Thursday, 18 December 1986: A Drive through the Rural Interior of the Western Cape

Denver, Colorado, April 15, 2023

In the morning, I loaded a new 36 exposure roll of Kodachrome film in one of my cameras after finishing off a roll that was damaged by sea water the day before.  I made a couple phone calls to Cape Town and found a camera repair shop that could evaluate the water damage to my cameras.  Dinner, bed, and breakfast at the Valley Inn cost me R37.60.

 

View of Barrydale and mountains through a window at the Valley Hotel


“The times, they are a changing” (at least in the relatively more progressive Cape Province):  Sign in front of a bar in Barrydale has been altered to indicate that it now admits patrons of all races.  “VIR BLANKES” (for whites) has been painted over on the top row; “EUROPEAN” has been painted over in the second row. 


From Barrydale, I drove west and northwest on Highway R62 for 63 km to Montagu.  The highway went through the Little Karoo valley – pretty agricultural country north of the Lang Mountains.  After lunch in Montagu, I turned south on 62 and drove 25 km to Bonnievale via Kogmanskloof Pass which crossed the Lang Mountains.  It was another 62 km to McGreggor through dry, hilly country; then 20 km north past a number of farms in the Konigs and Bree river valleys to Robertson; another 45 km along the base of the Lange and Hex River mountains to Worcester.  From there, I turned south and drove 48 km south past the Brandvlei Reservoir to Villiersdorp where I had dinner and spent the night in the Boland Hotel (R30 for dinner, bed, and breakfast).


My route on December 18 took me through mountains, hills, and agricultural valleys from Barrydale to Villiersdorp.


It was an uneventful day of driving and shooting photos of interesting, but not spectacular mountains, towns, and rural landscapes.  Along the way, my jazz cassette tapes provided companionship but I was starting to get a bit bored from all the driving.

 

View northwest of Worcester and the Hex River Mountains from Highway R43.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monday, 21 April 1986: Zooming Across the High Veld to Piet Retief

Image
I’m riding in the back seat of a Toyota Cressida station wagon flying across the high veld at 140.   OK, that’s KPH but it’s equivalent to about 85 MPH.   If we weren’t driving on the wrong side of this four-lane divided motorway, we could just as easily be crossing Iowa.   Lots of mealie (corn) fields, slightly undulating topography, groves of deciduous trees here and there.   Tony tells me that we will be passing through coal mining country soon.   To my right and left are two huge coal-fired power plants.   Tony and Hugh (white Johannesburg business colleagues) are talking about the bad erosion in the northwestern Orange Free State around Bothaville.   They claim that the stubborn ol’ Afrikaner farmers in that area plant corn year after year after year and use poor erosion control practices.   Tony says the soil there has been bleached white by all the chemical fertilizers.                    ...
Read more

Thursday-Friday, 5-6 June 1986: An Amazing Employment Opportunity!!!

Image
June 6, 10:00 AM, Thornhill Government Guest Flats, Gaborone, Botswana Yesterday, I stumbled into an amazing, serendipitous opportunity.   While I had found my barroom conversations in Gaborone with the two British accountants very informative, I wanted to get some additional perspective on Botswana from local residents.   So, I took a walk to the campus of the University of Botswana hoping to meet a geography professor or two for a chat.   I stopped at the administration building and explained to the receptionist that I was an American geographer travelling through Botswana and was wondering if they had a geography department at the university.   No, they didn’t but they have an environmental science department.   I figured that was close enough having worked in environmental consulting for several years.   Were any of the environmental science professors around that I could perhaps meet?   The receptionist wasn’t sure because final exams were about...
Read more

Friday, 25 April 1986: National Police Museum Highlights Crime-Fighting Tactics

Image
Monday morning, 4/28/86, Hillcrest Community, Halfway House, South Africa Last Friday, I was in Pretoria and had about two hours to kill in the afternoon.   My guidebook listed a police museum close by.   The description mentioned “police and terrorist weapons, uniforms and reconstructions of celebrated criminal cases.”   I thought it would be particularly interesting to see how the national police portrayed terrorists.   It was indeed. In the terrorist section of the museum were hokey dioramas of “Terrorist on Guard at Hide-Out” and “Underground Terrorist Hide-Out.”   These displays included nasty-looking plaster of Paris black men poised for the kill.   There were, however, some more interesting displays.   One dealt with the Bloody Friday (5/20/83) car bomb explosion on Church Street in Pretoria which killed 18.   In addition to photos of the damage and newspaper reports, pieces of victims’ clothes, wallets, and other personal items were in...
Read more