On The Road Home
After my great afternoon at the Clanwilliam Hospital I spent an hour or so in “downtown” Clanwilliam. I parked at one end of the town and wandered along the storefronts enjoying the sights, people watching for a little while, and even doing a little bit of shopping. The experience would not have been complete without one of Clanwilliam’s finest citizens joining me for a stroll along the road. It was a chance to practice my very limited Afrikaans as I told him to shove off and I was relieved when he took me at my word and left me alone.
It was my turn to cook tonight so a trip to the grocery store was in order. I am sure the townspeople will be talking about the crazy woman who was standing in the grocery store laughing out loud at the impossible task of finding enough familiar ingredients to make a meal from. While some things were familiar, many things were totally different. I finally settled on lamb chops (sans mint as it doesn’t seem to be popular here), rice and carrots. Fairly safe I figured. It will require an entire re-education to cook here! There are fascinating possibilities though as some of the choices have very exotic backgrounds.
After doing the groceries and a quick stop to stock up at the wine store (Hmmmm…. there’s that recurring wine theme again) I headed home to Gecko Creek. This time I headed home along the Highway as it was approaching dusk and best to be home before dark. As I turned off the N7 onto the road into the Cederberg I was confronted with an interesting dilemna.
The bridge over the Olifants River is extremely low, only a foot or so above water level at it’s lowest times. Even though we had had no rain today, the river had begun to rise. The runoff from the higher elevations had apparently made it’s way down to the main road in the 5 or 6 hours I had been in town. Although the bridge was completely above the water level when I went into town, it was now completely submerged in water. Not being very familiar with the bridge, I was not really sure how much water! There were two choices: go all the way back to Clanwillian (over half an hour away) and traverse the old, narrow, mountainous road back after dark; or, risk crossing the river.
Well, going back to Clanwilliam didn’t seem very appealing so … in I plunged. As it turned out, the water was only a couple of inches deep and it was easy enough to traverse it slowly with a little caution.
By the time I turned into the gate at Gecko Creek it was almost dark. As I was reflecting on an almost perfect day I couldn’t imagine it could get any better. But it was about to.
About a third of the way up the lane, my attention was caught by something moving up ahead in my headlights. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. It trotted ahead of me allowing me to put my high beams on it and getting quite close. I was first able to identify a bushy tail and a furry, brown and reddish striped body. Then I saw the fluffy, rounded ears. It looked like a cross between a fox, hyena and jackal. It was an “Aardwolf”. A mammal about the size of a medium sized dog relative to the Hyena family.
There is evidence of Aardwolves everywhere here as they dig up the trails to eat ants and leave behind obvious mounds of earth. They also make short work of termites. Although they are common, many people have never even seen one so I consider myself very fortunate.
It was the perfect end to a great day!
Tags: Uncategorized
Morag