audi5e
Registered User
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2004
- Messages
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- Location
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Website
- www.simplybirding.com
The drive down to Cape Town started at 21:30 in Johannesburg. We drove through the night until around 7:00 where we pulled off the main road somewhere near the town of Three Sisters to have breakfast:
If you're wondering, that's sparkling fruit juice not champaigne...
)
Colesberg/Three Sisters mark the start of the Karoo (very dry and vast desert area of the country):
There are plenty of warning signs along the way and they have also put "rumble strips" across the road every 100km or so to wake you up...
If you look at the road verge, you will notice that they are wide enough for a large truck to pull over and allow faster traffic to get past reasonably safely.
The dry scenery eventually gave way to some very pretty mountain passes:
Finally the road goes through a tunnel in the last mountain, known as the Du Toit's Kloof Tunnel and you come out on the other side to much more lush scenery much like this:
Unfortunately Cape Town itself was under thick cloud, the effects of a cold front, hence no photo's, however these were taken further up the West Coast, going north from Cape Town:
The above two photo's were taken near the West Coast National Park during a rare break in the cloud, wind and rain. The second of the two shows the start of the flower season. Looks like it will be good this year!
The next photo was taken further north at a little hamlet called Strandfontein, note the kite surfers, mad enough to go out during a howling gale in 8Deg Celcius temperatures...) (yep, the weather was closing in again!)
The next picture was taken inland from the West Coast National Park around a mountain range called the Cederberg:
The last two photo's were taken driving through to the town of Ceres on the start of our 1400km trip back to Johannesburg (it was around 15:30 and we were only just leaving, ok, so we should probably consider seeing a psychiatrist...)
The above photo is about 60km short of the mountain pass into Ceres and the next image was taken from the top of the pass:
We finally got back into Johannesburg at 7:00 on Tuesday morning after once again driving through the night. We did 3952Km in three and a bit days... I have to say by the end of the last stint at the wheel, I was starting to see brightly coloured creatures dancing on the bonnet....))
If you're wondering, that's sparkling fruit juice not champaigne...
)Colesberg/Three Sisters mark the start of the Karoo (very dry and vast desert area of the country):
There are plenty of warning signs along the way and they have also put "rumble strips" across the road every 100km or so to wake you up...
If you look at the road verge, you will notice that they are wide enough for a large truck to pull over and allow faster traffic to get past reasonably safely.
The dry scenery eventually gave way to some very pretty mountain passes:
Finally the road goes through a tunnel in the last mountain, known as the Du Toit's Kloof Tunnel and you come out on the other side to much more lush scenery much like this:
Unfortunately Cape Town itself was under thick cloud, the effects of a cold front, hence no photo's, however these were taken further up the West Coast, going north from Cape Town:
The above two photo's were taken near the West Coast National Park during a rare break in the cloud, wind and rain. The second of the two shows the start of the flower season. Looks like it will be good this year!
The next photo was taken further north at a little hamlet called Strandfontein, note the kite surfers, mad enough to go out during a howling gale in 8Deg Celcius temperatures...
) (yep, the weather was closing in again!)
The next picture was taken inland from the West Coast National Park around a mountain range called the Cederberg:
The last two photo's were taken driving through to the town of Ceres on the start of our 1400km trip back to Johannesburg (it was around 15:30 and we were only just leaving, ok, so we should probably consider seeing a psychiatrist...)
The above photo is about 60km short of the mountain pass into Ceres and the next image was taken from the top of the pass:
We finally got back into Johannesburg at 7:00 on Tuesday morning after once again driving through the night. We did 3952Km in three and a bit days... I have to say by the end of the last stint at the wheel, I was starting to see brightly coloured creatures dancing on the bonnet....
))
