Africa Wild

not quite a travel tale, but a collection of images of this all too often overlooked karoo gem.
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if ever the camdeboo national park lives up to the meaning of its name, it might be in the middle of the rainy season

which, i am told is often in december when it is swathed in greenery.......

december 2012 was, however, a different matter, as it was more like a "watery hollow" than a "green hollow"..........

i took a day trip from nieu bethesda to graaff reinet

and popped into the park as the rain had subsided after 3 days of incessant downpours

reminiscent of the lowveld summers..

reception was very friendly and helpful tracking my wild card on the web

as i was without the receipt or the card (have not actually had a card for two years - - -just a receipt)

the first stop was at the newly acquired andries pretorius monument

which had been relocated there the previous december........
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the cold granite blocks seemed to leak bleakness into everything around me
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it had been a long while since i had seen the early use of the inverted commas -

with the opening "commas" at the bottom of the line preceding the quotation.....

and a long time, too, since i had read such prophetic words

so very relevant to all aspects of our existence in south africa
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from there i headed off in search of the treasures of the camdeboo.......

That's gonna be interesting We passed by Camdeboo in March / April 2012
but couldn't make it in as we had a reservation with... I think it was the Karoo.
And since we hadn't done the road trip before we weren't too sure about the
timing.

So bring it on.

Now this could be an interesting trip.

Please show us more of your ,,top quality photos"!

as i was without the receipt or the card (have not actually had a card for two years - - -just a receipt)

Not your fault Happened to me too, as Sanparks never sent the card , but luckily we encountered a very nice clever guy at reception, who got everything sorted out (a nice surprise to me.....the very nice clever guy I mean)

Great map

That quote gives me gooseflesh, leachy! Remarkable!

Very interesting... would like to see more

I'm ready too

nice to have a few folks who might want to see what the camdeboo had to offer

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you might be forgiven for thinking that i had suddenly landed up in the middle of a wetland on the garden route
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this is the view,

the only view
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from the khwalimanzi hide
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a karoo shongololo - seems a dark shade of red compared to ours up north..
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karoo thorn bush

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so i took the road from the hide towards the viewing area indicated on the map

and found the viewing area totally submerged.....
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one is allowed to alight from one's vehicle in this national park

so i ventured closer to the water's edge

where i was startled by what i thought to be the local version of the "loch ness monster"
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only to see that it was merely some type of karoo dwelling amphibian
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trying to get closer to the "salad bar"
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this was the view, from the vicinity of the viewing area

looking across the dam towards the valley of desolation
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sacred ibis majestically flying by
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