TomTom and Ziggy and Mbono had a housewarming braai at their new home in Waterloo, north of Durbs. Jess and I were there along with Mbono’s parents, Ziggy’s Mom, sisters, brothers, nieces and star of the show: Melokuhle, Ziggy and Mbono’s baby, my grandson. Their little 2-bedroom house with its own garden is so much nicer than their last place, a flat in a high-rise building downtown.
One niece buzzed around taking lots of pics and videos, so I’ll post some of those when I get them. Meantime, I took too few:
Ziggy organised a lovely meal under the watchful eyes of her Mom and Mom-in-law – daunting, that! Luckily my Zig is a qualified chef! The young men – Mbono and two brothers did the braai for her. Tom had marinaded the meat overnight in his special sauce.
Suddenly it was decided there were too few bowls for dessert! Mbono, his older bra and Tom hopped into his Dad’s car and roared off to Spar; Later, another crisis: Older brother’s new girlfriend wanted sparkling water! Mbono, his older bra and Tom hopped into his Dad’s car and roared off to Spar. I remember those days. Any excuse to drive Dad’s car!
After lunch the large punch bowl was just about empty and the party was getting started! I thought I’d leave the dancing to the younger crowd. So Jess and I left early to get home to Mtwalume, about 100km south, before dark. We dropped off Ziggy’s Mom and a cousin along the way.
~~oo0oo~~
Waterloo Promise to love you for ever more Waterloo Couldn’t escape if I wanted to Waterloo Knowing my fate is to be with you Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Waterloo Finally facing my Waterloo
I was on the phone to an ancient friend named Owen as I neared Port Alfred when a lady invited me to join her at the side of the road. I did so with alacrity. She was a traffic gendarme in Ndlambe. The ticket she wrote tells me I was pulled over in Voortrekker Street ‘opposite the Lunch Box.’
May I see your drivers licence? asked the friendly lady in the every-stitch-on-duty uniform. ‘Sure,’ said I, ‘You will notice it has expired.’
Tut tut, she tutted me and wrote out that ticket. Five hundred bucks cos I “Drove a M/V on a Public Road with Expired Driver’s Licence.” Not quite true, as my driver’s licence is for life. What she meant was my proof of having a licence had expired. The card had expired. That was true. The driver on the other hand, he was still fresh.
I forgot about it till today and so now I have just paid it online. I hope the good people of Ndlambe municipality accept the cash, as I see I am past the deadline date!
I don’t want a criminal record! I was reminded of such often on our journeys, as it’s one of Jessie’s songs she plays as we buzz along the byways of Southern Africa.
Ama Criminal Record – by Blaq Diamond. Long before the song is over – it’s a long one – I usually ask Jess: ‘Earphones please my love!!’
As Jess and I whizzed southwestward in search of clear skies to dry out the tent on my lorry after the floods in the Kruger Park at the beginning of the year and the soaking rains in Mpumalanga, Free State and KZN which kept my canvas damp. It got so bad I started thinking there wasn’t a sky in the cloud. On the tar roads we passed numerous signs saying some or other pass. You notice the lovely scenery, but the passes pass with no effort, so we seldom stopped for photos. Thanks to the amazing website run by the geeks, nerds and – worse – engineers of mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za anyone can go on a virtual drive over these passes. I used them gratis for a bit, then subscribed. Well worth R465 a year in my view, even if you’re only doing one trip with one pass – you’ll get so much more out of the trip once you’ve read the amount of info these guys post about each pass. A narrated video of the route, angles, altitudes, distances, directions, gain, gradient, history, can you take a Fiat Uno or do you need a Unimog, ens. Fascinating.
I had some well-known and challenging passes on my to-do list for this trip, and on those I did take pics which I’ll post.
Wapadberg Pass – On the tarred R61 between Cradock and Graaff Reinet; 17km long; On YouTube here.
Carlton Heights Pass – On the tarred N9 between Noupoort and Middelburg; 7km long; On YouTube here. It was here I remarked to Jess, ‘Look, not a cloud in the sky!’ We had found our dry blue skies to dry out my tent! We stopped for a pic and saw there was one wee cloud to the south, no bigger than a man’s hand, just like in the Bible.
