Recent Ramblings: To Cape Town and Back Again

Though lengthy, this post is a bit more hurried than we'd like as we are scrambling like maniacs to catch up on things and get ready for our next and biggest (longest) trip over the break between semesters. (Poor us, eh!?) We took advantage of the time lull between the execution of UB final exams and the completion of the arduous process of soliciting approval for and submitting final grades by heading out of town. We've just returned from a 2-week camping trip, travelling in our new rig from Gaborone to Cape Town, South Africa and back whilst (!) stopping at as many places along the way as we could manage.

In a nutshell, the trip was like entering the world of fractals. The further along the path you go, the more you realize there is to see, and myriads of alternative paths unfold before your eyes. Our world is always like that, but it is easy to forget this as we settle into our tiny corner of existence. Travelling allows us to remind ourselves that there is great abundance of some kind, anywhere we look.

Red Hardebeest with calf at Mokala National Park

Our first stop was at Mokala National Park just south of the City of Kimberly in the Northern Cape State of South Africa.  Mokala is one of South Africa's newer parks, being composed of retired ranches in 2007 and interestingly, replacing Vaalbos National Park, which was "deproclaimed" due to diamond prospecting rights. Mokala is the Setwana name for camelthorn (Acacia erioloba), kameel being the Afrikaans name for giraffe. Our campsite was one of only five located within view of a waterhole visited by wildbeest, impala, rhebock, and lots of birds.  We spent a lazy day touring the 70 km of dirt road, admiring the abundance of antelope, warthogs, and sociable weaver nests scattered throughout the park, and added a number of new birds to our knowledge base.  It must have just been the calving season because very single red hardebeest we saw had a nearly newborn calf nearby.  Most of the parks in South Africa mandate that you remain in your car at all times except at designated view points and picnic spots, etc., and  unfortunately Mokalo has very few of these.  There is a friendly staff and a lodge where you can buy a cold beverage, but the feel is extremely formal and the view from the lodge is of the manicured lawns surrounding the upscale rental chalets with warthogs happily munching on the turfgrass.  Amusing, but not exactly our favorite type of scenery (well, except for the warthogs.)  So by the second morning, we were ready to move on in search of more unruly landscapes, and we were up at dawn for the day's journey to Karoo National Park.

Caracal as seen on our night drive
(okay-I took this photo in the museum) :)

We had chosen Karoo as a stopping point both because of its location midway between Mokala and Cape Town, and because it offers hiking trails and we wanted to stretch our legs and explore the landscape on our own after so much mandatory time in the car.  Karoo National Park encompasses both rolling plains and eroded mesas of sand and mudstone that were once part of a vast and ancient seabed and are rich sources of the fossils of primitive reptiles and amphibians.  The Karoo is the largerst ecosystem in South Africa and this vast, harsh landscape is typified by an extremely diverse assemblage of diminutive shrubs, forbs, and grasses, reminding us very much of the great Mohave desert of  the southwestern U.S.  In the Nama Karoo Biome, where the Park is located, plants have tiny leaves often reduced to barely visible scales, but to the eastern and southern reaches of this ecosystem were there is slightly more moisture from fog and more regular rainfall, succulent plants dominate. When the rains are good, vast eruptions of color burst from the deceptively simple-looking landscape.

Jon and leopard tortoise
 at Karoo NP campground

Jan Daniel and a southern rock agama

Despite our hopes for hiking, we arrived to the news that the Park had just reintroduced (ten days prior to our arrival) eight lions (2M, 2F, and 4 cubs), and the trails were closed to ensure the safely of all park visitors. The Park still offers three two-hour, ranger-led hikes per day in the foothills near the Park reception.  We signed up for two of these: a late morning and dawn hike, and were pleased by the knowledge and enthusiasm of Jan Daniel, our gun-toting guide and protector on these saunters.  We learned a lot about the diversity of the landscape and the many uses the early utilizers of this landscape found the plants offer. We also went on a nightdrive and were lucky to see a caracal with a fresh kill, a porcupine with its peppered spines bristling across the low shrubs, an ardwolf loping quickly away from a termite mound due to our approaching vehicle, several especially gorgeous black-backed jackals curled and waiting for action here and there, and the briefest glimpse of the banded tail of a small-spotted genet, an agile cat-like predator of birds and small mammals.  We also spent an entire day driving and admiring the vast mesa tops through which lions now again roam.

Rich in rainbows at Karoo National Park

The campground facility is very nice with a communal kitchen complete with stoves and sinks, and an amazing bath house, and huge leopard tortoises roam freely throughout the area, making inspections of the underside of the car necessary before moving.  Because the lions were reintroduced, the park installed electric "predator-proof" fencing around the entire 170-kilometer perimeter.  In addition, all public facilities within the park (lodges, chalets, pool, housing, campground, visitor's center and museum) are encircled by predator-proof electric fencing.  There is much to say about fencing in Africa, not the least of which is the issue of collateral damage, but I will have to defer that discussion to a future post.  Much of this work was still under completion while we were there so the bird blind was not open for public use.  We were told that the lions were doing well, having been fed only on the first day after their release and making their own kills since that time.

