Forgotten Towns of the Karoo - a photojournalistic essay

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Calitzdorp | Vosburg

Day 5
20 December 2005 TUESDAY

Baboons echoing through the mountains brought my rested body awake, although I did have a few aches in my back from a stone or two. Once again, I was wide awake, long before Etienne surfaced. So I went exploring through the campsite, and found a number of caravans all empty. They were badly neglected, but also decayed from old age. While I was exploring, I came across a bed under a caravan tent and lifted the duvet and found a cocoon as big as my whole thumb wrapped in the sheets, totally disgusting.

Later on when we spoke to Marinette again, she told us that they use to hire the caravans out to visitors, but not anymore because they had deteriorated so badly and the maintenance or restoration just wouldn’t be worth it, so they still had the predicament of trying to get rid of them.

Back at the campsite before Etienne woke up, I found a large pile of dried wood and placed them on the smouldering coals. It didn’t take long before I had a lovely fire going and made us some coffee. Etienne kept on commenting about not hearing our neighbour’s baby crying, and that it had disappeared in the night. That someone must have killed it. I was utterly disgusted with him, and all the while hoped the little baby would cry just to prove him wrong, but the youngster was fast asleep and never made a peep to my dismay.

We were fortunate enough to have a wonderful shower where we didn’t have to worry about scorching the skin from of your body.

One by one the campers were packing up. We didn’t take long to pack our tent, two chairs and odds and ends before we stopped once more at the curio shop before tackling the arduous journey back up to the Swartberg Pass. Our journey back wasn’t nearly as stressful as the first, partly due to the fact that we had driven it before, and that this time we were driving on the inside, so we hardly ever had to overtake other 4x4’s on the outer side.

I was looking out for other 4x4’s as before and sooner than expected we reached the flat stretch with the hobbles on it and I was once again flying around with my stomach in the air.

Coming out of the Swartberg Pass on the other side of Prince Albert was like driving into a fairy tale. It was picture perfect. Beautiful lush landscapes stretched as far as your eyes could see. Although the air was very chilly, we stopped for long periods to absorb the stunning landscapes.

There were numerous farms that had guest houses and hiking trails, and unlike before were we use to see flocks of sheep, they were replaced by ostrich. At first we were puzzled by the sticks we saw sticking through the grass, but then realized it had been the breeding season and that we actually saw little ostriches.

They were quite scared of us and whenever we stopped to photograph them, they would run and hide in the far side of the camp. While we were driving so slow to try and capture the ostrich, we came upon a tortoise that was crossing the road. He had us entertained for a few minutes, while he posed for us so that we could take photographs of him. But he must have had enough, because it didn’t take long before he disappeared into the shrubs beside the road.

The distance from Die Hell to Calitzdorp was approximately *km.