Friday, July 26, 2013

to the Karoo

Animal count: cattle, horses, sheep, 1 donkey, other cattle with big humps, kudu, springboks, butreboks, dassie, read heartbok, cape mountain zebras, ostrichesa (I know they are birds and not animals but they can't fly and they are big so they rae included in my list), and 2 dogs

All the way along our travels we were told by other travelers, lodg owners and our guide how cold it is in the Karoo. "Just wait until the Karoo" our guide told us. "Trust me, it's cold there!"

This made some of us a little nervous, as many of our early mornings have been decidedly chilly.  Not 0 degrees chilly, but "I can see my breath" and several-layers-of-clothing-piled on chilly.  Drakensberg pumped it up a notch, or down I should say, although the days were summer-hot. 


toilet stop 1


another toilet stop
on the way to the Karoo
erosion obvious here
It was a long way to the Karoo as well. We stopped for the night in a small town to break up the journey, and then started up again before dawn, not even stopping for breakfast (we had a small box the motel put together for us - a hard boiled egg, a cold sausage, yogurt, an orange and a chocolate wafer.  Toilet stops only.
wow! did you see those baboo.....?  oh, never mind
Even then we didn't get there until nightfall. The last part of the journey was a couple of hours on a gravel road., a not bad gravel road for most of it, and a terrible gravel road for the last half hour, which was only 4 kilometers in distance so you can imagine what a terrible gravel road it must be. I come from Canada and there have been a lot of gravel roads in my history.  Some pretty bad.  But this was probably the worst in my experience. Probably a 9.5 on the scale of 1 to 10 on the "gravel road intensity scale".  And it was almost sraight up.

Ok you get the picture - the Karoo lodge was very high in altitude, very rough in approach and very cold in temperature.  The main lodge showed a flicker of yellow light which turned into exclamations of joy when as came in to a room lit with several lanterns, and a bright little fire.  Our own cabins were lovely stone buildings, but unheated and no electricity (a solar operated foyer light and a bedside lantern).  We never did get exactly warm, but we got as warm as it is possible to get there, with another cloudless sky and hikes around the property. 

I had ony heard of the Karoo in literature and until I went to Australia I had always thought it was there (Karoo, kangaroo - not such a big leap for a child).  A favourite author of mine Thomas Hardy, wrote a poem called "the Dead Drummer" that contained this verse:

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew
Fresh from his Wessex home
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam

I came across it again years later when reading Rudyard Kipling's "Bridge-Guard in the Karoo":

Sudden the desert changes,
  The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
  Stand up like the thrones of Kings –

We hear the Hottentot herders
  As the sheep click past to the fold –
And the click of the restless girders
  As the steel contracts in the cold –

And the solemn firmament marches,
  And the hosts of heaven rise
Framed through the iron arches –
  Banded and barred by the ties."

no shortage of wind for pumping water

Laying a train through this region could very well have been the single largest contribution to building this country.  The Karoo comprises an enormous amount of South Africa, so that it is even divided into sections: the Upper Karoo, which is itself divided into Great and Little Karoos, and the Succulent Karoo, which sounds like an outback recipe. It is semi-desert - where we were there was only 1 lone tree in the scrubby landscape, although the pioneers who had built this lodge originally in 1852 seem to have planted a few fruit trees which were still there, but very old and scaly.  Mr. lodge owner had growm up in the area so it didn't faze him but Mrs. lodge owner had been a hair stylist in another life and so this must be one incredible lifestyle change.  They must be very much in love, because there is no one else for 50 odd kilometres.  The lack of trees becomes somewhat of a crisis for our little group.  as it means wood is like gold, and there is none available for us to have a fire in our cabins.  With two safari groups arriving from wood-rich locales every week you'd think this might have been anticipated.
day about to break

Karoo lodge
breaking dawn
Coal mining and sheep raising took a lot of the indigenous four legges inhabitants out, but people like our lodge owners are slowly restocking them in ecologically responsible portions.  A few herbivores here, a few carnivores there. 
warming ourselves with sunrise
We saw ostriches, springboks, and butreboks all co-mingling quite calmly.  And another type of zebra.

Did you know there was more than one type of zebra?  I sure didn't. To me any  horse-like animal wearing black and white striped pajamas fit the label of zebra and that was it.  But no.  In South Africa there are two twpes of zebra, Burchell's and Cape Mountain.  There are even different ones in other countries, but two is enough for my brain to process right now.  Not being able to compare them in person I must rely on what the guide tells me.  Cape Mountain zebras have a white stomach and no"shadow' stripes.  Also, I read, a reddish brown nose, a prominent dewlap and a gridiron pattern on the rump.  Ok I believeyou.  How could I have been so stupid as to have confused them with Burchell's zebras?  Silly me.
where are you?
in the Karoo?
Yo-del-a-lay-hee-hoo!
Now we are two
in the Karoo
boop-boop-ba-do
 
Can we please go somewhere warm to discuss it?  Like the little bar area?  The one with the fire and the glasses of wine?

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