Last stop: Clarens

Leaving Kimberley it became apparent that the Karoo was behind us as we passed through lush green fields contrasting with deep red soils.

Soon we began to see spectacular rock formations -

Accompanied by that dreaded road sign -

The roads through the Karoo had been smooth as silk, but as soon as the scenery improved, the roads went all to pot (holes).  Guess you just can't have it all.

So we did the pothole slalom into the town of Clarens, which is our final stopping place before heading home.  This is a popular vacation spot, a few hours from Johannesburg and at the entrance to the Golden Gate National Park.  I'm sitting on the patio of our hotel room looking out at the sun setting behind the hills.

The hills are actually higher than they appear - the town of Clarens is at about 6000 ft. elevation.

After we arrived and got settled into our hotel, we went for a drive in Golden Gate National Park, climbing in elevation to well over 7000 ft. - the surrounding mountains are over 10,000 ft.  We saw more rock formations and a herd of mid-size antelope - we believe these are kudu.

Last night we were entertained with an absolutely spectacular thunderstorm, with nearly constant lightning that went on for hours.  We opened the drapes and sliding glass door so we could see and hear it - until the torrential rain began pounding down, forcing us to close the door.

This is also an artist enclave, with many galleries of both serious and whimsical art.  I enjoyed this fountain outside one of the latter  -

The water pour from the teapot into the flower pot below.

Now it's time to get our bags packed for the journey home.  It's been a fantastic trip.

Through the Karoo

The drive north through the Great Karoo from Beaufort West to the diamond mining city of Kimberley was pretty much like driving through the desert anywhere.  The subtle beauty of the desert gets old after a hundred miles or so.

However, our destination, the historic Kimberley Club, was well worth the drive.  This was the private club of the early diamond moguls, beginning with Cecil Rhodes.  It's now a boutique hotel.

We had dinner in the Rhodes dining room -

The halls are full of photos and newspaper articles about the history of the club and Kimberley, including the siege of 1899-1900 during the Boer War.  Some of the huge shells from the "Long Tom" gun that the Boers bombarded the city with are on display, as well.

Apparently the club members convinced the Boers to not shell the club by pointing out that they'd have a great club for themselves should they win the war - it would be a shame to ruin it.

To the Southern End of Africa (and back)

The end - of the African continent, anyway.  

The drive to Cape Aguilhas, the southern-most point of Africa where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet, took us a little out of our way, but how could we come this far and not visit this spot (and get our picture taken here, of course).  When John was here two years ago, the weather was calm and sunny, and he could see a clear delineation between the different colors of the water from each ocean.  Today, though, the water is too rough to see that.

We walked up the the lighthouse that was built in the mid-1800's.  Apparently there have been a lot of shipwrecks in this area.  According to the woman at the information desk at the lighthouse, one such wreck that happened in the 1980's is still visible about a mile further on the Atlantic side (there's no road to it - we took her word for it).

We stayed at the same little hotel where John stayed when he was here before.

We had one of the corner rooms with a great view - again, same view John had before.  This was his picture from two years ago -

And this time -

Aside from the clearer weather before, John recalls that there were far fewer homes along the coastline.  It does look as though many of the homes are very new.

On our return trip, we took an alternative route back to Oudtshoorn, where we saw more ostriches -

The only backtracking we did was through the beautiful Meiringspoort Canyon, which links the Klein (small) Karoo and the Great Karoo (a "Karoo" seems to be a high desert).  No pictures - while it's a very scenic drive, I couldn't find a way to get a picture that did it justice (one rocky cliff pretty much looks like any other).  You could say that the whole was much greater than the sum of the parts.

Our destination was a B&B in the town of Beaufort West, whose claims to fame include being the largest town of the Great Karoo and the hometown of Christian Barnard, who performed the first successful heart transplant.  Our lodging had been a farmhouse, with the rooms in what had probably been the outbuildings.

Breakfast was on the back porch of the farmhouse.

The property is surrounded by a high wall topped with an electric fence.  This seemed a little over the top, even by South African standards (the crime rate is REALLY over the top here), but when we found out that the are just beyond the property is a National Park containing lions, leopards, and such, the security seemed very reasonable.

Oudtshoorn and Swartberg Pass

We're in Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital of the universe, and a very nice town in the semi-arid "klein karoo," which, as far as I can ascertain, means small area of semi-arid vegetation.  Just over the mountains is the large karoo.  Besides ostriches, there's a thriving wine industry here, as well.

