.: 11/04/21

Thursday, November 04, 2021

MENU visits the Karoo and the Garden Route 6. From Calitzdorp to the Swartberg Pass

Onward up and over the Swartberg Pass to Prince Albert

Leaving the Baylys’ farm at Groenfontein, we continued up the unpaved road crossing dry river beds which become torrents when it rains almost every winter, and into verdant valleys growing flowering onions. We passed the privately owned Swartberg Game Reserve and spotted some very unusual antelopes, Red Lechwe (Kobus leche), normally found in northern Botswana and not usually seen south of the Okavango

Lots of brightly coloured vygies (mesembryanthemums) along the road

The Swartberg (black mountains) are magnificent and Lynne had no idea that we were to go right over them at this point

You can see the waterfalls in the kloofs and the verdant pastures below, and a road going up ....

There are great views of the long range of the Swartberg (Black mountains) and they do look black

Then the road began climbing and, at a cross road, we discovered a charmingly (sic) named restaurant
called Kobus se Gat (tr. Kobus' Hole), which friends had told us about. We were hungry, so stopped for some lunch

It is also a convention/wedding venue

The man himself, Kobus, who is a great friendly bear of a man
He was extremely helpful, giving us directions and good travel information about the trip

We sat on the sunny terrace and waited for our food to arrive

A play area for children and more magnificent views. The air was like champagne

A cheeky sparrow who had just had a bath in some water, waiting for crumbs

Now dried off

It has a short menu: full Breakfasts, and various filled Roosterkoek braai bread (yeasty bread toasted on an open fire) and hamburgers, we ordered two and a couple of beers. They came full loaded with all the necessary accompaniments, and crispy chips and are covered in a creamy mushroom sauce (no sauce for John). It was one of the best hamburgers we have had in a long time, good beef, well seasoned, great flavour

"Perhaps," Lynne thought, "as we have already climbed so high,
we just go around those mountains and through the pass behind this one?" HA!

Succulents grow very well up here

Then it was time to venture up the Swartberg pass. Built by Thomas Bain in 1880s, it’s a major feat of road engineering
A rather narrow dirt road (just enough space for 2 cars to pass)

Leucadendrons - "Leucadendron is a genus of about 80 species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae,
endemic to South Africa, where they are a prominent part of the fynbos ecoregion and vegetation type" (Wikipedia)

Many kissed by mountain fires, they need fire to drop their seeds and regrow

"Are we nearly there?" she said, when she spotted where we'd had lunch below

The other road via Oudtshoorn to the coast

Farmland below, lots of fields of onions

and the road went on and upward and the views became spectacular

Higher and higher we went. Not yet at the top! We kept stopping to take photos and admire the views

And here you can see the huge uplift of the mountains

Geology eroded by water slowly over the centuries

A wild African daisy

You could see almost up into the whole of Africa (OK, poetic licence, but we were very high)

The trip played havoc with Lynne's vertigo and had her shaking with fear if her eye caught the drop while we were moving
She was praying that we wouldn’t meet another car on a narrow bend, which luckily we didn’t
The passenger side of the car was mostly on the side of the drop

How high can you go? This far?

And onward went the road, up and up, winding up to the top of the mountain till we stopped to examine this sign

This was the last car before we reached the summit for which we were very thankful

There was not much traffic that day

It was good when we stopped to take photos, especially right at the top, when we could really see the spectacular views
but she was not brave enough to look while travelling. And the proper summit was even higher up