Oranges

There are two areas within an hour's drive from Port Elizabeth that are major citrus, and in particular orange, farming districts. The Sundays River Valley is to the north of the city while the Gamtoos River Valley is to the west. The Gamtoos Valley is often called the food basket of the eastern Cape as they grow all kinds of crops there. The main products are oranges and potatoes, but they also grow lots of pumpkins, cabbage, cucumbers, watermelons, chicory and tobacco just to name a few. The valley is also home to one of the three big dams supplying water to Port Elizabeth and environs. The valley is very scenic with loads of tourism potential.


The oranges gets picked by hand and put onto trailers pulled by tractors. The oranges then get taken to the co-operative or a private sorting facility to be sorted and packed. The trailers get lifted on the one side and dumps the oranges in a tank water. It is so that the oranges don't get damaged as well as to clean them.


From there the oranges get coated with a wax coating to seal in the freshness before the sorting process start. In the big Co-op most of these activities gets done through automation, but the smaller private facilities still do it by hand (and thus create a lot of job opportunities), The bad (rotten or damaged) oranges get taken out and that will either go to the pig farmers (rotten) or the juicing factory (damaged or undersized). The oranges then get sorted by size.

The big oranges are of export quality and get packed into boxes, transported to the Port Elizabeth harbour and put into cold storage before loaded onto ships heading to Europe and Asia. The "normal" oranges for the local market get packed into orange bags which get taken to the fresh produce market or sold directly to supermarkets and fruit and veg stores.

Grasshoppers

So I don't really know the difference between grasshoppers and locusts. Wikipedia tells me locusts are several types of grasshoppers that would swarm at times. Around here I haven't seen any swarms, so these must be grasshoppers. What confuses me more is that in Afrikaans we just say "Springkaan" which is grasshopper for all of them. Whatever! I'm not really one that likes to get too close to things like spiders, grasshoppers or anything with more that four legs, but when there is a camera between me and them it is amazing how close I will get for that shot. So here is a variety of shots I have of our normal garden variety (at a loss for a proper name) grasshoppers.

This pic comes from the Outeniqua Mountains in the Southern Cape. This one is sitting on a plant called a kapok bush, also known by some people as "Old Mans Balls". Not being an old man I can't guess why its called that.

This grasshopper was sitting on a pole in one of the game reserves. I chased him around the pole several times before he decided to just sit still and get it over with. He even smiled at me. Or was it a smirk?

For these two I can only say one thing: "Get a room!" Well, they are assuring the continuation of the species. Oh look, the male is blushing. LOL.

Southern Dwarf Chameleon

I couldn't remember when last I saw a chameleon when I saw this little guy. Taken a little while ago, I was on a drive through the Kragga Kamma Game Park just outside Port Elizabeth when my eye caught a slight movement on the road (well, more like a two track path). I stopped and there it was, slowly making his way across the road. I didn't want somebody to drive over him, so I made sure there were no animals close to us and I jumped out of the vehicle and picked him up and moved him to a branch on the side of the road. I remember a time when I was small when we often saw them where we lived. Pity their habitat is slowly disappearing like this.

The Southern Dwarf Chameleon is part of the species of Bradypodion, meaning "slow-footed". It is one of six genera of chameleons within the "true" or "typical" chameleons. Bradypodion (of which there are various sub species) is native to southern Africa, and are sometimes collectively called South African dwarf chameleons. The Southern Dwarf Chameleon is found in the Eastern Cape province from the coast into the drier Karoo.

The Big Pineapple

During my series on The British Settlers is posted about the history of Bathurst here and here. The biggest attraction in Bathurst is not an historic one, but a bit of a gimmick. Bathurst is in the heart of one of the biggest pineapple growing areas in South Africa. The Bathurst Pineapple Growers Association is base on Summerhill Farm on the outskirts of town. Some years ago the farmers from the Association visited Australia on a fact finding mission and saw what was then the biggest pineapple in the world. The Aussies being out arch rivals in sport, they decided that they wanted to beat them and put one up that was bigger.

