. Onehas a choice of eight different breakfast options

and bacon, through to a full farmer s breakfast of steak, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, chips and therest. All the breakfast options come for the sameprice of basically nothing (because it is includedwith the chalet which is cheap enough). But, andthis is the important bit, one is not allowed to makeany substitutions or additions to the items that youchoose: you must either have the full farmer'sbreakfast, or the kidneys on toast or whatever.

I did have the one that said eggs, bacon,mushrooms, tomatoes, kidneys with toast andcoffee and all. Jill had the one that was the samebut which had boerewors instead of kidneys. Bothbreakfasts were very good and we did notcomplain that we could not have one egg and nottwo.

Jill had been complaining that I was doing allthe driving so I suggested that she drove today. Isurely let her in for some hard work. We went onthe Potlekkertjie Loop (I have no idea what a potlekkertjie is – a little sweet cooked in a pot?)which is the main drive in the park. It is a circular

route that starts off by climbing up the mountainand then makes a big loop through a plateau whichis sort of half way up the escarpment. Most of theroads in the park are 4x4 routes that lead off thePotlekkertjie Loop.

So we drove along the main road from theentrance, down past the camp ground andimmediately up the steep Klipspringer Pass thatgoes around and around and up and up and upsome more. It looks like a plasticine worm that hasbeen stuck onto the side of the cliff. The tar is goodand the retaining wall between the road and

oblivion looks reliable. I was glad that Jill wasdriving so that I could close my eyes.

The view from the view point at the top of thepass was magnificent. There are mountains allaround with deep gorges on both sides of the view

Top left: Klipspringer pass; Top Right: Gorge; Above: Karoo Panorama



site and a great view of the pathetic little roadthat we had justclimbed. We took lotsof pictures there and

admired a falcon (Lanner?) that soared at us to sayhello and then zoomed away. We had learned a bitabout the geology of the area from our visit to thefossil park yesterday and here we could see thedolerite sills and the sandstone and mudstonelayers in the rocks. We could also see the rocksstained by eagles' nests although none seemed tobe active at the moment.

We had climbed one step up the mountain,but we could see the escarpment still in front of us

and another few hundred metres higher than us.The plateau we were on was the place to see lotsof game: we saw Cape Mountain zebra (we sawBurchell's zebra later), gemsbuck, klipspringer,steenbuck, hartebees and a couple of very largetortoises.

The road goes along the top of the plateaufor a bit and then drops down quite suddenly andsteeply. I wondered if this was the right place to

take sedan cars andwas quite glad thatwe were in Juanitaand later realisedthat sedan carsprobably approachedthe loop the other

way round and didnot even attempt theplateau or theKlipspringer pass.There is a very nicepicnic spot, theDoringhoek PicnicGround, where westopped andsolemnly ate a fewbiscuits that were allthe picnic that wehad with us. There is a pretty grove of acacia trees

there and a lot of rather different bird life from theKaroo birds we had been seeing.

From the picnic spot back to the rest campthe road was back on the plain and the drive was abit boring after what we had been through.Perhaps we were tired by now (it was after 14h00by the time we got back), but there was not verymuch to see except for a big herd of gemsbuckthat was quite special. We passed the entrances to

Above" gemsbuck; Below left: Steenbuck; Bottom: Monitor lizard; Below: Mountain zebra;

Top right: Hartebees; Lower right: Ostrich



the 4x4 routes but were not especially tempted togo and explore further as they would all have takenus even further into the interior of the park.

We had a quick lunch of left over boereworsand tomatoes and bread.

We chilled in the afternoon. After a nice liedown and a decent sleep, we looked at themountains and the local birds. Jill did lots of pictures on her computer and I cooked a very nicecurry for supper.

Saturday 4th October 2014Jill and I have been married for 39 years

today. Wow.

We spent the morning doing washing whichsounds very boring but actually wasn't because wedid the washing in a good place for birding andmousing.

We started with an early-ish breakfast andthen asked at reception where the laundry was andwhat we needed to drive the laundry machines.The nice lady said that the laundry was at thecamp ground and that we needed R10 tokens todrive the machines. So we bought three tokens(one for the wash and two for the dry) and off wewent down the drag to the camp ground.

It is a very smart camp ground and I wouldlike to go and camp there one day. They just needto move the Karoo National Park a bit closer toModimolle and I would visit it quite often. We putour laundry into the machine and then spent acouple of hours wandering around the place. Our Birdfinder book says that this is the best birding inthe park and suggested that we should see a lot of the specials here. We did not see any specials butdid see a lot of regulars. Just as exciting as the

birds were the rodents. There were lots of littlemice that scurried around at speeds slightly faster than the eye could see or the camera could catch.There were striped mice and another (morecommon) one that looked like a normal housemouse but which we later worked out was a vlei ratof some kind. There was also a tortoise whowandered through the camp being a lawn mower.

