We drove 560 kilometers (336 miles for us yanks) today
across some great-looking farmlands and residential areas. Tan grasses, green bushes, yellow-barked
acacia and brown wattle trees provide a feast for the eyes.
To make the scene more dramatic,
today’s weather brought the edge of a serious storm coming up from the Cape,
which was dropping its moisture and snow on the other side of the mountains we
are headed toward for tonight’s two-day stay (Drakensberg).
I have only one problem with the landscape, however. Seems the government decided long ago
that their land reform distribution program design was to homestead all the
blacks to a patchwork of farmlands.
We’d drive past white-owned, beautiful sugarcane farms covering all the
eye could see, and then the next hill over would begin a valley of distressed
homes with no infrastructure. The
next hilltop would begin another vast expanse of green farmland, followed by
another valley and hillside urban sprawl. It’s been said that this intentionally made it much
more difficult for the new housing residents to organize, and to create
coherent communities.
The Cavern is an amazing resort, high up in a secluded valley in the Drakensberg Mountains. To make our entrance even more awesome, those storm clouds I mentioned provided a light show that had us all scrambling to get shots of it. I swear we all expected either the alien craft from Close Encounters to descend, or the one from Independence Day.
Finally, a beam of light pointed the way to a single tree marking the entrance road to the resort.
To see the photos we took on the way here today, click on Sunday, The Caverns, Drakensberg, South Africa. To read the itinerary for the stay here, or to figure out where we are going next, check out the Google Engine Map.
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