On the trail

Well, Readers, after a lovely night in the Yellow Aloe guest house in Clanwilliam, we headed off into the Cedarberg mountains to follow a trail that has been followed for thousands of years by the San people of South Africa. They have left their marks over generations in rock paintings. Nothing really prepares you for the landscape here: I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything remotely like it. The mountains are sandstone, and carved by the wind over generations into extraordinary shapes and colours. Add to this the lichens, the plants and the animals, and you have a truly unique habitat.

As yesterday, I need some time to digest what I’ve seen, and in some cases to identify it, but I wanted to share some photos with you now.

We saw some wonderful lizards…

….some spectacular birds, especially this Red Bishop…

and this lovely elephant shrew, a first for me…

There was also this spectacular cloud…

And then there was the rock art, of course. In some cases, wind and lichen have made the paintings (all made with ochre pigment) difficult to work out, in other cases they’re better preserved because they’re less accessible.

This one shows two dinosaur-like creatures on the left, and on the right, someone who appears to be about to dive into the water.

This one shows a zebra on the left, and below it a handprint. On the right is a group of people walking.

This zebra foal was probably my favourite!

The paintings range in age from 6,000 years to about 400 years – as was the case with the rock paintings I saw in Namibia, the San people were nomadic, and these paintings would have served a variety of purposes over time as they were added to by each subsequent generation. They remain enigmatic.

I was a bit nervous about today – clambering over rocks isn’t the easiest thing what with my balance issues, and the last thing I wanted to do was have another fall. But we all helped one another over the difficult bits, and in fact complete strangers were happy to give a hand up when the going got tough. And the reward is so great. What a magnificent country this is.