The Gariep Dam - South Africa's biggest dam

Returning from Gauteng on a recent road trip I decided to make a little detour via the Gariep Dam and take the Steynsburg and Hofmeyr road through the Karoo to Cradock.  I made a lunch and leg stretch stop at the lookout overlooking the Gariep Dam wall.  The Gariep Dam was opened in 1071 and initially called the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam after the first prime minister of the Republic of South Africa.  After the end of Apartheid it was decided to change the name to the Gariep Dam.  Gariep is the original name of the Orange River and means "river" in the Khoekhoe (Khoisan) language.

 

The Gariep Dam is the biggest dam in South Africa and has a total storage capacity of approximately 5,340,000 megalitres and a surface area of more than 370 square kilometers when full.  The wall is 88 meters high and along its crest is 914 meters long.  Truly a South African man made marvel.

Gariep Dam revisited

Two years ago we camped at the Forever Resorts' Gariep Dam Resort and had a marvelous time in the sun and next to the pool.  Afterwards I did this post on the dam.  Last week we headed for Gauteng for Chaos Boy to compete in the SA Trampoline Championships and stopped at the Gariep Dam on the way up to stretch our legs and have a breakfast picnic.

The Gariep Dam was commissioned in 1971 and was originally called the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam.  After the end of apartheid the name was considered unsuitable and changed to Gariep Dam in 1996.  The word gariep comes from the Khoi San language and means "Great water". It is also the original name of the Orange River which flows into the dam  and acts as the border between the provinces of the Eastern Cape and Free State. 

The road crosses the 88 m high and 914 m long wall and you can actually get out and walk back onto it for views both over the dam on the one side and into the gorge on the other.  Tours of the dam wall is also possible, but as we did it last time around, we didn't bother again.  Plus we still had two hours to go before our overnight spot in Bloemfontein.

This is the view back towards the dam wall

We also had a quick "do you remember..." stop above the resort, just for memory sake before moving onto the boring drive through the "flat lands" of the Free State.

Gariep Dam Sunrise

With the sun rising just after 05:00 am, I didn't think that I will be able to get up early enough to get a decent sunrise pic over the Gariep Dam while on holiday. But luck (if you can call it that)was on my side. One night we had a couple with three small kids camping next to us in their tent. The baby cried just about the whole night and waking up for the upteenth time I relised that if I rushed up to the lookout, that I would be able to catch the sun rising over the dam. I wasn't disappointed.

Gariep Dam

The big unpacking has started. We got back yesterday from our two week camping holiday and everything is out of the car and waiting to be sorted, cleaned or stored. At least I've downloaded all my pics. The first week was spent camping at the Gariep Dam in the center of South Africa while the second week was spent on the coast at Cannon Rocks. Most of the time at Gariep was spent next to the pool, but during the second week I got to do a lot more exploring and obviously got to take a lot more photos. This means that for the next week or so I will be sharing the places and scenes we encountered.

The Gariep Dam was originally called the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam after the first Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa and was commissioned in 1971. However after the end of apartheid the name was considered unsuitable, and the name was officially changed to Gariep Dam on 4 October 1996. The word gariep comes from the Khoi San language and means "Great water". It is also the original name of the Orange River which flows into the dam which is situated between the provinces of the Eastern Cape and Free State. We stayed at the Forever Resorts' Gariep Dam Resort on the banks of the dam.

The dam itself is a concrete gravity-arch hybrid dam. This design was chosen as the gorge is too wide for a complete arch so flanking walls form gravity abutments to the central arch. It is 88 m high and has a crest length of 914 m and contains approximately 1.73 million m³ of concrete.
The Gariep Dam is the largest storage reservoir in South Africa with a total storage of approximately 5,340,000 megalitres (5,340 hm³) and a surface area of more than 370 km² when full. It has four 90 MW generators, giving a maximum output of 360 MW of electricity at a water flow rate of 800 m³/s. Ok, so I got this bit off Wikipedia but I did sound all clever, didn't I? Along the top of the wall (the part that looks like it has support beams underneath) is a road that links the two provinces with each other.

On a particular windy day we decided to take a tour of the dam wall. During the tour they took us down into the wall and we walked inside it to about halfway along the main wall. The cool thing they did during the tour was to open one of the sluice gates for us to see with what force the water gets released from the dam into the river below if the need arises.