Cape Town road trip

Roberts has Niewhoudsville as a birding site on the app. So once over Vanrhynspass I crawled into Niewhoudsville looking for the turnoff to the waterfall that Roberts says is impressive and worth a visit. Luckily I knew the road to take as there were no signs suggesting there was a waterfall anywhere around.

It turns out the signs weren’t all wrong. There was absolutely no water falling off anything. I’m pretty sure it would be impressive if there was water falling off the rocks. I also think there would be more birds in the area. In this case the dryness was evident and the lack of life more so. To be fair I was there around midday but I think my bird count was 4.

Leaving Niewhoudsville on the left was a WWF flower reserve. I suspect it wasn’t amazing this year but I guess it could be. A place to visit another time when (and if) South Africa gets rain there again.Read more

I made it to Carnarvon. But before getting there I took a little detour to look for an SKA telescope. The detour was successful even though the telescope was somewhat far away. I also saw a Ludwigs Bustard which was almost as cool as a small radio-telescope (now I sound like a real nerd).

I stayed in the Lord Carvarvon hotel which turned out to have two establishments. One close to dinner. The other close to breakfast. I chose dinner without knowing about the breakfast location thing. Either way they were 2 blocks and 400m apart so not too much of a hack of walking.

It turns out that Carnarvon is not only famous for the SKA but also for Corbelled houses. These are houses built by the early white guys who (for some reason no one will ever understand) came to farm in the Karoo. Once they arrived they found out that it was quite hot in the area and so needed to build something that they could live in that wouldn’t cook them alive. Hence the corbelled house. Who knew. Anyway I found one at the museaum that was closed (along with everything else, except the bars).Read more