Mrad & Inge's 60+ South Africa: West Coast: 1. Pretoria - Christiana

2011.09.13

We left home/Pretoria twice: the first time without some essentials (such as a purse and the Ipac), the second time to continue on to Christiana successfully – whatever else we had forgotten would become evident as our tour continued.

The following dawned on me: when traveling through Africa, we take photos of all the interesting things we see during our travels, but a stint at home and traveling in our own country seem to dull our perception. After all, we've either seen it before or we can see it again! So we whiz past, taking no notice or photos. And then suddenly we realize that what we are looking at is really worthy of attention and of a photo! Out comes the camera/cell phone and click, click, click – some of the sights are recorded – but there are many gaps on the first few days.

Here are some of the noticeable things we managed to record:

The FNB World Cup Soccer stadium.

A beautiful sunset.

After +-430km, we spent the night in Robyn's Guest House (Cell 0837261780) in Christiana where Gertie made us feel very welcome and the bed was good.
We set off at +- 8am in order to reach Brandvlei before dark. Our route took us through Kimberley.

Just before Kimberley we stopped to look at Lesser Flamingoes – they were too far away and we settled for ducks: Cape Shoveler and Red Bill Teal were special. A train slowly rattled past Kamfer Dam – does it care about the birds?

Just through Douglas, we saw a notice announcing the Confluence of the Orange/Vaal Rivers. Our GPS informed us that the area at the confluence was clled “The Nose” - we went there to have lunch.

Once we had marvelled at the Vaal River (on the left) joining the Orange/Gariep River (on the right) we returned to the main road to continue our journey.

Next we saw a sign pointing towards “Glacial Pavemens” – so we turned off to investigate the residue of ancient glaciers which helped to form the Karoo.

Hopefully this is an example of the glacial pavement?

And would these loose stones have been dropped when the glacier melted? Probably, but we should do more research!

We crossed the Orange/Gariep River on R357 as we were driving towards Van Wyksvlei.

The veld was dotted with bushveld bridal wreaths – a type of acacia?

The road stretched ahead – gently rocking us up and down.

An enormous granary caught our attention – what was the tent-like structure next to it?

The sign confirmed that we were on the right road. The road cut through the gentle hills like a hot knife through butter showing us the layers of the Karoo Sequence which form the Karoo basin.

We saw many of the homes of the Sociable Weavers perched high on telephone poles with the busy little occupants continually flitting in and out of the myriad little doors.

Then our GPS warned us of “Change in the road surface” - we traveled the last +-145km on a good gravel road through typical desolate Karoo veld. We were surprized when we passed a large power station in the middle of nowhere. Who would have thought such a structure would be hidden out on such a godforsaken road?

We traveled through the arid region of the North West region and arrived in Brandvlei at sundown. This is Brandvlei’s main street – quite impressive for such a small town.

Once we had driven through Brandvlei, we turned north on the R27 and after 15km reached “Oom Benna’s” (Cell 0836032958) where we spent two nights in our tent. We can highly recommend the place!

The birds in this region are “lifers” sought after by avid birders – so we set off to find Stark’s Lark and Sclater’s Lark – we saw both but couldn’t take photos. However, the Sak River, the sheep trails through the veld and the beauty of the arid environment were possible to capture.