| More articles : Another interesting article. More about Baviaanskloof. Stronghold of the baboon |
For more information/ Navrae :
By e-mail to Griet / Stuur 'n e-pos na Griet :
or/of
Tel. & fax : (0)44 9451002
| Abstracts from the article: OUTHERE MAGAZINE September 1999 BAVIAANSKLOOF Hidden amongst the mountains of the Eastern Cape is a wilderness so rugged, it's known only to the truly adventurous. The best roads to ride are the ones that squiggle on the map. Curves mean hills, mountains and passes. Make that road a dirt traverse of thousands of hectares of wilderness on ageing 500cc scramblers, and you have something. By the fifth day in the Baviaanskloof, PAUL ASH definitely wasn't ready to go home. Not much of a road, I thought, as the tyres raised a shroud of white dust and gravel bits pinged and spattered off the bike. The land rolled away into nothingness. It was dry and cold, strange for midday under an empty blue sky on the edge of the Karoo. And the fabled wilderness was no more than a few desperate farms spread under stark mountainsides grazed to desert by goats. Not that I was doing much sightseeing, mind you. The bike was skittish and my lack of experience was not helping, so I was ambling along, just trying to stay on. In time, the hills crowded closer and where there were no more farms, the thornveld grew thickly. The road rose in twists and zigzags into hills which became mountains, making me grateful that I wasn't on a bicycle... " Useful things, knees," I thought as once more I broke my - and the bike's - fall in a low speed tail slide on a tight mountain bend. " But a real pity we've only got two." At this rate I was also going to total all my denims long before the weekend was over. The upside, though, was complete solitude. In five days we saw five vehicles - traffic is a curse the Baviaanskloof will never have to live with, not least of all because no-one knows about the place. If all goes to plan, it will soon be the country's third largest wilderness area after Kuger and the Kalahari Gemsbok. To imagine that there is potentially 300 000 ha of basically raw wilderness juts two hours from the Garden Route and an hour from Port Elisabeth is almost unthinkable at a time when the country's finest real estate has long been snapped up and developed. Piet en Magriet Kruger, realising that their seed production farm could not last forever, went into tourism instead. They've started horsetrails and have opened their land to hikers and mountain bikers. The Krugers embody an encouraging change in attitudes towards the environment and wildlife. " If you don't care for the land, it'll kick you off," says Kruger. That means stopping sucking life out of the river, and restoring the land to its natural state. He reckons the latter will take about five years. Meanwhile, game restocking in the reserve is going ahead. Disease-free buffalo have been re--introduced, black rhino are expected to follow. Large antelope species like kudu and eland already roam the area and leopard sightings are surging. Farmers have learnt that everything has a place in the circle of things. We thumped our way southwards into the mountains over a rough-as- a - badger's bum 4x4 trail. It was a jeep track in every sense - broken stone interpersed with rare patches of hard-packed sand. We rode above thornveld into fynbos where proteas reached down to snatch at the handlebars. There was no time to rode the 78 km to the Langkloof - we made do with overnighting in a remote sheperd's hut tucked in on the steep slopes of folded hills. End Kraal was an apt name. Looking south from Kommandonek, the mountains falling into deep valleys, there was no sign of human life. The track cut a thin line into a dark valley and disappeared. The silence engulfed us. Riding back in the early morning, I was struck by the privilege of where we were. Anywhere else in the world, people would be queueing at the gates for a chance in Paradise. And they'd pay for it. In the Baviaanskloof, we fee-wheeled down the steep, rock-strewn track, the only sound being the crunch of tyres on stones. The wilderness spread below us, and we were alone. |
| More articles : Another interesting article. More about Baviaanskloof. Stronghold of the baboon |