Monday morning kicked off with a message from a very despondent Colleen, Lucy’s mother. Could we have a quick WhatsApp call? There was a problem. The minister said that marriages were not allowed under the new lockdown level. He was willing to give the couple a blessing but that was it. Nothing legal! After the call Roger and I discussed this a bit and we both agreed that it was ludicrous; how could marriages not be allowed? Then, while in the shower, the thought occurred to me to call my sister Cynthia for advice. She is a retired Public Prosecutor and still has many contacts in the legal profession. She promised to get back to me within an hour, which she did.
It was a matter of interpretation. The President clearly said that all government officials will continue to work, even though the offices will be closed to the public. In this case the minister is a government official insofar as he had been legally bestowed with the functions and duties of a marriage officer. The marriage can therefore be performed, and the paperwork can be submitted once the lockdown level is relaxed again. It took a number of phone calls, even as high up as Home Affairs, but eventually everyone was on board, and we were back on track. Gatherings of any description were not allowed so the consensus was that only the wedding couple, parents, minister, and photographer would be present; eight people in total.
While we were driving towards Beaufort West I phoned ahead and made a reservation for a campsite at the Karoo National Park, which I cancelled again soon afterwards. Bool Smuts had invited us to stay on their farm for the night, something we had wanted to do for a while now, but we never seemed to get the timing right. Bool is Director of the Landmark Foundation, an NGO concerned with species conservation.
It felt as if I’d spent the entire day on the phone which, by the way, is not my favourite activity!
It was dark when we arrived at the farm Kambro. And very cold. Bool was not there but he put us in contact with Jeannine McManus, researcher and field manager at the Landmark Foundation, who lives on the farm. She showed us where to park Ufudu and arranged to take us on a tour of the farm the next morning.
The focus of the Kambro farm research project is on predator conservation and establishing wildlife friendly farming methods, specifically human herding. We spent a most interesting morning with field manager Jeannine, an intern, and a Canadian researcher, telling us how this method of farming cuts livestock losses while no predators are harmed in the process.
Middle: Chatting to the head herder Dixon
Bottom: A watering point
Bottom left: The animals are sheltered in moveable enclosures during the night; sheep and cattle are kept separately. One herder stays with them at night in the caravan. Night duty is on a rotational basis
Bottom right: The enclosures are moved weekly to ensure recovery of the veld. The patch of yellow’ish grass shows new growth at a previous site.
Instead of backtracking the way we drove to the farm, we took a different, more scenic route out in order to join the main road.
Once we were on the main road and in cell phone reception area again I phoned Karoo National Park to reactivate the previous day’s reservation but without success. All National Parks had since been closed for new reservations under the new lockdown regulations. Oh well, Prince Albert it will be. We were planning to visit friends there anyway. Now we would just be a day earlier.
When we arrived at the Olienhof Caravan Park in Prince Albert, as at every other place, the two questions were:
“Where are you from?” followed by “When did you leave Gauteng?”
The proprietor had a moment’s hesitation; it was less than five days since we left Gauteng. But then the potential income obviously tipped the scale, so she allowed us to stay. The pandemic has been hard on the travel industry. We’ve had the same reaction wherever we went; people stepping back to widen the distance, fiddling with their masks to make sure it is covering properly, etc. One could not blame them, I suppose…
Lamb chops were on the menu for our evening braai. We bought them from a butcher we found in Beaufort West. He was most impressed and visibly pleased by my response of “Ons is nie bang vir vet nie” (we’re not scared of fat) when he tried to warn us about the fat on Karoo lamb.
We spent a pleasant morning catching up with Charles and Moya the next day. We first met them at AC Motorhomes when Ufudu was built in 2012 and have been friends ever since. They have meanwhile decided to retire in Prince Albert. What a delightful town. During our year-long trip through the country Roger and I often asked ourselves “would we be able to live here permanently?” whenever we visited a town we enjoyed. Prince Albert got one of the “yes, maybe…” votes.
After fond goodbye’s we stopped at The Rude Chef restaurant to buy takeaway lunch. No sit-down restaurant meals, remember? We left town and had our lunch at the bottom of the Swartberg Pass, overlooking a bubbling stream. The food was delicious.
The weather was changing rapidly and by the time we got to the top of the pass Roger estimated the wind speed to be around 80 km per hour. With that of course came the most interesting cloud formations.
When we arrived in Barrydale where we planned to overnight, the usually vibrant, interesting town now felt more like a ghost town. Much to our disappointment the small caravan park where we’d camped before no longer existed, like so many other places since March 2020. Then we spotted cars outside the Karoo Art Hotel, so Roger popped in to enquire after other possible accommodation. Lo and behold, the hotel had also closed down and was up for sale. The prospective new owners were inside busy assessing its viability, but it was not open for trade. There were no other camping sites in the vicinity either, and it was approaching curfew hour. They extended an invitation for us to stay in the parking lot for the night, which we thankfully accepted.
It rained throughout the night. We were getting closer to Cape Town, I suppose…
A most interesting read and lovely photos too.
Thank you Peter. Good to hear from you!
Hope you are both well.