The washing took a long time and I

Top Left: there was lots of geology and

Second Left: the sign explained it Bottom Left: Bokmakirrie Above: Chalets at the Main Camp

Top Right: Vlei rat Lower Right: Striped mouse

abandoned Jill for a bit and went off to check outthe “Interpretive Centre” which is a sort of a



the Interpretive Centre which is a sort of amuseum place. As it was a Saturday, there were nopark employees around but the centre was openand I wandered around looking at the exhibits.There were lots of good exhibits but unfortunatelylooking at them meant a lot more standing aroundand I was a bit tired of doing that. There was alsoanother big tortoise there doing his lawnmower thing.

Back to collect Jill. There were twoBokmakieries bokmakkirrie-ing at each other as Iwalked out of the centre. We drove to our chaletand met another pair of tortoises mating in themiddle of the road just outside the chalets. Itlooked quite a dangerous exercise as they do it onthe march and the male could easily have fallenover onto his back if he had fallen off.

Some lamb chops for lunch and then a liedown but not a sleep because of some noisyneighbours who arrived and seemed to have car troubles as they shouted at each other outside our window and then ran their battery down trying to

get their car started. After tea we went to investigate the bird hide

and spent some time there. There is a little streamthat has been dammed and a hide has been built

next to it. The human entrance to the hide is fromthe camp side while the animal entrance to thepond is on the open side so the lions cannot walkunobstructed into the camp. We enjoyed our littletime there although we did not see anything veryexciting except perhaps for a pair of Karoo scrub-robins which, surprisingly perhaps, were a new birdfor the trip.

Then it was time to watch South Africa beatNew Zealand in the rugby.

Sunday 5th October 2014Time to leave the Karoo National Park. We

had a good time there and would like to come backsome time.

We were up early to a lovely sunny springday. Surprisingly, a heavy mist rolled up at about07h00 and completely hid the mountains in front of us. One moment it was clear and the next it wasdark and closed in. Then the mist disappeared as

quickly as it had come. An interestingmeteorological experience.

We went down to breakfast for the last time.For the third day in a row I had the eggs, bacon,mushrooms, kidneys and tomato. I could get usedto having that for breakfast; perhaps the occasionalEggs Benedict and kippers would be nice for achange. Jill has been a bit more adventurous and

this time she chose the one option on the menuthat allowed her to have only one egg.

We finished packing and were out of thecamp by 08h00 which we though might be arecord. As we were early we decided to spend alittle time exploring the one loop that we had notbeen on yet. This loop goes off the entrance road

and drives through the fairly flat plains country.There was a lot of game including both Mountainand Burchell's zebra, gemsbuck, hartebees. At theend of the loop is a nice little picnic spot, Bulkraal,

Above: the mist Below Left: European bee-eater

Below Right: making tortoises

complete with a swimming pool and braai facilities.I suspect that it is mostly used by day visitors from



p y y yBeaufort West. There were some nice birds thereincluding some European bee-eaters just outsidethe gate and a pair of Karoo prinias who objectedstrongly when Jill checked their call on her phone.

Driving the loop cost us about an hour of travelling time which we did not begrudge becausewe were quite early.

So we were back on the N1 about 10h00.

Poster map of the Karoo National Park photographed on the side of the administration block.The whole, huge, section on the west is only accessable as '4x4 Routes' and we just did not

have the time to get on them. We did drive on the major loop marked and also went to Bulkraal

on the far eastern side.

Burchell's zebra



The Long Drive Home

We had resolved before we started on this trip that we would try not todrive more than 300 km on any one day. We had nearly stuck by this

restaurant over the roadbut it did not open on a



y y y yresolution: I think that the drives from Augrabies to Kamieskroon and fromSpringbok to Lambert's Bay might have been a bit further. Proper South Africans drive from Cape Town to Johannesburg in a day and the weakspirited do it in two days with perhaps a stop in Colesberg. We are definitelyweak spirited and, despite the fact that we were already in Beaufort West, wetook another three days to drive back to Johannesburg.

Sunday 5th October 2014

We left the Karoo National Park anddrove through Beaufort West, Three Sisters,and Hanover to Colesberg. It was not far, just over the 300 km, but not a pleasantdrive as we were driving due north duringthe heat of the day straight into the sun. and,on top of it, it was a pretty hot day. Therewas just enough traffic to make passing a bitdifficult and a lot of the traffic going our waywas big trucks that needed to be passed. Toadd to the misery there were four placeswhere the traffic was reduced to a singlelane because of road maintenance and wehad to sit and wait for our turn to go through.