After our third night at Karoo, we loaded up the car for the last leg of the trip to Cape Town on the N-1, which was one of the most stunning car trips I have ever experienced. We gassed up in the small town of Laingsburg, where we were surprised to stumble across the Laingsburg Flood Museum, which documents the 1981 flood that,with little forewarning, drowned over 100 people and wiped out much of the town.  The museum contains many interested photographs and the windows are creatively decorated with items deposited by the river as the floodwaters withdrew.  As we neared the more populated regions of the western cape, the N-1 entered a region of multiple rugged mountain passes, with fertile river valleys with wineries, fruit and olive plantations winding through jagged layers of mountain peaks sporting succulent karoo vegetation on their lower slopes. We were catching tantalizing little glimpses of amazing plants like butter tree (Tyledodon paniculatus), but unfortunately there were few safe places to pull over and admire the scenery and we were forced to move through rather quickly.

Two of my favorite things:
Jon and buttertree in the succulent Karoo

Laingsburg Flood
 Museum window

Before we knew what was happening, we were coming into town and had to focus all our efforts onto navigating traffic correctly through the City and along the Port, down to the Cape Peninsula and along hair-raising and wildly-curving coastal roads with stunning views of the ocean below and amazing protea-studded, steep hillslopes above, while dodging bicyclists and other shiny, happy people (pedestrians and runners) through Malibu-Beach-like communities along the way. We finally arrived safely at the Imhoff Caravan Park near the small town of Kommetjie on the western peninsula where we had been able to secure a reservation for a tent space.  The Caravan Park was nice enough with lots of open campsites, and within a short walk to the beach and just north of the southernmost Unit of Table Mountain National Park.

The Road to Cape Peninsula

We decided to spend just one day in the City of Cape Town, reserving the rest of our time for reveling in the natural beauty surrounding us.  We drove to the nearby town of Fishhoek on the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula, and after seeking and finding what seemed to be a safe place to park, we headed to the train station to buy a ticket.  The ticket office was packed with shoving people eager to board the train, and when we asked when the train was leaving we were told "Now!", so we quickly hopped into the first car we came upon and then proceeded to wait approximately 20-25 minutes as more, more, and even MORE people were crammed into the car. We were standing near the doors where I could easily reach a pole to hold onto, and so many people were crammed into this open area that at one point I had to turn my baseball cap around backward to save space. There was not a private armpit, hip or thigh in that compartment by the time the train began to move on  its one-hour journey into the heart of the City. Shortly after our launch, we noticed warm guitar notes and a deep voice issuing gospel tunes from a region of the car that we couldn't see. I asked the fellow next to me and he confirmed that someone was indeed playing guitar in the car but he could not explain how there was room enough for that.  Many people in the car formed a chorus for well-known songs such as "Amazing Grace."  As the car slowly emptied out somewhat as we paused at stations closer to the City Center, we could see the musician, who was blind and sold the last of his supply of CDs before we could reach him.  Suddenly we were there and dumped out of the train, still dazed by the intensity of the experience.

View of Cape Town from Table Mountain

It is impossible to describe all the sights, sounds, opportunities and contrasts of Cape Town in a reasonable amount of time. Suffice it to say that we wandered about admiring the markets, restaurants, architecture, sounds (many languages), smells, and all kinds of dramas.  We were able to drop in at an Internet Cafe (translation: used bookstore with one computer for use for a fee) and check messages, and Jon was able to respond to a couple of recommendation requests, which are a constant, short-turnaround responsibility in his career life. We ate a nice Indian meal with a fabulous view of the street-life below. And we we still had time to catch a taxi to the Aerial Cable Car (Diana: you should have been there!) for a lift to the top of Table Mountain and its stunning views of the City and surrounding shorelines, islands, and oceans.  We left Table Mountain before we wanted to as we had to find a taxi back to the train station, catch the train back to Fishhoek, find our car which was thankfully intact, and drive back to the caravan park before dark.

African penguins at Boulder Beach:
don't they look like statues?

We spent all of the next day on the Cape Peninsula, much of which is encompassed within Table Mountain National Park.  First we stopped at Boulder Beach to look at some seabirds and visited an African penguin colony managed by the National Park.  This was a delighful experience. The park has erected a raised boardwalk above the dunes that the penguins occupy so that they can be viewed with minimal disturbance. It was amazing to watch these creatures waddle about and very hard to control the number of photographs we took!

