Diary 17 |
2005 |
Cows on the beach!! And a snake in the waterfall!!!
Dewald and Irma very kindly invited me to go with them to Transkei to visit their friend Tim. He has a little guest house by the sea.
A little background info first, I feel wouldn't go astray. Dewald and Irma live in a beautiful little village called great brak near Mossel bay
along the Garden route. In an awesome house made entirely from wood, its easier to look at
pictures rather than me explain.
Dewald works on an oil Rig off Angola and when home they enjoy nothing better than to travel, infact I met them on the desert run in Windoek. Roger and myself became friends with them and I went and spent a week with them in my last month in SA. I traveled by coach from
Cape town to Mossel bay and Irma met me from the coach. The next morning Dewald's flight landed at the nearby airstrip in George. No sooner had he been home we where off in their Jeep to Transkei, a pretty much untouched part of South Africa about 1000k north from Mossel bay. After turning off the tar roads we headed down gravel roads for what seemed hours and hours passing by
colorful little houses scattered over the hillsides. I love the way the locals paint their houses so bright and cheery :-)
We eventually arrived at Tim's place by the sea and to a warm welcome. We settled into our homely rooms and
were off down the beach for a stroll. Fantastic coast line, its called the wild coast and is beautiful. We rounded some rocks with
Tim's dogs racing around in the surf to be confronted with a herd of cows on the beach!! Hmmm never seen that before!! The herdsman was taking shelter in the trees nearby and the cows we guessed,
were happier by the sea away from the flies and a bit cooler.
After sitting up on a dune for a while we strolled back along to Tim's place for dinner. I noticed during the conversations that Tim was making several references to snakes, so I asked him if he had to deal with many snakes?
"Not so much" he said they don’t really come and bother him especially with all his dogs around but a few days before he was looking over at his computers thinking he should really get on with some work when he spotted a "boomslang" or green mamba as we know it, under his desk!! This is a seriously fast snake and deadly deadly!! Very unusual for one to come in the house and a serious problem. His main concern was that one of his dogs saw it and tried to kill it. He quickly solved the problem and has a neat shotgun mark in his wall behind pc's as evidence to the incident !!!
The next day we loaded ropes and jacks and supplies into the Jeep and headed off with Tim to a waterfall way of the beaten track to get a full body massage by the fresh water pouring from the mountains into the river. The Jeep and Dewald did a magnificent job of getting across the harsh and varied terrains to our stunning destination. Wow!! a little piece of paradise untouched. We got into the water and under the falls and had a proper massage from the warm water. Tim, bless him is nearly 20 years my senior but had me diving and jumping from rocks much higher than I would normally even consider!! We had two encounters with wild life in the water, an otter swam past Dewald and we where going to venture under one of the falls but Tim spotted a snake in the water so we gave that one a miss!!
That evening we sat amongst the trees having a Braai and watching the hundreds of bats flying around. I felt a drip of something on my arm then my hat and couldn’t work out why? after all it had been dry for days!! It was juice produced by the tree we where sitting under and that Christmas beetle love to feed on!! Little beetles that I have seen all over SA love this juice. That’s more interesting stuff on my rather worn hat!!
I found a nice stick to whittle on the beach and we had a really nice time down their, nice one Tim if you are
reading this :-)
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