The Great Karoo

Meet Ola

What an amazing weekend! We spent the weekend with an Afrikaans speaking 70+ year old male tour guide touring around the Great Karoo! We could not have had a better start than heading to a cheetah sanctuary where we got to pet cheetahs and play with baby lion cubs!! It was the best thing ever. We stopped Jansenville and saw a small cute antique shop in a bitty little town. Our next stop was Graaff-Reinet where we were able to get out and explore the town and local museums and the beautiful church that was situated in the middle of the city. Graaff-Reinet is also the city with the most memorials in all of South Africa. We then went on a game tour and saw a few animals including springbok, kudu, and a very rare Goliath Heron. (Props go to Dad for teaching me how to spot animals in the forest, I was the first one to spot almost every animal we saw.) We ended the day by going up a mountain that overlooked the Valley of Desolation to watch the sunset. Unfortunately the clouds were in the way, so we weren’t able to see too much of the sun set, but the view was still quite incredible. We returned back to our campsite (we stayed in bungalows) and had a braai. We cooked potatoes, chicken, sausage, and armadillo! Everything was delicious. I must say, we are becoming quite good at the art of braai-ing.

Pretty church in Graaff-Reinet

On Saturday we woke early and left Graaff-Reinet and made our way toward Ganora. It was a very rainy and cold day. And I’m pretty sure we even saw snow which was quite disturbing since we were in the middle of an African desert in an African summer. (Thanks to Mom for letting me bring with her rain coat on this trip, I would have frozen without it!) We stopped in a little town called Nieu Bethesda where we toured the Owl House and a few other small art centers in the town. We even stumbled upon a game of “Bowls” played by mostly the white British. Bowls is similar to bocce ball, but a little different. Our stop for lunch was great! I had kudu salami, figs, pickles, delicious homemade bread and many, many different types of goat cheese including: stinging nettle, chili, pepper, honey, feta, etc. We arrived at Ganora in the rain and spent most of the afternoon playing pool and table tennis while they prepared our rooms for us. After the rain slightly cleared, a few of us hiked down the river on the farm. We also met the family of tame meerkats that live on the farm. The owners of the farm then showed us their collection of fossils that they have found on their property and also showed us the San paintings made thousands and thousands of years ago. It was quite a view into the past and very interesting since we are learning about all of this in class. That night they made us springbok, potatoes, pumpkin, salad, and a delicious peach pudding. It was too good to be true! I ended the night by stargazing and watching the shooting stars zoom by overhead.

What a view! @ Ganora

Sunday morning I awoke extra early for some reason and took a book and read by the river (It was the only place on the farm that had sun and it was still cold!). We had breakfast and took off for our last day in the Great Karoo. We stopped briefly at an old police station where the PEBCO Three had been murdered along with countless other victims. We then headed to the town of Craddock where we wandered around the city and saw the monument dedicated to the Craddock 4 who were 4 young men that were killed in the apartheid struggle. That was a sad sight. It was supposed to be a huge and impressive monument, but never got finished and now is a mess and was a complete waste of time and money. We also broke into the house/museum of South African writer Olive Schreiner (I blame the breaking and entering on our tour guide. OK, we didn’t break anything, but we did enter without permission.). After Craddock, we meandered our way home to PE and I am now exhausted from a great weekend!