But ostriches rule.

We passed ostrich farm after ostrich farm, as well as an ostrich safari (not quite sure how that works), and just down the road from the B&B where we're staying we could climb aboard and race ostriches.  

We passed on that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and decided instead to tackle yet another unpaved road - Swartberg Pass.

Swartberg (which means "black mountain") is a World Heritage Site and was constructed in the 1880's using convict labor.

One of the notable features are the dry-stack stone walls that are still standing and functional after more than 125 years, although repairs are made periodically.  These stones were shaped with hammers and chisels, moved into place on the steep slopes with wheelbarrows, and then fitted together by hand.

It's hard to imagine how they accomplished this without any modern equipment.

Our route back to Oudtshoorn included going through a beautiful gorge - we will be back this way when we head back north.

Our B&B in Oudtshoorn has a pool - we've spent the afternoons reading in the lounge chairs.

Roads Not Taken

We knew we were going to be getting off the usual tourist route on this trip, and that the unpaved roads would likely be fairly solitary, but we had no idea how little traffic we'd encounter on some of the main highways in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces.  These are, indeed, roads not taken.

They are, however, roads often worked on.  On some stretches of highway, we encountered road construction every five miles or so.  This gave us plenty of opportunity to note (and take pictures of) a few peculiarities.

For one thing, rocks seem to be considered a useful substitute for orange cones - to mark the edge of the open lane, for example.

And to indicate a lane closure -

And to keep people from driving on the shoulder -

Driving Through the Drakensbergs

The Drakensberg ("dragon mountains" in Afrikaans) Mountains form borders between several provinces and between the countries of Lesotho and Swaziland and South Africa.  They are geologically very old, worn down to the craggy inner cores of the volcanic peaks, with row after row of sharp-edged escarpments that reveal layers of former ocean beds.

The mountain in the above picture doesn't look particularly high until you take into account that the road is nearly 6000 ft. In elevation.  (We landed at Johannesburg airport at over 5000 ft and haven't been below 4000 ft yet - very high plateau amid the mountains.)

To get a sense of the age of the mountain range, an area in the mountains just south of Kruger National Park near the town of Barberton has the oldest rocks found on earth - Barberton Greenstone (one of the Rotary Club members gave us a sample as a souvenir).  The oldest form of life - a micro bacterium - was also found in the same place, as well as many fossils.

Our drive from Rorke's Drift to the small town of Himeville, located on the east end of Sani Pass which separates South Africa from Lesotho, was another adventure on unpaved, unmarked roads - far from the tourist routes.  Our GPS gave it the old college try, but we didn't have complete confidence in its directions.  Our primary clue that we'd taken a wrong turn was when the estimated time of arrival would suddenly increase dramatically.

But we did get there (a couple hours later than expected), and the scenery was spectacular.

This is a picture that John took last year along the same route -

We spent two nights at a farm B&B in Himeville - a beautiful place in a stunning setting at the base of the mountains. 

More giraffes in their garden - these are pretty stationary, though - makes them easier to photograph.

We checked on taking a four-wheel drive tour of Sani Pass (cars like ours aren't permitted on the VERY rough pass), but the options didn't sound appealing, so we spent the day sightseeing in the area, instead.

And posing for picture on the grounds of the B&B.

We ended the day with dinner at a nice little cafe, followed by a spectacular thunderstorm that lasted for hours.

Battlefields of the Zulu Wars

We left Kruger National Park and drove south to KwaZulu Natal province to see several sites associated with the Zulu Wars (mid-1800's).  These occurred prior to the Boer War (around 1900) between the British and Dutch over who would claim South Africa as a colony.

Our first stop was the memorial to the Dutch Voortrekkers at Blood River.  The memorial is a full-scale replica of 64 wagons cast in bronze encircled in "laager" formation exactly as they were during the Battle of Blood River(1838) when the Voortrekkers held off a Zulu charge.

Our drive though the unpaved roads of the area was a challenge, both in terms of dodging livestock, pedestrians, and dangerously overloaded farm vehicles and figuring our where we were going.  The GPS was helpful, but it occasionally wanted us to take nonexistent roads.  It did eventually lead us to our next lodging - Rorke's Drift Hotel, overlooking the site of another famous battle.  It's in a stunning location.

