Karoo skies

Today's post is the conclusion of our drive through the Karoo (featured in Karoo Roads and Windpompe and Karoo Koppies ) from Gariep Dam (also see Gariep Dam Sunrise) to Cannon Rocks (posts still to come). And to link in with Skywatch Friday.

As stated before, the Karoo is often referred to as Big Sky Country. "Why?" you ask. "Several reasons", I say. It is a fairly flat countryside with few hills and mountains and even fever big trees. This means that you often have uninterrupted views all around and specially of the sky. Also because of the very dry climate, mostly these skies are blue skies with no clouds.

When there are clouds, they do make the sky something to be hold just after sunrise and before sunset.
And when the sun is down, the lack of light pollution makes for some of the most awesome night skies you can imagine. Ok, so I don't have a night sky picture, but the clouds do become even more beautiful just after sunset.

For more great Skywatch photos from all over the world, why not pop in over here.

Windpompe and Karoo Koppies

Today's post basically follows up on yesterday's post about Karoo roads.

The Karoo is generally a flat and dry area with a couple of hills and mountains. This means that driving through the Karoo there are very few features that are distictly "Karoo". The land in the Karoo is farming country with farmers farming mostly with Angora goats (for mohair), sheep (for the most divine Karoo lamb chops... I mean wool) and cattle (how about toasting that juicy t-bone with a glass of milk?). But two things, other than the dusty dorpies (little towns) stand out for me personally. The good ol' Windpomp and the Karoo koppie.

Water is the life blood of the Karoo and the majority of farms in the Karoo don't have a river running through them. One of the most important implements on these farms over the years has been the windpomp. Windpomp is Afrikaans for wind pump. Water is pumped from the bowls of the earth to the surface through wind power. Each and every farm has a couple. Some of them haven't worked for decades while others still bring life to the surface around it. What would the Karoo be without the windpomp? Yes I realise it is a rhetorical question, but I'm going to answer it myself. Drier.

The Karoo Koppie is as part of the Karoo landscape as the... well, windpomp. The word koppie means "head" or "hill" in this case mostly "little flat mountain". I'm not going to go into the whole geology of the area, but for most of the last 250 million years the Karoo was a huge inland basin covered in seas, lakes, swamps and deltas. For this reason the Karoo is one of the riches fossil areas in the world. Also because of this, don't ask me which part, these little flat hills were formed. The ones in the above photo is just outside the town of Steynsburg and are called Teebus (Teapot) on the left and Koffiebus (Coffee pot) on the right.

Karoo roads

The Karoo, meaning Place of Thirst in the Khoi San language, is the area of the Eastern and Western Cape between the coast and the Free State province. It is mainly a farming area with little, sometimes forgotten, towns dotting the landscape. The Karoo has a different kind of beauty to it and is often described as Big sky country for the fact that there isn't much out there that can obscure the sky. At night there is just about no light pollution so the stars are awesome. The area is similar to the Australian Outback, just not quite a desert.

Unless you whizz through the Karoo on the N1 between Cape Town and Johannesburg you are likely to find roads that are much less travelled. Often you can see down a road for miles and there won't be any other cars on it. It kinda feels like a road through nowhere where nothing grows about this high, but that's far from the truth. It has a awesomeness of its own which not everybody appreciates.

All along the way there are many farm gates with little dirt roads leading to farms and fields. Most of the time they are nothing more than a two wheel track. The platteland (rural countryside) truly has its own beauty. (Or have I said that before?)

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.

Gone on holiday, see you next year

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn we are heading away on holiday for two weeks. This is the first year since I met the Damselfly 11 years ago that we have been able to both get off during the summer holidays and are able to go away. We are going to be camping at Gariep Dam for a weeks and then head down to Cannon Rocks for another week. The Gariep Dam is the larges dam in South Africa and is situated about 500 km from the coast. Cannon Rocks is a small coastal holiday resort about 130km east of Port Elizabeth. This means that we will have to vastly different areas during the time we are gone. We are back on the 3rd of January so if the Damselfly don't hide the pc's plug from me, I will be back in the blogosphere that evening.

I want to take this opportunity to wish all my blog buddies and readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May the new year bring lots of happiness to you. And may there be many posts to come. See you all in 2009.

Cheers for now.

Oh yes, and the pink lily is from my Father-in-law's garden.

Opening of the Season Fireworks

Every year on 16 December we have the Opening of the Season celebrations on the beachfront here in Port Elizabeth. It is the official start of the summer holidays and the proverbial gunshot that signals the annual influx of holiday makers into Port Elizabeth. For the next 3 weeks most coastal towns and cities in South Africa will be packed with sun worshippers, mostly from the interior.

The Opening of the Season celebrations includes music and stalls, but the highlight of the evening is the fireworks display from Shark Rock Pier.

With my old compact camera I've never been able to take proper fireworks picture, so this was the first opportunity I had. It was also the first time we have taken the Rugrats to a fireworks display and the were suitable impressed.

For more great Skywatch photos from all over the world, why not visit the site here.