Tag: Photography
Where is Niewoudtville?
Simply put, it is about 5 to 6 hours drive up the West Coast. As you travel the country dries out. The plants become drought resistant and eventually you find yourself in, what has been called “big sky country”. The horizon is far away and shimmers in the heat.
Niewoudtville is known for its flowers. It sells itself as the “Bulb Capital of the World” and rightly so. It also has a an amazing waterfall and so we are first going to visit the waterfall and then get to the flowers.
The waterfall is about 7 km out of Niewoudtville on the road to Loeriesfontein and would probably be more famous if it were not for the fact that it only has water for a short period in spring and early summer.
It kinda sneaks up on you. One moment you are walking through open veld,
Then a noisy, boisterous river appears but you stil cannot see a waterfall.
Then a couple of small waterfalls do appear.
You tend to be disappointed and to think, “Is that all?”
As you pass the small waterfalls you realise that the noise of falling water is not coming from the falls you can see. And then the world kind of falls away in front of you and you have reached the waterfall.
And then you are standing looking down 100 m (about 300 foot) following the water cascading into the gorge below.
And then it just ambles away without anymore fuss.
I found this lovely little waterfall that trickled its way to the edge of the canyon and then just disappeard.
We aslo found plenty of green slugs. They are remarkably difficult to photograph. If you think a slug moves slowly, try to take a picture of it with your camera set to Macro. But in the end perseverance paid off.
But you cannot go far without seeing the spring flowers.
Before we hit the flowers we stopped to fulfill one of my ambitions. To see the glacial pavement that was ground down when South Africa was part of Pangea and was at the south pole. The temperatures that day were not south pole values, but it wasn’t warm. Notice the jacket!
And then we headed out to see the flowers that colour the landscape of Namaqualand.
If you haven’t travelled the Swartberg Pass you have missed an amazing South African experience. The Lonely Planet books rate this pass as the best in South Africa and I am inclined to agree with them – and believe me I have seen some amazing passes in my life. The pass is 25 km long and we took 2 hours 30 minutes to get to Prince Alfred from the foot of the pass. Why, well come with us, and do see why and what you have missed in not following it.
The Swartberg pass is a Bains pass and, as with all Bains passes has an almost artistic flow to it. It also has a a prison on it, reminding us that the passes in early South Africa were constructed with convict labour.
The pass starts off slowly and the local (Oudtshoorn) backpacker lodges provide bikes and transport to the top and you can ride down the pass on a bike. Not something I would recommend to the faint heartd or those who do not like being shaken.
Pretty flowers, calm slopes lure you into the pass.
Why is Amanda holding the flowers? The wind is already blowing strongly here.
The ruins of a toll gate.
Typical of a Bains Pass, dry walling is the norm, not the exception. Where he got his dry wallers from, I do not know, but the dry walls still stand.
The road as Tolkein wrote, “Goes ever on.”
And then we met the time waster. A golden banded sunbird. We stalked it for nearly half an hour before getting these pictures.
And then the top. Note the effects of the wind. The tripods were being blown over.
Looking down the other side of the pass.
Flowers. The wind is gone again.
A clever depth of field picture.
This what those curves look like properly focused.
And then it just keeps on dropping.
Looking back up the way we had come.
How did we get some of those pictures. Simple we climbed.
Cape Fold Mountains. You can see why they are called that.
The jail.
How does one relax on Swartberg Pass? Tai Chi of course.
Serendipity (n) – a happy discovery made when searching for something else.
In this case I was looking for space on a portable disk to save a large chunk of data, so I selected a directory to delete, but being cautious, I checked what was in the sub-directories. Lo and behold, I found a bunch of photos taken 18 months ago while traveling, stored on the portable disk and somehow never transferred onto my photo store. If I had thought about it, I would have written the pictures off as being lost. Equally the kloof shown in this email came as a complete and happy surprise as well – so join on a trip up serendipity kloof in the newly opened mega-reserve of Baviaanskloof in the Eastern Cape.
A bit of background first. Amanda and I had been to the Grahamstown Festival and Amanda had to attend a workshop in the mega‑reserve which was on the way back from Grahamstown. While Amanda was busy the farmer on whose farm we were staying suggested I go up one of the blind kloofs on the farm. He told me how to find one and I set out. I was not very enthusiastic as the surrounding country was hard, thorny and, despite it being July, very hot.
The approach did not seem particularly encouraging.
Well at least there is a bit of water.
A bit more interesting! The kloof is getting narrower and narrower. Believe it or not, that is the kloof up ahead. It narrowed down to less than a metre in places.
Looking back.
There are arums all over the place.
Indigenous Mint. I was amazed to find that South Africa has its own variety of mint.
Water thunders down this kloof. You can see debris from the last heavy flood in this picture. This not a place to be during a heavy rainstorm. There is nowhere to go.
Many pools have to be waded through or climbed around. This one was climbable.
This is in the heart of the Eastern Cape Biome. The local vegetation makes the water a greenish colour. It looks strangely beautiful and tastes wonderful.
And an arty arum picture.
Trees grow out of any cranny that has some soil in it.
An otters breakfast.
The last picture requires a little explanation. The water in the kloof is extremely cold. Many of the pools are impassable except by wading and to prove that I had actually waded, I set the camera on 10 seconds delay and waded out into the middle of a small but impassable pool. The strange look on my face is because I was losing all feeling in my legs, was convinced that the brother of the crab above was munching my toes and equally convinced that time had ground to a complete, but painful halt – 10 seconds was beginning to feel like 10 hours. For reference, the water was just touching the soles of my boots. When I got back and looked at the picture I realized that, to get a correctly exposed picture I would have to set the speed and aperture of the camera and then go back and stand hip deep in the icy water again while the camera counted the seconds. As you can tell, I opted for comfort and against perfection!
Wet, dirt roads, wild weather. Just the best way to travel.
Getting across the Breed River is done at Malgas by pont. The only still operating pont in South Africa
The flood waters from the last floods left debris high in the trees
Still pulling as the sun sets
Blue Cranes
The reserve lying before me.
A protea
Fiscal Shrike Bath Time
Weird shapes of trees caused by wind
Bulbul
Southern Booboo
Rock eroded by wind and water.
Fly Past
Don’t disturb me. Can’t you see I am basking.
Fossilized Dunes
Whale Tail
Chalet on the Beach.
Pelican
Grey headed gulls
Swallows nesting
Fishing
The new moon sets behind Lions Head as hikers descend from the top after watching the sunset.
During that photographic session I saw a green deep sky object. I am still battling to identify it and figure out why it is green. The red circle on the right is a hiker, the red circle on theleft is Venus, but what is the green object?
Categories
Peacock at Temenos
This peacock really put on a show for us.
There are some interesting and different doorways around Cape Town and I am going to post pictures as I collect them. The page is here.
But here are some to start with
I went for a walk this morning and found pictures of some really interesting architecture.
There a more pictures here.
Art Deco really moves me. I love it.
But Cape Town is not limited to just Art Deco. What would you call this? Faux Victorian?
Dunno but it is fun
Taken in Nieuwoudtville and Augrabies.
