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South-Africa

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-- From 2018/09/24 to 2018/10/01
-- From Knysna to Graaff-Reinet
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The GPS road tracklog
from Knysna to Rest area
from 2018/09/24 to 2018/09/24

Rest area

Monday, September 24 the way was very short. I had elected my bivouac at Forgotten Waterfall Camp where there was no parking lot. I continued on the track to hills whose trees had been cut down. Desolation view where there remained only one tree with a trunk in four parts, strange! I lunched on the spot but the place is isolated too much for a bivouac. I went to Jukani Sanctuary to bivouac on the car park. A colored south-African gave me the authorization. But later a white south-African brutally meant me to leave. Consequently I was going to install me on a rest area which I had seen approximately 4 km before.

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Lunch on nowhere Refused bivouac at parking Jukani
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Bivouac on rest area
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The GPS road tracklog
from Rest Area to Total gas station
from 2018/09/25 to 2018/09/25

Total gas station

Tuesday, September 25 I visited two sanctuaries. Jukani is a sanctuary of Big Cats which are free in vast enclosures and not in cage as in a zoo. Accompanied by two other visitors I traversed during nearly two hours the site with the explanations of a guide. Observatories allow to see animals above of protections and in particular to take pictures without fences. A few kilometers further on I visited Birds of Eden at the beginning of afternoon. Under a vast tent of fine netting very in height all kinds of birds live freely with here-beyond mangers for their food. Without being tamed they are not savage walking on the boardwalk which traverses a small valley in zigzag around a murmuring brook. I passed more than two hours in a rapture of colors taking keeps not to walk inopportunely on small volatile ones. In end of afternoon I found a bivouac on the car park of the Total gas station.

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The GPS road tracklog
from Total gas station to Port Elizabeth
from 2018/09/26 to 2018/09/27

Port Elizabeth, Skoenmakerskop

Wednesday, September 26 long way without interest to Port Elizabeth. After a research I found a splendid bivouac vis-a-vis the Indian Ocean where I remained two nights.

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Bivouac Sunset
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Le tracé GPS de la route
de Port Elizabeth à Kouga Dam Picnic Area
du 2018/09/28 au 2018/09/28

Kouga Dam Picnic Area

Friday, September 28 after a detour to Pick'n Pay I moved towards Kouga Dam Picnic Area by the R 331 and R 332 where I arrived at the beginning of afternoon after having wiped a storm along the Indian Ocean. The valley around the town of Patensie is an immense citrus fruits orchard planted on a very fertile ocher ground sprinkled out of water by the tank of Kouga.

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Orchard of citrus
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Bivouac Kouga Dam
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The GPS road tracklog
from Kouga Dam Picnic Area to Willowmore
from 2018/09/29 to 2018/09/29

Willowmore

Saturday, September 29 I undertook to traverse the R 332 which twist in Baviaanskloof Wilderness Area, registered with the World Heritage. It is a very degraded ground track sometimes with a two-track cemented roadway, sometimes paved on 10 or 20 meters and often with fords to be crossed. The panel at the entrance announces 173 km in 6 hours. Left at 8:00 I arrived at Willowmore exactly at 14:00! The landscapes are sublimes sometimes in bottom of valley, sometimes on croups or peaks to pass from a hill to another. Sensibly there are leopards, antelopes and Buffaloes. I met only antelopes and, monkeys on the track. In Willowmore I bivouacked in the street in front of the Police office.

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The GPS road tracklog
from Willowmore to Graaff-Reinet
from 2018/09/30 to 2018/10/01

Nieu-Bethesda, Valley of Désolation

Sunday morning September 30th I left my safety bivouac in front of the Police headquarters to go to Graaff-Reinet which I crossed without to stop to visit Owl House in Nieu-Bethesda. The house of the owl was decorated by Miss Helen Martins (1897-1976) with cement characters more or less in a biblical attitude, of which one of the characters is a reminiscence of a Sumerian orant! The interior of the house is very coloured. The unit is a patchwork between the French Dadaism of the Facteur-Cheval and the dwarfs of garden more licked besides. Is it art? or a demonstration of a disturbed spirit! At the beginning of afternoon I returned to Graff-Reinet to see Valley of Desolation located in Camdeboo National Mark. The description of Lonely-Planet is as usual dithyrambic. Actually it is about a gigantic fault between two rock faces laminated by the climatic erosion of million years. Of course only one walls is lit by the sun in the afternoon. Then I sought a bivouac in Graff-Reinet; I found only Urguhart Caravan Park whose sanitary are of a pushing back dirtiness! Before leaving to visit the city I announced the state of the sanitary to the reception.

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Bivouac at Graaff-Reinet

Graaff-Reinet

Monday morning I visited the four museums installed in houses of the time of colonization by Dutch East India Company. Graaff-Reinet was founded in 1786 according to the name of the governor, Van der Graaff as well as the maiden name of his wife, Reinet. It is at the altitude of 760 meters at the bottom of mountains and Valley of Desolation. The four museums gathers attesting odds and ends of this time of the life of the inhabitants. The houses kept their furniture of origin; it is moving. At the beginning of afternoon I returned to the camp-site by informing if the sanitary had been cleaned.

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Dutch Reformed Church