Déjà vu - Another long and winding road

And so it came to pass, another year has thankfully ground to an inevitable end.

Once again we are heading back on the road for another long winding road trip to Cape Town and beyond, why Cape Town again you ask, well firstly it is a nice long drive, and secondly other than the Pilanesberg it is the only other place I like in South Africa, well other than the Karoo through which we will pass en-route.

The route will follow thus; Johannesburg - Gariep Dam - Prince Albert - Swartberg Pass - Fish Hoek (Cape Town) - ..... - Prince Albert - Graaf Reinett - Nieuw Bathesda - Gariep Dam - Johannesburg (bleuugh)

Firstly lots and lots of packing, Pam likes to travel large, me, I need a shirt, swimming shorts, shorts and strops (canvas sandals) oh and a tooth brush.

So we will drive and drive and drive ...... And drive.....

600km down the road to our first stop at De Stijl hotel at Gariep Dam

Our room at the De Stijl Hotel

View from our room

The view from our room was spectacular, albeit that the dam is very low due to the drought being experienced in South Africa at the moment.

Gariep Dam seen from our room

The front side of the wall showed just how badly the water level had dropped since our visit of last year due to the drought now being experienced across the country.

Gariep Dam Wall

A rather vertiginous look over the overflow side of the Gariep dam wall



The next day we set off for our next stop, that being the town of Prince Albert another approximately 500 km down the road, now I can't be too accurate on this as we have a propensity for minor detours en route, I.e. We deviate off the main road into other little towns such as Richmond to have a peek around and to purchase much needed victuals such as biltong (dried beef or game meat) to sustain us on the long drive.

Unfortunately there is a lot of road maintenance going on on the road, so this involved stop-go places, and we were often held up for 20 -30 minutes - good leg and back stretch opportunity and a photo opportunity - apologies for the bluish photo! my camera decided to go on the blink and later I had to do a minor reset of all settings.
During the trip, we found the need to stop in at Beaufort West for some scones and jam all washed down with a vanilla milkshakes then we hit a rain storm, not as bad as our last trip that was to all intents and purposes a prelude to the gates of hell but pretty bad all the same.

Stop / Go 

And then onto Prince Albert, I don't have words for this exquisite little town, it is all I could ever want in a small Karoo town, peace, quiet, a museum, excellent food, and we can walk the streets safely day and night.
It does however get a tad hot, as seen in the below photo at 07:30 in the morning it had already reached 26C / 78F and this is on a day that is mostly cloudy with massive storms the day before.





The museum of Prince Albert is now housed in a ex-residence, and also proved to be a very interesting visit during the morning

Prince Albert Museum

Dinner was had at the Gallery restaurant on the upper floor of a building called the Seven Arches (See Below) as always a gastronomic affair, of figs and Gorgonzola cheese to start, then Pork fillet with ginger for Pam and a Kudu fillet for me.
I then had a trio of homemade ice cream for desert

Starters of figs and Gorgonzola

Pork Fillet

Kudu Fillet

Seven Arches and Gallery restaurant

The below photo is the self catering cottage we are staying in called Karoo View

Our cottage

And now to catch up to today this being Tuesday 10th December, we strolled around Prince Albert for most of the morning doing a bit of shopping and sightseeing and maybe just a bit of trying to walk off last nights dinner but then stopping in at the lazy lizard for scones, apple tart and tea to sustain through the morning.
And this led to a discussion on what was for dinner, and lo and behold what did we spy on said menu, none other than a plough mans platter, chicken, cheese, lamb, figs, salad and bread etc ( see below) after enquiry we requested to have it prepared and packed up for collection at 17:00 to be taken back to our cottage for dinner again to be washed down with a very passable Sauvignon blanc from the local area



We then went for another stroll around the town to walk off dinner and to get some exercise, we did think there was going to be another big storm tonight, but all it produces was a rather spectacular sunset.
And as I sit here on our patio looking out into the pitch darkness and typing, it is 20:21, the temperature is a mild 24C / 72F








Tomorrow we set off again hopefully crossing the Swartberg pass, and onwards to Cape Town, for us approximately a 6 -7 hour journey of about 500 - 600 kilometers again accuracy does not count because of said deviations to sniff out interesting places to see and eat.

Long and winding road......trip again

Off to Cape Town and beyond.... by road, we love long rambling road trips, going somewhere slowly, and this was just one of those.....
This trip was to Cape Town and back covering five provinces (Gauteng - Free State - Northern Cape - Western Cape - Eastern Cape) and 3812km 

Day one

Well to start with slow was the operative word..... on the first day saw us doing 549km in just over 7 hours; reason being bumper to bumper traffic, road works, nut job morons speeding and over taking into on coming traffic and causing chaos.

