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Saturday,
April 24
We
got back from Matjiesfontein what seems only hours ago (In fact it
was 72 hours ago) and now we are off to Durban. We left last Sunday
for the Karoo, to join Arelenes
Nicky and Lerie for their (and our) second honeymoon at the Lord
Milner. We left in the mist, following one of the few tarred roads
in South Africa which I have not travelled: from Stanford to
Riviersonderend to Bonnievale, to Montagu, and up two passes to
Touws River to reach the Little Karoo. It was one of the most
charming routes I have travelled in Africa.
One
turns off the main highway beyond Riviersonderend at Stormsvlei, a
tiny garden-hotel beside wide still waters, then wind through hills
under fynbos and karroo vegetation, past valleys of vines and fruit
to Bonnievale - which has an interesting-looking golf course - to
Ashton and the picturesque rose-covered village of Montagu with its
wine-cellars and dried-fruit stalls, hot springs - and another
half-a-golf-course. Here the new and best part of the journey
begins. You drive towards the mountain ranges to the East, West and
North, ducking into a narrow green valley which ends in the
north-west in barriers of hills where the first pass begins. It is
still drizzling as we zigzag up and beyond the last proteas in the
district of Koo. Another small village, with bird-filled dams, and
another steeply widing pass which takes one up to the plateau above
the Hex River valley and sight of the Matroosberg. Some sweeping
plains of damp Karoo, green lucerne and brown wheatfields, and onto
the road to the north - through Touws River to Matjiesfontein.
We
meet Nicky and Lerie in the Lord Milner library, with scones and tea
among the Victorian antiques. We spend this evening - and the next
two lunch hours and evenings - in the pub, where a fire burns off
the rain and dampens the pre-winter bluster outside. (At Hermanus,
we learn later, there is a storm from the North-east which blows
down trees and fences in the 'outpost'
of Onrus). Nick and I take a march through the flats to the hills on
the horizon, skirting the kopjie with its stiffly flapping Union Jack
marking the centre of a military camp housing no less than ten
thousand men and their horses during the Boer War. We stumble
across rusting tins and some ancient bottles on the campsite. We
also browse through Matjies history. . .
The
paraphenalia I have brought for a Victorian picnic in the open karoo
- chairs tables, champagne glasses et al - remains unpacked
during the chill of the three days. We decide to retrace our steps
on the same route coming home - and the winding, empty, excellent
road is even more spectacular on the downward run. Near home, Arlene
finds a fine antique shop at Riviersonderend, and I find small dams
and vast empty grain fields rich in birds. White pelicans swim in a
group, dipping their beaks in unison like a welltrained boat-race
crew. African Spoonbills, Sacred Ibis (and earlier on the route
Blackwinged Stilts) wade in small waters. A Forest Buzzard rises
from a pole a few metres from the Jeep and soars over the hills near
where we earlier saw Blue Cranes feeding. At home, high seas
pounded thr rocks outside Far Horizons, remaining powerfully
restless until today.
Is
it the absence of holidaymakers, or the first rains, or the first
shoots of winter bulbs that make the porcupines active on our cliff
path? There were signs of them in several places when I walked this
morning. The neighbouring gardener's
prophesies have proved accurate. The arum lilies outside our stone
wall have disappeared, or their leaves lie shorn at the base, their
bulbs gone. New ground covers and small flowers are leaping up
everywhere in the coast fynbos. In the grey of the morning, the
cliff face and the gnarled acres of rock seem to hold back time as
well as the giant seas charging against them from the south. Surely
very little has change here in the past few thousand years? The
changes are registered in immeasureably small surfaces of rock being
battered and eroded away; fewer fish, and no more large mammals
except mankind - but for the rest, the flowers and desperate little
salt-covered rock plants; the birds; the seals and dolphins and small
animal life must have been reproducing themselves here longf before
civilisation began. A horax, (dassie to us) stood on an old, twisted
rock and stared at me from only three metres. It refused to budge
when I stepped forward, or when I waved my arms. Only when I clapped
my hands did it leap down the seaward side of the cliff. An
adolescent mongoose waited in my path until I was only five paces
from it before casually hopping into the undergrowth. When I reached
the spot a second later it was nowhere to be seen - not even the
trace of an opening in the thicket. The rains have set off whole
choirs of frogs in the newly-made marshes amid fine vygies and thick,
low grass. On the rocks below, I stood beside a kelp gull on a
promontory beyond 'Angry
Waters' bay to my left
and beyond the rock where waves burst against the skyline; a place
where green sea, white surf, grey clouds and pale blue sky seem to
meet. The seascape changes constantly, but time seems to stand
still.
The
place from which I watch is a metre-square platfom of rock perched
high on the cliff edge - but not far this morning from falling spray.
I have taken over the gulls
feeding spot, for the skins of half-eaten redbait lie here, beside
neat little piles of crushed mussel shells.
The
rock-scramble along the cliff edge is one of the most exhilarating of
the paths, but I find I am getting a little old for the steeper
rock-climbs with sheer drops to the boiling surf. I have to retreat
and find easier routes down to the wave-ledges.
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