14 April 2006    to      17 April 2006

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This Easter weekend we decided to try and explore a few new places up Northwest Province and the Northern Cape as well as see some places that I had not seen in many years. Normally we report on the positive aspects of South Africa, but here is something that shows the other side of the country and that you do not see in the travel brochures. With over Twenty Thousand murders annually and a government that cares more about the rights of the criminals than the victims, South Africa is a dangerous place. At some stage virtually every citizen has been a victim of crime in this country. This photo was taken just outside Koster. Often the victims are simply shot and killed in these Hijackings.

On a more positive note, the veldt was looking very green after the rains we have had. From Koster where we had breakfast we headed off towards Swartruggens and then south towards Lichtenburg.

Everywhere along the way the Cosmos flowers where in bloom.

From Lichtenburg we drove to Mafikeng. Mafikeng can only be described as a dump. A Dirty place with dead rotting Donkeys laying next to the road that had been hit by vehicles and countless goats and other animals wandering next to the roads. From our experience, not a place to visit again.

In the late afternoon we made it to Vryburg and booked into a Chalet at the Leon Taljaard game reserve just outside Vryburg. Due to the heavy rain that the area had had, the roads in the game reserve in places were un-passable so we had to skip a game drive in the reserve. Like most municipal resorts, this one was in need of a bit of maintenance but other wise it was quite nice.

There where quite a few Golden Orb spiders in this area. The web is a golden color and the spider gets quite large with a body anywhere between 2-4cm large. This one had caught a moth and was wrapping it up.

Next morning we took the R378 north to try and get to either the Molopo Game reserve or Terra Firma. Along the way we could only marvel at the amount of water that was everywhere. Normally the area is very dry but the grass was thick with lots of flowers everywhere.

We passed through the settlement of Ganyesa. At least it was cleaner than Mafikeng!

After turning left at Voorspoed we arrived in Morokweng…and that was the end of the tar road. The Molopo Game reserve was at least another 80km further but as we did not know what facilities there where, so we decided not to risk the rest of the gravel road because we only have a small car and instead would try to get to Terra Firma which the map indicated was a tar road.

Along the way we found lots of Corn Crickets crossing the road.

A very colorful veldt.

Eventually we arrived in Tosca. The place is really small with only a few houses.

As we have seen so many times in the past, that map was wrong again and the tar road ended in Tosca, so we decided to head back to Vryburg.

Along the way back we came across some of the "local transport". Notice the two big ears in the middle!

We stayed over in Kuruman and next morning took the road south towards Danielskuil and lime Acres. In the distance one can see some of the Finch opencast diamond mine. I believe its one of the largest opencast diamond mines in the world. Back in 1986 I worked in Danielskuil for six months and built the first EWSD digital telephone exchange here.

I wanted to go and have a look at the old railway siding at Silverstreams where we used to pick up our spares for the telephone exchange back in 1986 again. I spent many a happy hour here having coffee with the station master at the time while we collected our spares. Time was a bit slower those days.

Sadly the place was a ruin now and totally vandalized. The old cast-iron fireplace that had always been a welcome sight during the cold winter months had been ripped out and all the windows had been smashed.

From here we headed off along the gravel road to Papkuil.

My mate at the time and I spent a rather interesting Saturday evening at the hotel in the pub here once in 1986 with the locals.

Most of the gravel road was in quite a good condition, so we carried on with it towards Cambell.

One of the local churches in Cambell.

We decided to overnight just outside Douglas at the municipal resort next to the Vaal river and moved into a chalet.

The place has a nice camping spot as well...as long as it does not rain!

Dinner was had inside as it started to rain.

We had bought a lot of wood and come hell or high water (in this case high water) we were determined to have a fire going. Eventually it stopped raining and we still spent a nice evening next to the fire with some "mellow juice" :-)

During the night it really came down again and next morning the sky looked pretty bleak. While trying to drive out next moring we nearly got stuck on the gravel road leading from the chalet to the main gate.

We decided to head off back home via Kimberly, but the N12 between Kimberly and Johannesburg was in such a bad state from all the rain that we decided to take the back roads via Bloemhof. In places along the N12 the road has completely disappeared. We stopped over at the Bloemhof dam which was over a 100% full at this time, which is very unusual.

Along the way back we came past Vredefort. The little town of Vredefort is famous as it is the area of the Vredefort dome which is a World Heritage Site where a 10km diameter asteroid hit the area some 2,023 million years ago.