As school holidays were almost upon me I did an overnight trip to Willowmore in the Karoo as it's caravan park was highly recommended on a website I use. Getting there involved driving along the R62 to Uniondale through a valley flanked by the impressive Sikammaberg - I think.
Near Willowmore one comes to the other end of the Baviansberg which starts just outside PE over 200 km away.
I over-nighted in the delightful Willow Historical Hotel which lived up to it's name with artifacts from two Boer and two World Wars. The village itself was typically Karoo with quaint cottages, huge NG Kerk and a two donkey power "karretjie" to take you sightseeing. A more apt name I felt would be Willowless as there certainly isn't a lot of it. But it is amazingly clean and mostly still works, but a lot of empty houses and closed shops attest to a definite drain of one population group. The caravan park right behind the City Hall was as promised in good shape with only 8 sites and each with a dedicated shower and toilet, so I booked for the week of the school holidays and was assured that I would be the only one there other than incidentals.
The only problem with Willowmore is that there are no fewer than 3 mountain ranges between it and the sea and rather than go around I decided to go over, via the only road available between Avontuur and Knysna, which, though dirt, was surprisingly good for the most part. It involved mountain passes constructed by the brilliant Thomas Baines that displayed his signature stone walls......
.........and liberal use of rivers.......
...........to get over this lot....................
...........and finally back to the green and fertile Gamtoos Valley with the Beast sitting in splendid isolation in an almost deserted park. Didn't last though as I was only moving on the Saturday after schools closed so by Friday evening it was back to half full - or half empty depending on your personality.
The return trip to Willowmore took a lot longer as the R62 is not the smoothest in the world and had me down to 60 kph in places for fear of breaking the Beast. When I did arrive I'd been allocated the most private site around the corner behind the ablution block and next to a very reedy river, which proved very popular with the birds, but then the was the CLOCK. This was affixed to the tower of the recently renovated Stadsaal, the aforementioned City Hall, and rapidly became the bane of my life. Not only did it ding-dong once for the first quarter, twice for the half and three times for the three quarter hour,but it went and did it four times on the hour before erupting into the hour chimes with a bigger and louder clang. It drove me to drink, well more than usual - it was the only way to get some sleep.
But the wonderful herby smell of the Karoo and the flowers made up for it. It was obvious where rain had fallen..........
.......Drosanthenum I believe, with petals that actually reflect the sun.......
.............swathes of Gazanias..................
...........and minute Gentians with flowers only about 15 mm in diameter.
It was also great to catch up with all the Karoo birds and relearn the calls as the loss of brain cells caused by the excess alcohol had taken it's toll. At one stage I heard something that sounded familiar but was unsure what was making the noise, so out comes the trusty (well mostly anyway) Robert's app. Well when I played the Karoo Prinia call, this little guy went absolutely ape - actually felt quite bad as he was still going off when I came back about half an hour later.
As atlassing was the order of the day I needed to find water and Baker's Dam which supplies the town was the obvious place to start. When I got there it was a perfect summer's day and with not another soul around I just had to go au naturelle and work on an all-over tan at the same time. Have had experience of this on the nudie beach on the south coast of course. All was well until I decided to try and get through the tangle of Acacia karoo (see picture above) that lined the river leading into the dam. When I finally emerged it looked as if I'd gone 10 rounds with a caracal and I thought I was going to bleed to death.
I was out early one morning and heard the distinctive call of the Karoo Korhaan which sounds just like they are saying their name in a croaky voice. They also contrive to do an antiphonal duet (drop that at the next cocktail party) where one birds' call is immediately answered by it's mate. When I located them there were two pairs and it looked like either a territorial or sexual confrontation, with much posturing and shouting by the males - typical.
Also spent time atlassing in pentads that had only ever had one card submitted, which when you go on to the SABAP website changes their background colour from yellow to brown - quite exciting really - well I've got a lot of time on my hands and you do get to see panoramas like this.
The tourism dudes have to try and convince people to come and spend and one large board proclaims that "This is mohair country". That got me thinking that if mohair comes from one of these shouldn't they be called a Mo? Which led to the even more ludicrous conclusion that their offspring would the be a "half a mo" - as I said too much time on my hands. Would think that's about all you can stomach for now.
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