It was very overcast when we woke up and there was even a light drizzle at times. Our campsite mouse kept us amused during breakfast and the well concealed woodpecker showed itself in the branches above us. It was a cardinal woodpecker as I had thought. During breakfast I had a long chat to Ruth about 4x4ing and her recent bad experiences. The morning's plan was to tackle the Waterfall Hiking Trail, a short walk of about 3.5 km up a nearby kloof. The walk in went past the other chalets that were occupied and Trefor took us to look at the private camp site, available only to a single group. It was delightful, completely isolated and with its own swimming hole in the river right next door. Then it was up the waterfall kloof. The waterfall, now dry, was at the start of the kloof. The walk up the kloof was quite steep with a couple of quite tricky scrambles where there were fixed ropes for assistance. It was all very lush and beautiful and we stopped near the top for morning tea. There was again no invasive vegetation and it was another example of how unspoiled and beautiful the East Cape mountains are. From the tea stop it was a short climb out to the ridge path that led back to our campsite. The path itself was a lovely walk through Fynbos and with dramatic shows of the pincushion protea "Leucospermum cuneiforme" in full bloom. All too soon we dropped back to the road (having lost the path we had to climb a fence) and got back just in time for lunch. Our GPS track showed that we had covered 4.4km. Not very far, but certainly worthwhile. Now it was time to have lunch and pack up. We were not in a hurry as we were heading for Willowmore, and had only about 180km to cover. The others left before us and it was quite sad to say goodbye to our campsite under the big oak tree. When we got back to main the gravel road, we turned left to complete the loop back to the tar. This would be about 25 km longer than the way that we had come, but would let us see more of what was a very interesting area. Marianne took over the driving for a while and hence there are no photographs of this section! It proved to be a beautiful drive through isolated farms on a road that got to be quite narrow at times with steep descents. The pass down to the Kouga River was as dramatic as all the Kouga crossings are. We got back to the tar 10km before Joubertina and decided that the extra kilometers were a small price to pay for the opportunity to see a lovely area which we had last gone through over thirty years ago. Marianne had been involved with research on Bushman shelters and rock paintings in this area in her student years, but she could not really recognize anything familiar. As we left Joubertina, there was an accident where a grey car had just ended up on its roof. It must have been going much faster than the mandated 80km/h. The stretch through the Langkloof to the Uniondale Poort was quiet with few cars and the Poort (gorge) was as dramatic as ever with its rugged sandstone cliffs and folded mountains. It was hard to believe that three months had passed since we came this way on our way to and back from the West Coast. I took over the driving again in Uniondale and the 60km to Willowmore was soon done. The campsite in town did look very neat, but also windswept and was next to the town taxi rank. So we turned west onto the gravel road to Klaarstroom that was to be our route for tomorrow and got to Finchley Farm camping about 3km out of town. We got a wonderful welcome from a ginger tabby cat that explored the car thoroughly before giving us the thumbs up to carry on. We got a bag of firewood from the farmer because there was no power. We could at least heat water on the fire. Then we drove through desperately dry lands to the campsite. There was no one else in the campsite, something which we were getting very used to. It was in a grove of the thorniest Acacia Karoo that we had ever seen. The sites were well sheltered by the sadly mostly dead trees. As soon as one left the Acacia thicket, one was blown away! The wind was howling over this parched land and one really feels for these desperate farmers. There was plenty of wood to collect and there was no need to use our bag of wood. As it looked like rain we amused ourselves getting out and setting up our various awnings. Doing this had proved to be a great "rain avoider" in the north on our travels and so it proved to be again. It did not rain! It was also very sheltered amongst the thorn trees so we could not really test our "toys". We had no meat to braai and Marianne had to get inventive with corned beef. We used a tin of very special Ecco Botswana bully beef, which we had bought on the border at Bray on our way back from our Africa trip now more than two years ago. It turned out very well indeed. It was good to have the fire to sit next to as it was very cold and we enjoyed toasted sandwiches for snack and got into bed at about 22h15 with the wind still moving things around.

Geschreven door Leartravels