Sunshine! Finally!
Monday was an absolutely spectacular day. The sun was shining and it was mid-20’s. Perfect T-shirt weather. After the last several days of rain the river is running very high with the runoff from the higher altitudes. Sampson, Linton’s hired man, was coming home from the city and phoned for someone to come and pick him up at the road. (Very few workers here have a car nor could they afford to keep them on the road even if they had them. There is rampant unemployment — over 30%. Ingrid tells me that minimum wage is 7.50 rand (just over $1.00) per hour.)
Anyway, when one of the tour guides went to try and get Sampson, the bridge was impassable, even though he had a rugged off-road type vehicle. Ingrid had to tell Sampson to hitchhike back to Citrusdal (about 20 miles) and she would drive the back road to pick him up there. When she returned she said that not only was the bridge impassable but the road was very bad as well.
As they say, curiosity killed the cat, so first thing Monday morning I went down to the bridge to see it for myself. Sure enough, the water was just raging down with the crest being well above the level of even the fenceposts. The top of the cement posts of the bridge were submerged, I would guess, about a foot and a half. It was quite a site.
I puttered around down at the riverbank for quite a while but it was a little bit cold first thing in the morning and there was a very heavy mist hanging over the river. It was clearly a better day to be up above the river where the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.
The day before I had explored a little bit of the old road going north where I was treated to three different animal experiences.
While driving along it was shades of home when a Grey Rhebok bounded across the road just in front of me. This member of the antelope family was about the size of a small Whitetail Deer but had a blockier body type. It was mousey grey in colour with two spiked horns about 6 or 8 inches long, between its ears. Quite a beautiful thing.
Further along the road at the old bridge on the curve, I again encountered the troop of baboons I had seen there before except this time there had to be about 30 of them all over the road. There were males and females as well as young ones and they were quite comfortable slowly moving along the road to give me a good look before they moved into the bush. I had thought seeing half a dozen baboons had been impressive but this was truly amazing.
On my return trip back along the same road, again at the bridge at the curve in the canyon, I looked over to my right and there perched in a bare tree was an African Fish Eagle. At first glance it looked similar to an American Bald Eagle because of its full white head except slightly smaller but a closer look revealed a rust coloured flash along the top of his wings and a full rust coloured breast. An amazing site to see this very regal bird take off and cruise gracefully along the river looking for prey.
I had never been down the old road towards Citrusdal before so I set off to explore it. It proved to be a somewhat less remote road, even housing a very small “Primer” (elementary) school for the worker’s children. These small Primers are similar to our old one-room school houses and I hope to have the opportunity to visit one or two before I leave.
It soon became evident why the town is called Citrusdal. The road was lined on both sides by beautiful citrus farms, mostly oranges but some lemons too. The orange trees are heavily laden now and the harvest is in full swing. I passed many workers walking along the roadside to get to work. The scenery was again amazing. The mist hung like a layer of clouds over the river and I felt as though I was driving along above the clouds.
The animal treat today was a pair of African Sacred Ibis. Beautiful, black and white birds with long downward curving bills.
At Citrusdal I turned left onto the road towards Ceres, heading again deep into the Cederberg Mountains. I meandered past farms and cottages with names such as Waterkloof and Elandskloof, high up over the spectacular mountain pass and over into the next municipality. It never ceases to amaze me here that just when you think you are in the middle of nowhere, you come upon a house, miles and miles from anything.
On my way back, I stopped and had a look round the town of Citrusdal. A very neat little town about the size of Clinton I would guess with a main street which houses the usual assortment of stores and services. I found some of the homes in Citrusdal very attractive and well kept, and all in all I liked this little town very much. I did notice, however, that there seemed to be very few whites in this neck of the woods.
I picked up a few things at the local Spar (grocery store) for supper as it’s my night to cook and headed back to Gecko Creek after another day of spectacular mountain scenery.
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Morag