Category: this is south africa

What happened?

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OK. Let me quickly fill you in a few details.

We abandoned Agulhas on Friday afternoon. There was no power, no internet, and little hope of either being restored anytime soon. We were lucky enough to have somewhere to go (home), the roads were open, and so we took the chance.

There was a lot of fire damage on the road back up to Bredasdorp, and the situation was too risky to pull over and take photos like we had done on the way down. But here’s an image from the car window of the same place that we got the second shot in this post.

So we’ve been home since about 7:30 pm on Friday evening, and the electricity was only restored to Agulhas at 6pm this evening: an outage of about 74 hours. That makes even loadshedding look like a minor inconvenience.

The fire is now contained:

Which is obviously great news for those who have had no power for three days, and for those whose property was threatened by the actual flames, rather than the lack of utilities.

As for us: a disappointing end to a few days away, but we’ll be back – hopefully for a less eventful visit – sometime soon.

Fire issue

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We drove down to the cottage yesterday afternoon, for a few days R&R.

Before we set off, I did note that there was a bit of a fire just south of Bredasdorp, but we weren’t quite aware of what was coming.

Even from Caledon, we could see the fire burning about 60km away.

And the scenes in Bredasdorp were even more dramatic – but I can’t show you yet (see below) – before we drive within a few hundred metres of the blaze:

The problem is this. The internet cables through to (6000 miles from) civilisation run along this road, and they’ve been damaged.

So we’re running very low on bandwidth, and that’s why I’m writing this post last night (if you’re reading it today), just in case the damage gets worse.

Incidentally, the fire has now closed the road back to Cape Town as well, so I’m guessing that the power lines to us – which run along the side of that road – are in danger too.

Never a dull moment.

But maybe some dark ones.

Quota Ostrich

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I have a feeling that the afternoon and evening are going to run away from me (not literally – that would be weird), and so I thought I’d pop up a quick Quota Photo.

This one was taken in the car park of one of the places I stayed up in Limpopo when I was taking photos there last March.

Ostrich in a car park?
I know, I know, its serious.

Sorry.

The acacia tree made for a nice frame for this male ostrich’s head. His comedic goon expression does the rest quite nicely.

When I was younger, growing up in Sheffield, we generally didn’t have ostriches wandering around the car parks. Perhaps a pigeon, sometimes a squirrel, but nothing really this big or daft looking.

Not to say this is the usual thing here in SA either. Although your chances of spotting a wild baboon or ostrich in a parking area are probably here than in Broomhill.

But despite the rather larger wildlife, you’re still perfectly safe.

As long as it chooses not to kick you to death with its terrifying dinosaur feet, of course.

CPD

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Continuing Professional Development?

No: Chapman’s Peak Drive.

We had a bit of a walk on the beach on one side of the peninsula today, before scooting through Sun Valley (which was both sunny and a valley) to the other side for a spot of lunch. We could have come back over the mountain, but because Ke Dezemba (I know, but the spirit remains for the moment), we went around it instead.

Chapman’s Peak Drive has won all sorts of awards for being a beautiful, scenic road, and while I 100% understand where these awards committees are coming from, it really needs to be noted that the beauty of Chapman’s Peak Drive is from Chapman’s Peak Drive, and actually not Chapman’s Peak Drive.

Now just over 100 years old, Chapman’s Peak Drive remains an incredible bit of engineering. Stuck into the granite cliff of… well… Chapman’s Peak, there are 114 bends in 9.6km of road, which begins at 38m AMSL and peaks (lol) at 161m.

It’s an incredible bit of road to drive on, and the views are equally amazing:

This one is a 24MP pano that I knocked up earlier today with almost 2 minutes of effort. Almost.

But that’s the view from the road. If you look at the actual road, it’s a real scar across the Cape landscape. You can see it – or rather not miss it – it on the right hand side of my image above, or if you prefer a borrowed aerial shot from a bit further south:

It has wrecked the mountain a bit. Chapman is presumably turning in his grave.

Of course, none of this was a problem back in the 1910s and 20s, but I’d wager that you’d never get away with building this sort of thing today.

And equally of course, you can’t say that it’s ugly to look at.

That would be against The Rules.

Chapman’s Peak Drive is sacrosanct, flawless and infallible. Just like Stephen Fry. (Although.)

But “Stunning to look from, unpleasant to look at” isn’t a category in any tourism awards, so we have to keep saying that it’s beautiful.

Which the view from it, is.