Overlook at the Cape of Good Hope

Within the southern reach of the park, we took a gorgeous stroll to a precipitous overlook on the Cape of Good Hope near the southern tip of the Peninsula, explored some limpet-filled Atlantic tidepools, and admired coastal ostrich and lovely herds of an antelope called Bontebok, which, until recently, was on the brink of extinction but is currently rebounding throughout the region.  The Cape of Good Hope is that rocky point we all learned about in elementary history where ships rounded the continent and began to sail more eastward than south and where Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias established the a direct trading route with the far east way back in 1488. Contrary to intuition, however, it is not the southernmost point of the continent.

After leaving the Cape the following morning, we traveled west along the southern coast through the expansive suburbs radiating out from Cape Town. Perhaps the poignant of the sights is passing through Cape Flats, one of the largest Townships in the region and the forth largest in South Africa with well over a million people living there. For those who don't know, Townships are the living areas designated for non-whites under the Apartheid era. They are still inhabited today and exist outside every town we passed through, though they vary in terms of overall size and the type of structures present and the amount of space each shelter (home) occupies.  Many of the homes in Cape Flats, as is true of many of the Townships near Urban Centers, are mostly constructed of a patchwork of salvaged corrugated tin strips fastened together in various ways.  The roofs, also constructed of tin slabs, are often held down with old tires, bricks, or boulders. The structures are usually located too close together for any kind of privacy and many lack plumbing and any other kind of sanitary services or facilities.  In other neighborhoods within this Township, homes are purportedly more typical suburban-style stucco houses.  Although many visitors take tours of the Townships during the day, they are purportedly too dangerous to visit at night.  It is hard to overlook the reality that the lives of the people in the Townships support the lifestyles of those who live elsewhere.  Every time we stopped at a gas station or store I wondered where the person serving us lived and how they managed in life. In our travels, we never met an impolite or unkind person, and many people seemed incredibly happy and cheerful in their work, often to the point of exuberance.

Young penguins at Betty's Bay

Betty's Bay penguin colony

Once we left the City and suburbs behind, we began stopping here and there again to explore.  We came to Betty's Bay, where we viewed another huge penguin colony of over 8,000. This is the most successful land-based breeding colony due to the steady food supply and relative lack of disturbance. Nesting season is mostly over by now and many of these birds were actively molting, which means they are stuck on land and can't swim or fish. We noticed three late downy young near the entrance of the burrow, however.  As we were leaving, we spotted a couple of fisherman on a rocky outcrop casting their lines within the preserve.  Jon stopped at the preserve HQ to ask why the fisherman can fish so close to the colony with all the abundance of alternative locations nearby. He was told that the preserve is trying to ban fishing but has been unsuccessful thus far.  The representative there also explained that many of the young penguins that hatch late die of starvation because their parents cannot feed them, but the preserve removes most of the latecomers to a brood facility and re-releases them once the moulting season is over in order to boost the colony just a bit more.

Another town we stopped in (Hermanus) down the coast a bit is a famous whale-viewing location for southern right whales complete with an official "Whale-Crier" who wanders about blowing his horn and announcing the latest sightings.  The southern right whales are abundant in the sheltered bay during the winter but most of the whales have moved on this time of year so we didn't see any, but did have a very nice walk along the coast.
 

Shipwreck near the southern tip of Africa

We decided to head for and spend the night in the Town of Agulhas because it is located near the southern-most tip of the African continent where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans converge.  On a whim we decided to leave the paved road for a gravel road on route to Agulhas, and were delighted to hop out of the car and explore a protea-studded hillslope of Fynbos vegetation.  Fynbos occurs in a narrow band along the southern reaches of the continent where is is bathed in coastal fog.  There are three major plant forms in this community: heaths, Cape reeds, and proteas.  Although Fynbos occupies only about 6 % of the land in southern Africa, it includes about half of the plant species in this portion of the continent and approximately 80% of the species occur nowhere else.  After exploring this hillslope we continued on our journey across the farmlands and topped one hillslope to arrive in a Village that made us think we were back in the Czech Republic!  Indeed, we later discovered that Elim was settled as a Moravian Mission in 1824.  At present this municipality is sill owned and managed by the Moravian Church of south Africa and many Khoi, a indigenous cape population, remain there today.   Thatching is the Town's greatest trade and it is world renowned for these master craftsmen. The town also contains a mill that still uses South Africa's largest water wheel.

Indian Ocean encounters the Atlantic Ocean
at the southern tip of Africa

Kassiebaai

Sunset at the southern tip

Coffee in the lighthouse cafe

In late afternoon we arrived at Cape Agulhas and were able to rent a small cottage with a view of the Indian Ocean and the Agulas lighthouse, and just a short walk to the southernmost tip of the continent for the sunset.  In the morning, after a cappicino in the lighthouse restaurant, we headed out for one of the final parks on our destination-De Hoop Nature Reserve.  Not too far east of Cape Agulhas, we took a slight detour to take in the Village of Arniston and the centuries-old fisherman's cottages of Kassiebaai, with unspeakably beautiful turquoise waters, sparkling white sands and white-washed, thatch-roofed cottages overlooking the sea.  This entire community is a designated national monument.  On the outskirts of this community too was the ever-present township, but the air is fresh and clean here and the homes more widely-spaced, and we saw dozens of children playing together and eating honeycomb while they giggled at us as we passed through.