Now four passes on the tarred N9 north of Graaff Reinet. Heading South, as we did, they are: Naudesberg Pass; Paardekloof Pass; Goliathskraal se Hoogte Pass; Perrieshoogte Pass; All tar, all beautiful, but none caused us to stop and take pics. Also near – almost in – Graaff Reinet are van Ryneveld’s Pass and Munniks Poort. Some of these passes were Andrew Geddes Bain passes, the famous road- and passbuilder whose reputation I accuse my ancestors of appropriating when they got to Natal!
In Camdeboo National Park we found the first pass, mountain and valley I had long wanted to see: Camdeboo Pass leading to the Valley of Desolation! Back in 1972, fresh from a wonderful Veld & Vlei adventure, I’d been invited on a Boy Scouts patrol leader camp to the “Valley of Desolation near Graaff Reinet.” The camp was cancelled, but my imagination had been fired up and I always dreamed of seeing this mythical place one day. Now, a mere fifty one years later, I was driving up the pass. – – (virtual drive it on YouTube here and here)
— Jess halfway up the pass; and the tent on my lorry nice and dry —
Next we headed to the Karoo national park outside Beaufort West, my old mate Louis’ stamping ground. Inside the park there’s the Klipspringer Pass built with great effort and care. Being in a declared nature reserve, rocks were sourced from outside the park, ruins of old houses and kraals eg. and local labourers dry-packed them by hand to minimise the damage to the area. Jess chose to loaf back at camp while I drove it. She missed out.
After Beaufort we headed for Oudtshoorn to visit Louis and Gail – and what a welcome we received! Good friends indeed. Louis told of us of Meiringspoort, saying It’s Beautiful! and he was right. We crossed Droekloof Pass on the way, then took our time in the poort, stopping at every picnic spot and walking up to the waterfall. — (the feature pic at the top shows the mighty Ford Ranger on the Meiringspoort road).
Reluctantly leaving Louis n Gail’s hospitality we headed north towards a must-do pass – the famed Swartberg Pass. After passing through Schoemanspoort near the Cango Caves we started up the pass, stopping at Kobus se Gat to get Jess her 100th hot chocolate (! approx). Ahead lay 24km of Thomas Bain’s finest road engineering. The boffins at mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za rate it so special they have made eight videos to cover it! See a shorter video here, showing north to south, opposite of our direction. Swartberg could actually be called multiple passes and multiple poorts!
~~oo0oo~~
A pass goes up or down or over a mountain. A poort goes through – often following a river course. Often you drive with high mountain walls on both sides, whereas on a pass there’s usually a wall on one side and a drop on the other.
Thanks to mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za; tripadvisor.com; and princealbert.org.za for pictures
Breakfast at Kwalata Lodge was delish. I had an egg n bacon usual health meal, while Jess had an omelette with cheese, potato and onions and loved it, so the next day we had the same.
The third morning we ordered the same again. Our meal arrived with our waitress carrying mine and the chef carrying Jessie’s. That was different.
‘We have made a mistake,’ said our waitress. ‘I made the mistake,’ said the chef. ‘I read tomato instead of potato! My bad!’ He was looking at me. I looked at Jess and waited.
‘I’m sure that will be fine,’ said Jess. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll eat that.’ The two looked relieved and hurried away. Well done goggo, said I. You’re a kind and lovely person. ‘Well, they were honest and decent about it and the chef came himself, he didn’t make the waitress do it,’ said my Jessie. Proud of ya love!
~~oo0oo~~
(I think the only pics I took at Kwalata was that lovely moth with the trompe-l’œil trailing edges to its wings that look folded over forward on top from the right angle. Bright yellow thorax when it flew. Luckily Jess took 437 selfies).
Jess and I had a wonderful chill at Abba Game Lodge in the greater Waterberg, near Modimolle. No traveling to do, nowhere to go, we just chilled for four days. Jess enjoyed the attention and kindness shown her by the ladies who run the show, especially Chantel, who encouraged her to get out and about on the grounds, but couldn’t persuade her to swim in their heated pool. She did get some exercise wandering around searching for the wifi signal!
