Nature park in the heart of the Karoo.
We wanted to see Aloe broomii and Aloe claviflora in bloom in their habitat. There can be no nicer place to go and look for them than in the Nature Park at Beaufort West in the Karoo.

Photo above :-  A very friendly welcome at the entrance to the park.  This is Aloe broomii habitat. The inflorescens of this aloe is unbranched with densely packed small flowers. The buds are still tightly closed on the photo above.

 More aloes in the small garden at the entrance to the park The bungalows are at the foot of the mountains in the background, far from the noisy N1 traffic.

Photo above:- The view late afternoon from the back of our bungalow. There are some walking trails but visitors may walk where they please in the park before 17:00. The only warning is to remain in the car if the rhinos are visible. And take note bird watchers - In the park there is also bird watching huts at a dam where a large variety of birds will at least visit to drink.

We saw only the dung of the rhino on the dry river bed. Much more interesting was the exposed history where the river cut into the terrain exposing large rocks deposited by a glacier some 250 million years ago. Those rocks are about one and a half metre high (four to five feet) and a few are larger. I thought I could use the tree to show size but it is not as effective as it would have been with one of us standing there.
I took one of the small boulders home, so that I can look at a 250+ million year old souvenir in my garden. By the way at this stage Africa was still part of Gondwanaland, with South America, India and Australia.

It was only millions of years later when the continents drifted apart making cracks in the crust where volcanoes erupted, that the forces of nature folded and turned whole mountains on their side, as if it was playing with clay. This photo was taken in the Small Karoo to the south of Beaufort West. The folds can be seen much better when the photo is larger. Click on the photo.

Back to the present, we were driving up and down mountains looking for our aloes. One of the roads is visible to the left and back of the photo. We took the footpath to the top of this mountain but even that was without success. The aloes we saw at the entrance were nice, but the purpose of our visit was to see them in the wild. We saw many different wild antelope but the only wild things that we wanted to see were the aloe plants, and we found nothing on the top of the mountain or even in the deep crevices (where aloes often grow, no joking). We had a laugh to think we wanted to see them in flower, now we will be happy to see any one. There will be aloes somewhere in this very large park, but it seems they are not near any of the usual trails.

the road of death 

is that part of the N1 starting roughly at Lainsburg to Beaufortwes in the Karoo, just over 300 km long. It is a perfectly good road as far as we could see. We were on our way to the Karoo National park to see Aloe Broomii and Aloe claviflora in bloom in their natural habitat.
The enormous notice at the side of the road gave me a bad feeling. It stated - "Record without an accident is 11 days" and "The latest accident free record is 1 day ". It was early morning 9:00, the day was only starting.
This road carries the main freight between the northern parts of South Africa and Cape Town. There are very few cars amongst these enormous heavy freight trucks. We watched the trucks pass while having breakfast at a roadside picnic table. I found them beautiful, the sound was exciting too. Not that there was heavy traffic by any standard. 2-3 trucks would pass and be gone before a car or another truck would pass again. How on earth could there be so many accidents on this road?

The reason is not very obvious at first, but apparently it has to do with a straight monotonous road and tired drivers. The overall distance to travel is way over 1000 km for most of these trucks. The drivers work for a bonus if they rush or penalties if they take longer than the allotted time to deliver. There are stops to pull off the road and rest, as well as ripples in the tar that make a noise to wake up the drivers, but only so much can be done - money has the last word.
The day started without an accident but before noon we passed an accident near LeeuGamka, one of the very small towns near the main road. A truck full of apples was standing on the shoulder of the road leaning over at an angle which just needs a tiny bump to roll the truck over. Nobody was hurt (except the pocket of the unfortunate driver). The top layers of boxes filled with apples were thrown off the truck and apples were strewn all over the side of the road. Children from LeeuGamka settlement were having a ball carrying apples in anything, mostly their shirts. The police have little patience with cars stopping at the accident sites, so we had to drive on without taking a photo of the kids.

We spent the afternoon and night in the Nature Park at Beaufortwes (very nice, we can recommend it - in our next blog) and left at about 9:00 the next morning to return home on the same road. The notice read "days without accident 0" zero! at the start of the day... then we saw the flashing lights of the police at the accident. This time it was a small pick-up truck. It was badly damaged as it rolled far into the veld. We did not see any sign of what it was carrying and that is bad as the local people like to hitch a cheap ride on the back of these pick-ups. No stopping permitted so we drive on hoping nobody died in that accident.

We wanted to see more of the Karoo so we turned north to Fraserburg, away from the road of death. We felt relaxed and enjoyed the peaceful Karoo scenery - but then absolutely unexpectedly at the roadside we were reminded that there is no "safe from harm" place.

UNSERER LIEBER MUTTI EIN GEDENKEN + 12 - 12 - 1994

In memory of our beloved mother.