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| Abstracts from the article: WHAT'S AN OLD RUNNER LIKE YOU DOING IN A WILDERNESS LIKE THIS? OUTHERE MAGAZINE September 1999 When the genes for running are finally identified in our DNA, we'll know for certain that we share less with baboons than is generally believed. No baboon has ever run from one end of the Baviaanskloof to the other, just for the hell of it. GRAEME ADDISON, however, has. Baviaanskloof is named after the scores of baboon troops that throng its rocky crags and haunt its forests. Runing along the twisting dirt road that leads through the heart of this wild wilderness area, I kept meeting up with granddaddy sentinels who would give a short, angry bark before hotfooting it onto the shrubbery with yapping kids in tow. That seemed to be the full extent of their athletic abilities for the day, and it made me feel quite superior. To run the kloof, all 100-odd km of it, was a pretty arbituary decision, I admit, but it struck me that the best way to get a handle on the place was to feel it thorough my jolting bones. Folded and broken mountains form the Baviaanskloof, their multicoloured strata creeping like a wrinkled carpet to the dark horizon. Remote is hardly the word for it - it can best be described as neglected. Now it is tagged to become South Africa's third largest national park. I chose to run the road that joins Willowmore in the doer Karoo to the picturesque farming town of Patensie. My route took me through what must be the greatest slab of undefiled, unphotgrahped adventure territory in South Africa. The road - which at times is reduced to a mere track where in the rainy season you might need a 4x4 - is a switchback alternating between deeply cut valleys, wide farmlands and high grasslands looking out over tumbled mountain terrain. Running was a good way to gain a sense of the giant scale of the Baviaanskloof. Mine was a survey mission to plan future explorations - there are trails waiting to be hiked, rivers to be run, cliffs to be climbed, kloofs needing rock-hoppers. The beauty of it is that once you have purchased the hiking permit, you can go walkabout just where you like and dissapear into them thar hills. Starting early, when the misty heights were tinged with wraights of pink, I felt no urgency to go the distance like a marathon competitor. My consciousness settled into a doglike trot. Lateral thoughts curled around the mind. Wild schemes like mountain biking across Antartica or running the Skeleton Coast someday came easily. A signboard as you enter the reserve declares that the next refuge bin is 93km away. Okay! I was entering from the Geelhoutbos end after already running down the Nuwekloof, gateway to this secret world and was on the second day of my planned 33 km - per-day sub-marathon. Legs, fine, lungs pumping. A big red sign read 'Beware of Buffalo'. That was very scary but fundamentally futile advice: what are you supposed to do if you meet up with an enraged buffalo? Jogging along on my own under a canopy of trees with dense grass both sides, I remembered terrifying tales about how cunning and deadly this beast is, how he lurks beside the trail ready to storm out and gore you to a bloody pulp. Suddenly a huge beast broke from the underbrush just metres in front of me. It was brown, it was big, it had horns. My legs lurched sideways, my lungs yelped, my mind raced through its stored software looking for buffalo evasion mode. But it was only a lone kudu bull, even more skittish on its feet than I, and before I could catch a breath he was gone, his muscular energy melting into the background as if I had imagined the whole incident. For one whole day between Geelhoutbos and Rooihoek campsite, not a single car passed me, except for my own car driven by two Rhodes photojournalism students. Sarah Wyllie and Woods would pop out of the bushes at intervals, urging me onwards, which usually meant upwards. meanwhile, ahead of me somewhere, companion Zac Moloto followed the same road on a mountain bike. We passed by neat rural houses occupied by farm labourers and sharecroppers around Studtis, then entered a zone where white farmers are turning from soil management to eco-tourism. Travel guides that bother to describe the Baviaanskloof at all say the vegetation is "tough-delicate fynbos"mixed with valley bushveld and montane grassland. Proteas, silver-trees,ericas: typical Western Cape grey-green colours rise up the mountainsides to merge with whispering yellow fields and heatland. Beyond, the southern edge of the continent recedes out of sight in layer upon layer of blue rocky ridges. Large parts of the Baviaanskloof are already protected under the names Berg Plaatz,Guerna and Stinkhoutbos supervised by the department formerly known as Cape Nature Conservation. These are the areas once abandoned to the despised Bushmen who, with the baboons, were welcome to make themselves at home. Even the herds of elephant that moved along the southern coastline from Addo towards Knysna passed by the Baviaanskloof. Meanwhile it was a paradise for leopard, kudu, bushbuck, rhebok,eland and the rare mountain zebra, all of which are still there. Three rivers cut through the sandstone that makes up much of the geology. From the west, the Baviaanskloof River starts as a deep trench and ends in a wide floodplain at the confluence with the Kouga River. The latter flows in from the southwest and it is a white-water challenge for kayakers, starting at Riverside and ending where the floodwaters of the Kouga Dam ( formerly known as the Paul Sauer) back up to the campsite at Rooihoek. From there, a narrow dam - fully 30km long and seldom more than 300m wide - winds through steep, bush terrain to the wall near Condomo camp. The three major peaks in the area are Cockscomb - well known to climbers and highly visible for miles on all sides - and two less dramatic elevations, Mac and Scholtzberg. Hikes to these two are sometimes done, but the trails are scarcely established at all and it takes some bundi-bashing to get to the top. On my last day of running, I came to an area I recognized. A few years ago I had mountain biking with my family to Berg Plaatz. Now I came pounding down the dirt the other way, and for the first time actually encountered traffic - a kombi wiht a family and a conservationist in a bakkie. The family looked concerned for my welfare, shouting that I could catch a lift with them; the conservationist just smiled. He knew about oddballs like me, driven by the wandering spirit of the great open tracts over which he holds sway. My photography students had meanwhile eased up on shitter-finger exercise and seemed stunned. Moloto vanished for one whole day, only to reappear searching for me when I failed to arrive at the end point. Reason: I stopped for one final dip and passed out in the lulling warmth of the sun, lying on a bank of spongy succulents. Awoken from a insect-like stupor by a clattering truck, I dashed off on the last few kilometres. It was hot. My sweat-creased map showed I was passing Goede Hoop, a settled area. Farmworkers pranced along next to me, cracking jokes and cackling. They wanted to know why I was so red in the face - have I lost my car? Nope. Well, said one, delivering his wisdom with a voice that whistled through missing front teeth, "Sir's having fun in a funny way, hey? " |
| FROM THE FACT FILE: OUTHERE SEPT. 1999 Pieter and Magriet Kruger's B&b at Zandvlakte is an excellent base for hiking, horse riding, mountain hiking, canoeing or game viewing in the wilderness itself. Their second self-catering cottage has recently opened - an awesome place to sit on the stoep and stare dreamily at the mountains. The farm is 97 km down the road from Willowmore on the R332. The exceptional helpful owners know everything about the area. They can put you in touch with horse trail and 4x4 trail operators. |