Took me a while to get used to the pitch black impala and pale, not quite pure white, blesbok roaming the grounds. Weird!
The road we took to get there from Bela Bela was rough; the road to Modimolle much easier, so we left that way, stopping for breakfast en route to Dinokeng, north of Pretoria.
There are at least ten Saint Francisii. I’m sure most were skelms, so why a lovely place on South Africa’s shores is named St Francis I do not know. I bet Saartjie Baartman wouldn’t know either.
Lekker place to visit though. Cheap, too. We found a luxury fully-catered mansion where we were treated like royalty for FREE! We had our own bedrooms, me and Jess, three cordon bleu meals a day, guided tours of the harbour, walks along the beaches and a boat trip in the canals and on the Krom river, all included. And it was Easter, high season!
OK, confession: We were guests of generous good friends Mike & Yvonne who rescued us from the Easter crush. My usual procrastination meaning I hadn’t looked ahead and seen the long weekend looming. Hey! It’s not easy when every day is like a Sunday. Perpetual loafing can make your brain mushy. OK, mushier.
Chester watches Jessie’s vape escape.
Mike and a handy neighbour had almost completed a project: Building a side-car! How cool is that?
~~oo0oo~~
You need to be a local to know which part of ‘St Francis’ is the Bay, the Cape, the Port, the Harbour. We had visited twice before, but brief visits. The first time we visited the red roof area and went for a walk in the nature reserve with Colin & Di Hall; the nature reserve was beautiful; the next time we visited the thatched roof area on the canals and went for a boat ride with Mike & Yvonne Lello; the river was beautiful.
Thank goodness he has Elizanne for a spot of normality. See, young David Scratchmo suffers from some strange delusions. Like thinking he’s a goeie kykende ou, thinking his lop-eared puppy is beautiful, and thinking it matters which brown horse wins a horse race. I’ve tried to tell him it makes no difference and it’s pointless taking all the horses to one end of a field and putting small people on them to slap them to the other end, cos we know one of the brown horses always comes first. He came back with this strange statement: There Are No Brown Racehorses, Koos. Can you believe it? As a race-goer of some experience I have seen dozens of brown race horses at the track that time that I went to the Rothmans July!
I spose its cos of my kindly pointing this fact out to him that he didn’t have a brown racehorse in his lounge when Jess and I visited him and Elizanne in their lovely home in that unpronounceable city formerly know as Pee Ee. He had instead, an old semi-retired black race horse in his lounge.
Personally I think he knows a lot more about people races.
Anton used to tell me about the Baviaans with great excitement and enthusiasm. You gotta go there, Pete! Well I finally got there about thirty years later. After, when I got to Gqeberha I phoned my old colleague, now in Jo’burg, to tell him the valley was even better and more spectacular than he’d said!
The full Baviaanskloof route was a lot longer than I had thought; it was also far more rugged than I’d imagined; and it certainly was beautiful and spectacular, as Anton had shouted while also telling me how indestructible his old Toyota bakkie was. You know what Toyota groupies are like.
On the way we met Ian, farmboy from Ireland, put-putting through the kloof alone on his motorbike while slowly going round the world. Africa is his last continent and he’s doing it slowly and thoroughly with a puptent for a home. Made me feel overdressed, did Ian, what with my Ford Ranger and canopy tent!
We stayed at Zandvlakte farm in a lovely big cottage. Only after leaving there did I realise the friendly owner Magriet Kruger was the co-author of this magnificent newly published book! Aitch would have kicked me (and bought three copies!).
Life in the penthouse was fantastic, as always! Rita has hosted us there since even before we were afflicted with children, and has had the kids there many times, sometimes even as ‘Unaccompanied Minors.’ Brave lass!
Jess had a hair makeover, thanks to Rita’s friends Raikie, Berlin and Linda, who treated and spoiled her. Braids out, Curlers in.
It’s Rita’s pozzie so food plays a central role. Gourmet meals and restaurant outings. This time Italian.
