(Temporary Backup) South Africa #36

I completely forgot about the evening drive we took in Graaf-Reinet the night before we left for  Lesotho, so I will squeeze it in here. We drove up to The valley of Desolation in an open-top Toyota 4x4. Toyotas are the main vehicle you see here, followed by Isuzu and then Mercedes. We are a Toyota family at home. I don't know if my husband would even buy any other vehicle, so he is always interested in seeing them in other countries. 

  The first interesting thing we saw was the dam that provides water to the town. So this is it. Not a drop of water. The smell was pretty bad as we drove by, once the water is gone all the dead fish lie there and rot. Ugh. The local people try to gather up as much of the debris and dead creatures as possible, but the smell is still pretty rank. The drought in South Africa is severe everywhere.

Within the next mile or two we entered the park, which, I gotta say, was pretty desolate. Unlike the “Gates of Paradise Pass” in Lesotho, this place was aptly named. Desolate, but also quite beautiful.

We didn’t see much as far as animals go, other than lots of impala and springbok and the occasional kudu. We were hoping to see the rare and elusive mountain zebra, but they remained rare and elusive. We did see these two juvenile leopard tortoises desperately trying to hump the older female. She was running away as fast as her little tortoise legs could carry her and they were determined to catch her,  falling all over each other and grabbing and snapping at the back of her shell.

 The bird was watching them with amusement, at least I assume it was with amusement, she/he would follow them from bush to bush...maybe a male encouraging the two tortoises to “go fo it” or maybe a female, encouraging the female tortoise to “run for it!”. Or maybe neither and I’ve just watched too much Disney.

Eventually we stopped and hiked up a short path to a viewpoint over the town.

And then we continued on to the “desolate” formations to watch the sunset. It was really beautiful, pictures don't quite do it justice. As the sun set the rocks turned various shades of red.

We sat and had a glass of wine (yes, even me) and enjoyed the scenery. It was fairly dark going down, good thing we all had our headlamps, it would not be the place to stumble over a cliff in the pitch dark.

Back at the hotel we had a late dinner, springbok pie for me. It was like a pulled beef in gravy, very tasty, to gamey at all. I was torn between this and a kudu steak, but some of the others ordered the kudu and we all shared. The kudu tasted like any other steak, but the texture was a bit finer and very tender and mild in flavour.

In bed early as tomorrow is the early start to Lesotho.