De Hoop Nature Reserve Dunes

The De Hoop Nature Reserve is about 34,000 hectares and encompasses shoreline next to the adjacent De Hoop Marine Protected Area which extends five nautical km out to sea.  It is managed by CapeNature, a public institution with statutory responsibility for biodiversity in the Western Cape. The campground is located at the top of a huge "vlei" (shallow seasonal or intemittent lake) that is located in a gorge and blocked from the sea by natural coastal dunes.  The lake is often filled with huge flocks of wetland birds including greater flamingo and great white pelicans, to name just a couple.  The fynbos of this area is specialized due to the coastal location and limestone soils and supports an amazing number of endemic species.  We saw both puff adders and Cape cobras as we were driving a loop in the park, so we were a bit more timid about trapsing through the Fynbos than we might have been otherwise. We saw some new birds here and we excited to see two hammerkop nests: great big messy globs of sticks and flotsam with a sneaky side entrance.  The campground facilities include a communal kitchen complete with stoves, pots, pans, utensils, a refrigerator and a freezer, which was raided by baboons one day during our visit. Luckily we hadn't placed any food in the facility.  Much of our time there was windy and on the last day it began to sprinkle late in the afternoon.

We left De Hoop the next morning in steady rain, and at one point we were behind a huge flock of sheep that filled the road for about 20 minutes before the shepherd aided by his skillful sheep-herding dogs, urged the sheep to one side so that we could get by. On one hillslope we caught sight of two blue crane, the national bird of South Africa, with two young. We left the rain behind as we crossed the first mountain pass north of De Hoop, and by the time we crossed the towering Groot-Swartzberg mountains, we had beautiful blue skies. We pulled over to admire a klipspringer on a rock outcrop and to scramble around on a few rocky precipices admiring all the amazing alpine plants, and then headed into the deep canyon leading down from the crest to the tiny Victorian town of Prince Albert.

Towering walls of the Groot-Swartberg pass.

Hail shelter in Prince Albert

We pulled in just a few minutes before the tourist information office closed in search of a self-catering room, and suddenly ended up with an entire beautiful house for less than the price of most U.S. Interstate Exit-ramp motels.  This was on the edge of town and we had a view of the foothills to the mountains, but steady wind and rain discouraged us from using either of the porches and accumulated fatigue urged us to sleep quite early.  In the middle of the night we were suddenly awakened by fierce pounding on the tin roof by thousands of golf-sized hailstones, flashes of lightening and booming thundering. Peeking out of the windows, we could see the ground was solid white with accumulated hailstones.  We were lucky indeed that we decided not to sleep in our tiny tent that night!!!!

Upon leaving Prince Albert, we were closing the loop for the journey back home and headed back to Mokala National Park for one last night spent in the wonderful fresh air and under the stars. We quickly reclaimed our familiar campsite and chatted with a couple from Johannesburg who were as relaxed and relieved to leave the City behind as we were. We enjoyed seeing the wildebeest with their wild bucking gallop down into and just as quickly out of the waterhole, and the warthogs wallowing in fresh mudholes left by recent rain.  The next morning we left early and stopped at one big shopping center to buy a few supplies for the car to the tune of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and the twinkling of Christmas lights and huge displays of ornaments and imported chocolates. The remainder of the trip was mostly uneventful and the border crossing was smooth except for a slight misunderstanding with a grandma who asked us to transport herself, her daughter, and two grandchildren across the border and back to Gaborone!

By the time we came home, worry about our house and family and friends was mounting, so although traveling is wonderful, it was a bit of a relief to return to base camp and touch base with loved ones. Sadly, the news that one of our dear friends had passed from physical presence in this world awaited us.  This should have come as no surprise as she had fought cancer for over a year and had been cared for at home by her steadfast husband with the assistance of friends, family, and hospice in recent weeks. But still, STILL: hearing that one so true, so unmatchable, and indescribably good was taken from us (yes, I know I am being self-centered here), could not, and still cannot, be easily accepted.  Nancy is as fundamental to the Tucson landscape as the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Santa Cruz river and I cannot, shall not, contemplate the desert southwest without her.  This is why we must try, as best we can, to enjoy each and every moment, smile, touch, and sound of laughter while we can, and revel in what good we find while we can.

Thanks for bearing with me through these tales-sometimes it all seems like a dream and writing these those helps me fixate these things in my mind.  Stay well dear ones!