Sunset over the Atlantic from the balcony; The top pic: Table Mountain mist from the other balcony.
On our way to Riebeeck Kasteel I phoned ahead to ask Lang Dawid how we’d find him when we got there. ‘Just drive in, I’ll see you,’ he said. As I parked under a tree next to the Groot Kerk I got a call: ‘Look right,’ he said.
And there was a lang skraal athletic figure waving at us from outside his new cottage. Above is his view of the kerk from his stoep. From the steeple the dominee can see right into his bachelor bedroom. Complaints may follow.
Dave very kindly hosted me and daughter Jess on our travels in his new cottage he has built on the grounds of his boet William and wife Mary’s lovely home which doubles as their photographic studio and professional printing business. Check out their portfolios on that website – stunning.
Some lekker eating joints in the dorpie. From this table you can see Dave’s cottage right in the middle, next to his boet’s home and studio.
Dave is an accomplished birder and bird photographer. Not only has he exceeded my forty year count in far fewer years (not that I count, of course), but he has a photo of every one of his 650-odd birds recorded. With my 620-odd tally (not that I count, of course), you only have my word. We met other weird okes talking shutter speeds, ISO, length of your equipment, whimbrels and curlews. Or was it curlew sandpipers?
– spotted a spotted moth in Dave’s garden –
And wow! Here’s a picture Mary took of that same view of the kerk from their home:
God was more besig in the skies on her day.
Jess, I said as we drove off after a lovely kuier, Dave is a Springbok canoeist and he was on the trip I went on when we kayak’d the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Oh, says Jess. Also, Dave’s birthday is the same as mine, April Fools Day. NO WAY, DAD!! SERIOUSLY!? THAT’S SO COOL! says my Jess. I’m lucky, I can still impress my child.
Met old school chum Fluff in Bloemfontein for coffee. We were in pre-school together at Kathy Putterill’s home, went on to the local sandstone Kleinspan school, then the local sandstone Volkskool down the road, all the way to matric up in the yucky modern brick high school on the hill below Platberg. Meantime also Sunday School in the old local sandstone Methylated Spirits church. Also quite often sport on Saturdays – rugby, tennis and cricket for him to shine and me to get ducks for balance – and jolling weekends and after hours, so me n Fluffy shared much of our childhood.
Great chat over coffee, gentleman Fluffy very kind and considerate towards my Jessie; followed by an ussie taken by Fluff (see above) – he remembers to actually take pictures. I too often remember afterwards!
Driving south-west out of Bloem towards the Groot Gariep river, there’s a beep on my phone and there was the image, sent by Fluffy.
I showed it to Jess and asked, “Can you believe we’re the same age?”
NO WAY Dad! says my darling daughter, wide-eyed.
So how much younger do you think he is than me, Jess?
“Dad, I thought he was like, in his early fifties.”
No supper for you tonight! I laughed.
Pointedly explained to her that he is actually 68 and 13 days, whereas I am a mere 67. He is actually a full year older than me for six weeks every year, Jess!
We visited Louis n Gail in Oudtshoorn. What lovely hosts! They invited us to their holiday home in Groot Brak. They know I enjoy the byroads, so suggested we go to George via Montagu Pass.
The first road between Oudtshoorn and George, the Montagu Pass was opened in 1848, and is SA’s oldest unaltered pass still in use. It took about 250 convicts three years to build the seventeen kilometres at a cost of 36,000 Pounds Sterling. A magnificently scenic, narrow – in places very narrow – gravel road, it ascends from the tiny hamlet of Herold, on the northern side of the Outeniqua Mountains up and over the summit and then descends to the outskirts of George. – See Mountain Passes South Africa for videos, including wonderful aerial views and detailed descriptions of the history and places to see en-route.
Just outside the metropolis of Herold a big sign blocked the road but there was just space enough to squeeze past it and off we went. Jess said something like, Dad! That said ROAD CLOSED, but I wasn’t sure she read it right.
