Post 7
It’s a warmish 75 degrees and gray with 30 percent chance of rain. A gentle wind…they don’t call Port Elizabeth the “windy city” for nothing. I can hear the tide coming in with gentle lazy crashes…that is when there are no cars or motorcycles going by. I feel kinda gray and sluggish too but I need to catch you up on our trip to the Karoo.
So what’s a Karoo anyway? Well to quote the Lonely Planet guide on the subject it “is a vast semi desert stretching over miles of the great South African plateau inland from the Cape coast. The Karoo’s southeastern extension is in the Eastern Cape (which is the province we live in) and includes the exquisite town of Graaff-Reinet, ….It is one of the region’s most intriguing areas, with an overwhelming sense of space and arid beauty that stands in sharp contrast to the cheery holiday atmosphere of the western coastline.”
From here the eloquence quickly evaporates as I reminisce on small pieces of what I did on my summer vacation written on wide lined paper in the third grade.
First stop was a cheetah breeding farm. They take injured animals for rehabilitation as well as breeding for sale to game farms. We got to feed bread to the black wildebeest (a very short and knobby looking fellow) and the kudo. Then we went around to where we could pet the cheetahs. These are not tame cheetahs and these cheetahs would not be sent back to the wild. These had some malfunction like being blind in one eye or a limp. In any event we were quietly let into the enclosure and the cheetah lay down and we lined up to quietly approach her and pet her head. When she became restive we paused for a bit before resuming petting. I touched her head as though I were petting our kitty and she purred. I was pleased! The other noise that they make sounds more like high yelps and rather bird-like. I heard this when we went to Kragga Kamma Game Reserve here close to PE. The cheetah cubs were fighting over a carcass. At this stop I bought some prickly pear jam. It has nice sweet flavor but is full of tiny little seeds. Eating a piece of toast generously slathered with jam would give you enough roughage for a week!
On from there to a small farming community and it’s township. The township is where the blacks live. We went there to see a very unusual business. There is a man who digs worms and sells them to fishermen. If that were all it wouldn’t be a very big story but these worms are more than three feet long. They were amazing! It was unclear on what kind of fish was caught with these beauties.
From there we went to Noorspoot Guest Farm, a fully functioning farm. They had sheep and were moving into game animals as well as adding the holiday stays. You could tell those farms who had moved into game farming because they had fences twice the height of regular farm fences. Game farming has increased as more people want kudu and other venison species and warthog for their braais (barbeques). I can recommend both…the tenderloin of warthog is very tasty! Bruce and I were put up in the honeymoon suite in the original family home…the family has been here for about 200 years. The room was the size of Rhode Island and included a claw footed tub with a decorated screen around it. The bed boasted a down comforter that was another enterprise they had started. They had a lot of geese. So many businesses were needed to keep the farm functioning because of droughts that come and last for years. Remember the “semi desert”? We had a lovely braai with a whole sheep and some kudu and some sausages….sausages are always included in the braais. Much later many, not me, went out gaze at the stars through a 10” telescope. Sadly, there were some clouds but all seemed to enjoy looking at the stars in the southern hemisphere. They certainly weren’t bothered by ambient light. Some even stayed up and caught the total ellipse of the moon.
On Saturday we found ourselves in beautiful Graff-Reinet. It was a lovely little town that we didn’t stay in long enough. It is the 4th oldest town in SA. There were several museums we visited and discovered that many fossils from prehistoric animals were found in the vicinity as well as many homes from the early 19th century. We went out to the local tequila factory and looked at the process. They cannot call it tequila so they call it agave which we would know vaguely as the century plant. Farmers are beginning to grow the agave for the distillery. Mexico has a lock on the name tequila so they call their brew agave.
Finally that day which proved to be partly cloudy we wound up in the Valley of Desolation on a high cliff above the canyon floor. We were there for sunset and before that sun disappeared we were getting chilly and hungry. The sunset made us forget all of that. Sunset was through some clouds and so was particularly spectacular. As we looked down into the canyon and the valley floor the terrain became pink and orange on both sides of us. And if that were not enough, the full moon rose behind us just as the sun was setting. It was magnificent! It gives me chills just recounting it.
Before going home we went through a wonderful cave that had lots of stalagmites and stalactites and wonderful formations and then we went to an ostrich farm where we stood on ostrich eggs (to prove their strength), learned about ostrich breeding and many took a ride on an ostrich!...OK…I just sat on his back and had picture taken but the riders looked hilarious! By the way, it was still cool and having your knees under the ostrich feathers was soft and warm. We got home late and fell into bed!
Right now I am looking at a sail boat catching the last rays of the sunset in its sail coming into harbor. Every Wednesday the yacht club goes out and asks for crew. I know Bruce is going to get there soon. It is a very picturesque scene!
ND
Blog for some pictures: http://bndickau.blogspot.com/