South Africans will know what I mean - we have lemming syndrome here - people have to rush to the sea at the fastest possible pace with no regard for anyone else.
A rather hellish accident gave testament to this bad driving attitude in the form of an accident just a while before we got to it; a car had been involved in a head on with a truck, tearing the car in half, killing 5 people.
By the end of our trip on the 31st of January a total of 1207 people were killed in traffic related accidents and the holiday season only really finishes on Sunday 6th January, with the lemmings doing the frantic trip back to Gauteng.

Back to Day one of the journey; added to the traffic, the rain was coming down and lo and behold who should raise their ugly heads but our government morons members in their blue light brigades (high speed convoys of high end vehicles with blue lights on the roof), pushing and shoving and overtaking into oncoming traffic at abnormally excessive speeds to get to Bloemfontein for the ANC meeting.

And then a long came a random road block by our oft moronic police force, who were all camped out on the side of the road DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING , just in time to block up the N1 highway even more during the main rush for the Cape coast.

Bumper to Bumper Traffic on the N1

But then it was into a small Free State town called Springfontien and a stunning B&B called Springfontien House;  time to relax, eat great food a calming bottle of wine and sleep, for tomorrow we do battle with the traffic once more.

Room at Springfontien House

Cottage at Springfontien House

Day two 

Back in the traffic and onwards passing through the Northern Cape to a town called Prince Albert in the Western Cape, at this point I will digress and tell you at this point we are driving through the Great Karoo where you can see 10 years into your future when you stare down the road

Off the Highway on to a long straight road

And into the town of Prince Albert where we stayed just out of town (by this I mean about a 10 minute stroll) at a guest house call Karoo View Cottages, what an amazing place overlooking the town of Prince Albert - a gem in its own right, dinner was has a the exquisite Gallery restaurant

Prince Albert

Gallery Restaurant and Art Gallery

Our cottage on the right 

View of Prince Albert in the morning from our cottage

Inside view of our cottage

The town of Prince Albert is 250 years old and the residents are super proud of their town, keeping it extraordinarily clean and neat - a bit of an change for South Africa where most of the cities make a very passable imitation of a refuse dump.
The below photo show the "Lei Water that runs down the sides of the houses with small "gates or locks along the way allowing residents to divert water into a small dam on the property to be used for irrigation of gardens or small crops they may grow - they have an allocated amount each month calculated by the length of time they can open the gate for.

Lei Water

Moving out the next day after a leisurely walk around town we headed out onto the Swartberg Pass..... I have one thing to say.... OMG!!!! it is impressive on a number of scales, So a quick set of stats:

• The pass climbs 1000 metres in 12 kilometres and is one of the steepest passes in South Africa
• It was built by Master pass engineer Thomas Baines and his team of convict labourers it took five years to build in the late 1800s. 
• Today it is a National Monument and largely unchanged.

 The geology on the pass is incredible with examples of the folding and shaping of the rock during the formation of the mountains, Here are a random set of photos to give you an idea of what we experienced, although they will never do justice to the impressive magnitude and scale of the pass and the mountains it climbs - please also note that this entire pass is a gravel road.

Start of the Swartberg Pass

This part of the journey was the was the final run to Cape Town and should have taken us about 4 hours, now for those who know us that would be like the equivalent of us hoping on a bullet train..... 9 hours later we eventually pulled into our accommodation in Fish Hoek, Cape Town - a bit tired, a bit hungry, a bit ratty around the edges - who ever said travel was a walk in the park.

And into Fish Hoek.......

View of the sea from our accommodation

So.... the above photo, a view from our accommodation was taken on the day before "The end of the world", I took it so in the event I survived the cataclysm I would have a record of what it looked like, well it looked just the same on the day after and the day after that, and the .... so as they say in the classics...."Life's a Beach...."

Fish Hoek Beach

Fish Hoek Beach

Fish Hoek in the background 

Kalk Bay harbour

We would walk from Fish Hoek along the beach to the next town to do shopping and partake in a restaurant or two that we are rather partial to, really heavy labour at a distance of 4 km but someone has to be brave and do it, this we only did when the really heavy work of sweating on the beach and swimming in the sea got a bit tiring.

View of the harbour from the Cape to Cuba restaurant

"Artsy Fartsy" photo of seagulls

Moon rise at 8:16pm on December the 27th 2012

Christmas Eve was celebrated with my cousins from Cape Town, Johannesburg and Belgium and Christmas day was celebrated with my Sister and family who also live in Somerset West in the Western Cape, yes we are rather spread around.

And so it was back to the beach .........

Day something or other......

Al good things must come to an end, not that the next part of the holiday was by any means bad, it was just the next long drive back to Johannesburg; we did do a bit of a change to the trip in the route that was originally planned was changed to take us back to Prince Albert (just via a different route) as we had enjoyed it so much.

So as I said back to Prince Albert for the night, then ever onward to a town called Graaff Reinett where Pam's sister and her husband run a B&B

 Day after the something or other day......

Back on the road again to Springfontien for another night and then onwards to Johannesburg.......