At the end of the pass there was a neat old stone store and tollhouse, and another sign appeared, but it had nothing written on it. The Ole Ford Ranger squeezed past again. Looking back, it appeared to agree with Jess. Oh well, it was a beautiful pass and we’d have missed the roadside flowers if I’d been literate.
Three days in Mfolosi’s Mpila camp with two demure young ladies.
We saw a few confrontations: Two male impala, two male lions, four rhino, with one male threatening the others. Nothing much came of these feints and threats, despite the loud shouts which came from the back seat, where the two demure young ladies were seated: FIGHT! Fuck him up!
Mopani camp was full. How about Letaba? I asked. Sorry, its also full. Sometimes getting into the Kruger National Park can be challenging. Let’s look outside the Park, Jessie; say within an hour of this Phalaborwa gate. Aha! She found Tingala Lodge on booking.com within our budget – set at R900 for the both of us sharing. And what a happy diversion it turned out to be. About 15km north of the Phalaborwa gate into Kruger Park, Tingala Lodge is terrific.
– Tingala Lodge sunrise –
While we chilled on the big patio overlooking a waterhole, a lady arrived in a double-cab bakkie and I noticed a couple of cases of Painted Wolf wine being carried into her room. When she joined us on the patio where I was nursing a G&T, I said, ‘Lovely Wine, that Painted Wolf. My sister sells it in Durban.’
Oh, she said, Your sister must be Sheila!It’s my wine. My husband is the winemaker. I’m visiting lodges promoting it, asking them to include it on their wine lists. All sales help with Wild Dog conservation. I’ve just stayed at Lion Sands.
‘Yep, Sheila’s my sister. I love the labels,’ I said, ‘Who does your artwork?’
Originally, an artist who worked on a game lodge in Botswana.
‘Which lodge?’
Lloyds Camp on the Savute channel.
‘I knew an artist at Lloyds Camp,’ I said, ‘Jenny Song, she was there when we visited way back when.’
It was Jenny! She did our original artwork.
‘What a lovely person, we got on so well with her. My wife Trish bought something she painted. We had such a special time there,’ I said. ‘When we flew in from the Delta, back in the day, we were picked up at the landing strip by Emma, a young pink-cheeked Pom who said she was the chef, and she was on guest-fetching duty that day. She loaded us into the open Landrover and drove us right up an elephant’s bum at the waterhole on the way to camp. When we got to camp Emma had prepared a delicious lunch for us overlooking the camp waterhole in the channel, and we ate and drank ice-cold beers looking down on eles heads as they drank freshly-pumped water.’
I’m that Emma! said this Emma! I worked with Lionel and Jenny Song in Lloyds Camp in 1993. I loved driving new arrivals to Pump Pan to watch the eles.
In 2022 we had bumped into Emma the pink-cheeked Pom from our 1993 trip to Lloyds Camp! You sadly just have to behave wherever you go – someone, somewhere will know you – even 29 years later!
I carried on reminiscing about our time in Savute: ‘Our fellow guests were cabin crew from SouthWest Airlines in Texas, the world’s biggest airline at the time. We had to chase lions because of them and Lionel. They caught a giraffe as we chased after them, and we had to sit for ages watching them eat it.’
That would be Doug and Linda, said Emma, and you won’t believe it, I was in contact with Linda just yesterday. We have kept in touch ever since! She’ll be amazed when I tell her who I met today.
I’m so glad Kruger Park was full that night!
~o0o~
I’ve since read Lloyd Wilmot’s book and he mentions Doug and Linda.
The next day we were due at Mopani Camp in Kruger, so we only stayed one night at Tingala Lodge. I’d love to go back. The birding was terrific, and on the way out we saw an African civet in broad daylight.
~o0o~
Birds at Tingala Lodge
Dark chanting goshawk - Brubru - Pearl-spotted owlet
Update 2026: This week I met a lovely couple Dave and Debbie, who wanted to inspect my AHA camper. We spoke about Botswana and Savuti. Talk got round to Lloyd Wilmot, and Dave said, ‘I landed up upside-down in a Piper Cub with Lloyd at the controls; back when I was a 16yr-old helping to build Xaxanaxa Camp.’ Top that story!
