We woke up to a brilliant sunny morning with not a breath of wind. Today would be largely a day of unknowns, as, except for the short piece of the main road to Eksteenfontein we would join later, we had not travelled these roads before. We had done some packing the night before so were able get going at 8h30. But before we left, I checked the wheel nuts and found some that were definitely loose. It was a pleasure to turn left onto a rough corrugation free track and drive past the ridge that we had walked up and the windpump that Paul and Petra had found. The GPS showed an old mine not far up the steeply rising road and we stopped at a concrete structure that looked promising. It proved to be a concrete water cistern so we drove further. We later realised that it was part of an extensive irrigation that had fallen into disrepair. A bit further on I noticed what looked like tailings on the right hand side of the track and stopped a bit further on where the hill was less steep. Walking back to join the others, I found that I had missed a very obvious tunnel on the other side of the track. A 5m horizontal shaft led to a vertical one that went down about 15m. We later found out that this was called Billingham’s Prospect and dated back to the 1970’s. They had been looking for gold. The rocky mountain track soon changed to sand and we continued along the Geigas River bed, stopping a number of times to look at tsammas and strange circles formed by purple flowered succulents. The Black Hills loomed to our left and the track led parallel with these dark hills. We had our morning coffee at a riverbed where there were lots of flowers. We eventually got the to the Eksteenfontein road at 12h45. It had taken us 4 hours to cover about 25 km, but it had been an absolute pleasure. Now we were back on corrugations. We came across the body of a very substantial trailer that had lost its axle and springs. Paul and I would both have enjoyed having it, but could not think of a way to get it into or onto a Troopy! I had plans to salvage the tow hitch, but discovered that some clever person had welded it onto the frame so all I got was the bolts. The road follows the Modderfontein River bed for a while and it was here that we stopped for lunch. The temperatures were now in the low thirties and we were grateful for a bit of shade from a shallow bush in the riverbed. As we got to the top of the pass just before descending to Eksteenfontein, we came across a sea of yellow daisies and many other colourful flowers. It looked as if the hill was painted. We spent a long time here enjoying and photographing a scene one would normally expect in the Biedouw Valley or Postberg, but not in a mountain desert! In Eksteenfontein we did not have much choice for shopping. Nicky’s Café was open, but the other shop was closed since the owner had gone to O'kiep. Fortunately we were able to get basic supplies Nicky’s. For once Vodacom worked and I was able to phone Penny. There was no MTN signal so Petra had to borrow my phone to make contact with her son in law. We then went to the tourism office to sort out a permit, but this was also closed. So we became illegals as we drove up the road into the unknown. We randomly picked the Fluorspar campsite as it was on our GPS and followed a properly graded road, which was actually muddy in places. At a lonely stock post we turned right onto a beautiful rough track and soon got to the campsite. It was an old mining base with a number of ruined buildings and an old Holden motor car parked, or rather resting, on concrete blocks next to one of the buildings. We had coffee here and Marianne went off the look at some of the far off buildings where she found samples of fluorspar and drilled sample cores. The old mine centre did not look like an ideal place to camp so we set off for Sun Valley. This track was even rougher and included a steep mountain pass where we were watched by a very big (fifty plus) troop of baboons. Sun Valley was the end of the road and the facilities were long gone. There was a toilet block that looked as if it might be functional, but it was locked. Maybe the key came with the permit we couldn’t get. We could see a track that led up the hill, possibly to another mine shaft. We would go and find out tomorrow. But it was a fabulous place to camp. We soon built a fireplace and got a fire going with the wood and charcoal we had brought in and we enjoyed the wors we had bought at Nicky’s. After supper we did another scorpion hunt, but again found none. It got rather chilly during the night, but we slept well in this strange, but beautiful place.

Geschreven door Leartravels