The battles of Rorke's Drift (a drift is a ford in the river) and Isandlwana (about 6-7 miles away) were a famous British victory (Rorke's Drift) and disaster (Isandlwana) occurring on the same day in 1879.  The classic movies "Zulu" and "Zulu Dawn" do a fairly accurate job of telling the stories of Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana, respectively.

After a good night's sleep, we went to the Isandlwana site, which features white stone cairns indicating where British soldiers fell in battle.  The parallels to the Battle of Little Big Horn, which occurred just a few years earlier, are significant.  Big egos coupled with bad judgment - a sure recipe for disaster.

From there we drove up to the spot on a hillside where two lieutenants, Caughill and Melville, tried to save the queen's colors (but they would have spelled it colours) from falling into the enemy's hands.  They lost their horses - and the colors - while trying to cross the river, and made it up a steep hill before dying themselves.  The flag was later recovered downstream by other British soldiers.  

Getting to the memorial involved driving through a resort's property - we got past the guard at the gate because he mistook us for guests who were checking in, but a pickup from the resort came looking for us while we were at the memorial.  They left us alone, but they were keeping an eye on us.  The owner of the hotel where we're staying assured us that we have the right to access the public memorial even though the resort would prefer otherwise.

These sites are amid several small Zulu communities ("kraals" in Afrikaans).  This is the medical clinic in one of them.  We've noticed that nearly every community has what appears to be a modern clinic, but notice the razor wire on the fence surrounding it - theft and general lawlessness are rampant throughout South Africa, and razor wire is everywhere.

Kruger National Park

Kruger National Park is a vast (several hundred square miles) game preserve in the northwest corner of South Africa.  Rules are strict for humans - unless you're staying at a designated lodge or camping area within the park, you have to enter and leave on the same day during daylight hours; you cannot get out of the car; and rangers search your car when you leave, checking for evidence of poaching.

We opted to stay at a lodge in the park in order to see the wildlife at dawn and sundown.

Jock Safari Lodge is named for the title character in a famous South African book - "Jock of the Bushveld" - a nonfiction memoir of a dog who had accompanied his owner as they transported goods to the gold camps in South Africa in the late 1800's. The real dog was born near the location of the lodge.

Our room is actually a separate cottage with its own deck overlooking the river bed (which is dry at the moment - it fills whenever it rains here or in the surrounding mountains).

It has its own "spa pool" which isn't heated, unfortunately.

But the wildlife is the reason to be here.  On the drive into the lodge we saw impalas (there are lots of them here) and zebras.

And right around the corner was an elephant standing right next to the road.

As we approached the lodge, we saw a waterbok, a large African antelope with a distinctive white ring on its rump (the locals call it a toilet bowl ring).

Our stay at the lodge included two 3-4 hour game drives per day, one just before dawn and another in the late afternoon/evening - the times that animals are most active.  The safari vehicles are like extended Jeeps, and our guide is an experienced naturalist and tracker.

The high point of our first evening drive was heralded by sighting lots of vultures in a tree.  

Then we got a whiff of a "maturing" carcass, just before coming to two male lions who were resting on either side of the road after a big meal.  They had dirty faces.

Getting up before 5 am didn't sound like a good time, but the reward was a spectacular sight - sunrise on the veld.

And more animals, such as giraffes.

And a wildebeest.

Lots of impalas.

And rhinos 

We were driving in the river bed on the second evening when John noticed holes dug in the sand and asked what caused them.  

Our guide explained that elephants dug the holes to get water, which is only a few inches down.  And a couple minutes later we came upon an elephant doing just that.

Then an elephant family used the water hole, too.

Notice how the parents surround the babies.

As we were marveling at this sight, our guide got a call on the radio from another guide who had come across three mother lions and their nine cubs, and off we flew to see them.

The cubs came very close to our vehicle, and we stayed very still to avoid getting the lionesses agitated, but after one mock charge, they ignored us - but kept an eye on us, nonetheless.

We watched the cubs play for about an hour.

The next morning we found them again, this time only about a hundred yards from the lodge (which has a high-voltage perimeter fence) -

This morning they were  having breakfast on a waterbok (a large antelope - likely the same one we'd taken a picture of on the way in).  The next pictures aren't for the faint of heart.

After the second morning drive, we had breakfast and checked out of the lodge.