The Karroo Tour

The Karoo Tour

 

         The week before our tour into the Karoo, Margaret Free's family came for a visit to South Africa. They hired a tour guide named Peter, a 30 year old man in a 65 year old body. He was a great tour guide so Margaret decided to plan a trip with Peter as our guide through the vast semi-desert region of South Africa called the Karoo. We were picked up from Langerry promptly at 8:00am by Peter in a large 12 seater Volkswagen bus.

        We started the tour from Port Elizabeth, and he commented on just about everything we passed until our first stop at the Daniel Cheetah Breeding Project farm, where we were able to look at all kinds of rare and endangered African cats. Little did we know that we would be let into a cage with a cheetah to pet it.

      She felt like one big, soft and greasy house cat which purred so loud you could hear it from fifteen feet away. Not to mention you could feel her purring. She even rolled around on top of some of us just like a domestic cat. I couldn't believe it. It was the most intimidating animal I have ever seen that close. NOt even fifteen minutes after being in the cage with the cheetah, the woman let us into a walled enclosure with several lion cubs. We were very happy with our first stop of the tour.

          After the cheetah farm, we plugged onward to Jansenville, a small Afrikaner town that had some small art and cultural exhibits as well as a beautiful Dutch Reformed Church (or in Afrikaans: Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk). After a short stop, we pushed on to another town called Graaf-Reinet where we would spend the night. We explored the town and went to three different museums of choice, but most of us spent time in the restored Afrikaner frontier home, the gun museum, and the fossil museum. After we had our fill of the museums, we stopped at a Spar to get groceries for our braii that night (beer-butt chicken and armadillo), as well as wine to have on top the mountain that overlooked the Karoo's Valley of Desolation for the sunset:

Vano and I at the police station.

          The next day we continued on to Nieu-Bethesda, a strange little town with dirt roads (at this time it was just mud), where we stopped to look at some famous art exhibits: the most famous being The Owl House. I despised the place, and I'm pretty sure that everyone in our group was creeped out enough by the whole place that we left after one brisk walk through without any regrets. I also stopped by the local police station when I saw the young officer sitting alone bored out of his mind. He had been posted in Nieu-Bethesda for the month, and in this town...there was nothing going on for him to take care of. We had a chat and he saw me looking down at his pistol and finally he said, "Man, I see you looking at it. You wanna hold it?" I replied, "Really?" He saw the excitement in my face and he grinned and said, "Too bad." After he got his fill of his joke, he looked around and then quickly ushered me into the police station office where he removed and unloaded his South African Z88 pistol for me to hold while he told me about the AR-15 assault rifle and combat shotgun he had in the locker not three feet from me. We talked for a bit after I examined his pistol and I learned about the schooling it took to become an officer and what he does day to day as a police officer.
We continued through Nieu-Bethesda to a local brewery for lunch. We had Kudu salami, every kind of goat cheese imaginable, and every type of beer he had to offer. Many of us ended up leaving with 6 bottles of the guy's beer because we enjoyed it so much.

 

A springbok.

We continued our trek to our lodging for the night at an Afrikaner farm in the middle of the Karroo. We did a short hike to see some cave paintings that the Khoi-San had left behind on their farm. In addition we saw the old man's collection of fossils that was especially impressive. The collection had even been sought after by the university in Johannesburg. That night we were treated to fresh springbok stew (which he had gone out and shot that morning) along with several other signature South African dishes. We finished out the night drinking our beers from the brewery, playing pool, talking, and listening to some quiet music in their sheep-shearing barn late into the night.


We woke up relatively early to move on in the tour, it was our last day. We said goodbye to our hosts, their two dogs, and their pet meerkat Timon.

Timon and I

Our next stop that day ended up being a stop immediately off the road. During apartheid, black people suspected of crimes or underground political activity were treated ruthlessly and usually just disappeared. Families and friends would most likely never hear from them or about them again, until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of 1995. The TRC was a court-room style of confession to crimes committed during apartheid. The idea was that so many people were involved, and there were so many criminals who violated human rights, that the TRC would be a way to just provide truth and closure to everyone involved. Many of the applicants to the TRC were granted amnesty if they had applied for it. Our tour guide, Peter, knew about a crime that was committed just down the road on our way to Cradock. We pulled off the road into an old police station and what looked to me like a home. It said no tresspassing but we pulled in anyway. We got out and after a short conversation (in Afrikaans) between Peter and a man in one of the buildings, we all piled out. The man was a construction worker, one of ten or so, living in the buildings while they fixed the roads. We walked through the police station where we saw the rings in the wall that were used to tie up 'suspects.' Some of the most brutal forms of torture occurred here. The Pebco Three, (the three men tortured and killed there) were tortured by genital mutilation, severe beatings, and whipping by the white police officers. The three were killed, and their bodies were cut up, burnt, and thrown into several wells near the buildings. Eventually, after the TRC and apartheid had been eradicated, the remains of the three men were recovered and re-interred in Port Elizabeth. I would put up pictures, but no one took any because it was much too solemn of a place to even consider doing so.

We continued on to Cradock, where we saw a memorial to four of the most famous martyrs of the freedom struggle was located. The Cradock Four were four men who were murdered in cold blood for being suspected political activists. Sadly, due to poor planning and budgeting, the project was only half finished. Four immense pillars stand on a hill overlooking the townships of Cradock. All of the other empty buildings and concrete structures had been vandalized. Although it was very sad to see such a beautiful memorial half finished and vandalized, I wasn't surprised. Things like this happen all too often in South Africa. Things run on Africa time, and therefore projects (especially government ones) take forever to be completed, if they are even completed at all.

The abandoned Cradock Four memorial.

We spent some time in Cradock, looking at churches and museums, but continued onward home with a few scheduled stops for food, petrol, and restrooms. To say the least, I have never seen so much stuff in three days. It was an incredible tour, thanks to Peter and Margaret for organizing it.

Next Post: Frontier Weekend

Cheers,
Isaak