Thus the world's biggest pineapple now stands in Bathurst, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It stands 16.7m high and has 3 floors. It is constructed out of a fibreglass outer skin covering a steel and concrete superstructure. The ground floor has a gift shop full of pineapple goodies such as jams and chutneys, locally made pottery and puzzles as well as t-shirts to name but a few of the items for sale.

The 1st floor has tourist information and static displays of the Pineapple Story. It is a must visit for kids doing school projects. The 2nd floor has a continuous DVD on the Eastern Cape pineapple industry and leads up to the observation deck with magnificent 360°views over the surrounding rolling farm lands to the Indian Ocean.

Cave drawings

The Khoisan people were the original inhabitants of much of southern Africa. Having had a relatively lighter skin color than most black Africans, evidence shows that they lived in the area long before the Black people moving down the east and west coasts of Africa arrived in the south or European colonization.

The Khoisan people are divided into two cultures. The hunter gatherer San (commonly known as Bushmen) and the pastoral Khoi (sometimes known as Hottentots). The San was found more to the north of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana where it is drier, while the Khoi lived in the south were there is a higher rainfall and thus more grazing areas for their cattle. Today the last of the San people can be found in the Kalahari (north western South Africa and southern Namibia), while the descendants of the Khoi can be found amongst the Coloured people of South Africa.

All over South Africa there is evidence of Khoisan people living in cave openings and under overhangs. In most of these locations people have found arrow heads, pottery shards, stone tools, beads and most evidently, cave paintings.

Most of these cave paintings are done of animals and people. All kinds of animals have been identified in these paintings, but most of them are antelope like eland. In some paintings hunters can be seen hunting with spears and bow and arrows.

These picture were taken on a farm outside the town of Alicedale about an hour east of Port Elizabeth. We were taken through the bush into and up a valley before getting to the overhang. The site isn't open to the public, but there are many public cave painting sites in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and the Drakensberg.

Tsitsikamma

The area between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town is known as the Garden Route. It is one of the most popular tourist routes in South Africa. About 160km west of Port Elizabeth you enter the Tsitsikamma. The Tsitsikamma is the area wedged between the ocean and the Tsitsikamma Mountains and consist of indigenous forests, magnificent coastline, river gorges, streams and some of the most awesome scenery on the whole Garden Route.

The indigenous forest consist of trees like the Yellowwood, stinkwood, ironwood, milkwood and much more. These trees are all protected by South African law as they are all hardwood species that were nearly cut out in the late 1800's for the building of boats, houses and the railway line north. Today you get very sought after furniture made from these woods harvested from the forest in a sustainable way. Some of the Outeniqua Yellowwoods (SA's national tree) in the Tsitsikamma Forest are about 800 years old.

The water in all the streams in the Tsitsikamma has a brown tea of whisky like colour to them. It is not because of pollution but because of tannin picked up as the streams flow through the fynbos and forests. If you want to look at it this way. The forest acts like a giant teabag. The water is still clean and drinkable.

One of the ways that the forest recycle itself is with the bracket fungus. Branches breaking off starts to rot and the bracket fungus starts to grow on it. The fungus pushes roots into the rotting branches that breaks it up even more. In this way all the nutrients of the rotting branches go back into the soil which is very important seeing the the whole forest grows on a layer of humic soil only about 1.5 - 2 metres deep. Below that is Table Mountain sandstone.

Air plant flowers

For the last couple of weeks my air plants have been flowering. Air plants just fascinate me. You hang them up or just put them down somewhere and they grow, no soil needed. Just give them some water if they are indoors or under a roof, otherwise outside they rain even waters them for you. I've had a couple for some time now, but they were not the flowering type, so earlier in the year when my mom sold her place and moved in with my sister she passed a lot of hers on to me. Mine are now hanging all over the show. From the washing line, the water pipes outside, my garden gate and from a windowsill.