We eventually arrived in Colesberg atabout 14h30 and found our guest house, theLighthouse, on the main road. The nice lady,

Hester, showed us our room and where wecould park our car. As Ilooked at the car park Iwas hit by a wave of deja vu. I was convincedthat I had been herebefore. The wavepassed and I realisedthat I had been herebefore. Many years ago,Jill and I travelled downto Grahamstown for thefestival and stayed thenight in Colesberg on theway. We had stayedhere.

There was a

pSunday. The last time wewere here was also aSunday and therestaurant was not openthen either.

We had a nicesleep and went for a walkup the main road to the

huge NG church whichwas built in 1824. Wecarried on down one of the side roads to admirethe old houses and then eventually found a nicepub, The Horse and Mill, where we had a verynice supper. We had a very nice supper therelast time we were in Colesberg.

Early to bed.

Monday 6th October 2014One of my complaints about the

Lighthouse the last time we stayed here had

been that they did not give us breakfast and nor was there even anywhere for us to cook our own. Last time we had driven from here toMiddleburg before finding a convenientbreakfasting place. Those who do not learn fromhistory are doomed to repeat it.

We were up and dressed and packed allbefore 08h00. We had acup of coffee quickly anda cold sausage toassuage the hunger pangs and decided thatwe would stop on the

road for breakfast. Thereare two garagesimmediately outsideColesberg that wouldhave been candidates,but we decided that wewere too early. Then wediscovered the bad news;



there is nothing after them until one gets toBloemfontein. Perhaps if one ventured off the roadand took a detour through one of the little townslike Springfield one might find a nice little café (as

we did in Middleburg all those years ago), but onthe other hand one might not.

The drive was like yesterday; again we weredriving north into the sun, again the sun was hot,again the traffic was quite heavy. Fortunately, weseemed to have left road maintenance behind us.We crossed the Orange River into the Free State.The river is quite large here (much bigger thanfurther downstream) and is quite impressive. Actually, we drove over it so fast that we did nothave time to appreciate it so I turned around totake some pictures. Turning around the first timewas easy enough but, as I drove in the southbound

lane I found that another u-turn could be quitedangerous and had to drive about 5 km before Icould find a safe place to turn. So the pictures of the Orange River must have cost us about 20minutes.

We drove all the way to Bloemfontein andlooked for a place for what was now brunch. Thefirst place we tried was a truck stop that looked

rather un-savoury; the second sold petrol but itsconvenience buildings were under reconstructionand its Wimpy was a caravan in a parking lot. Thethird was in fine functional form and we had amixed grill to celebrate.

On to Winburg where we found our guesthouse quite easily. The Winburg Guest House isan old building with guest rooms added on theback. Basic accommodation but quite comfortable.

After a compulsory rest we went for a walkaround Winburg. The first thing to notice was thatthe roads around the town square are perhaps thewidest that I have seen in any town anywhere.Mythology says that Cecil Rhodes insisted that thestreets of Salisbury (as Harare was called) shouldbe wide enough to turn an ox wagon. An ox-wagonactually needs little room, less that a motor car, toturn. The streets of Winburg are wide enough toturn a Sherman tank driving at 40 kph. Winburg isan attractive and very old town (older thanBloemfontein) and has a lot of attractive buildingsand the inevitable beautiful Dutch Reformed

Church dominating the centre of the town square.We looked at the hotel, the Post Office, the co-op,another Dutch Reformed Church (both NGK, I amnot sure why they need two) and some hugemealie silos.

Back to the pub for a beer and cheese andbiscuits in our room for supper.

Scenes of Winburg Left from top: The NG Church;a very wide street;the Winburg Guest House;the Square Above: the Hotel and the Post officeTop Right: The Cloister (old convent, now a house)

Tuesday 7th October 2014T d Willi ' 45th bi thd d



Today was son William's 45th birthday andwe were able to sing “Happy Birthday” to him inperson.

We had a nice breakfast in the guest house.There was no menu and no option of what wewanted except, “How do you like your egg?”Breakfast turned out to be two fried eggs, bacon,sausage, tomato and fried bread. Nice.

We filled up with petrol and left Winburgabout 09h30. The traffic had grown but north of Kroonstad the road also grew: first to three lanesso one never had to wait long to pass and then to afull double lane highway.

We stopped at one of the roadside servicestations (there are lots of them north of Bloemfontein) and phoned the grandchildren whoare at home on school holiday. We told them thatwe would bring lunch and they ordered pies. Sowhen we finally got to Johannesburg we stoppedfirst at Brightwater Common and bought lunch atPick n Pay.

It was good to see the grandchildren againand eventually William and Yolande when they gothome from work.

Kirsten Patricia (with Jillian Rissik) Cairns

Hello Granny!

Trip to the Cape in 2014

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