Friday July 21
Up earlyish, packed all the our warm clothes and then into the cars and headed off towards Aquilla Private Game Reserve for our safari at the edge of the
Karoo desert.
Didn't need to be there until lunch so took our time with the drive. Rather than taking the direct route opted instead to take
Bain's Kloof Pass 3 links, a road that clung to the side of the mountain and zigzags back and forth through it.
Said pass was named for Andrew Geddes Bain who was a self taught engineer who was responsible for the construction of this and a number of other mountain passes including one of the ones we'd driven through the other day. This was apparently his first pass [Built circa 1849] and it had turned out so well that he'd gone on to build many more.
At the start of the pass those of us in the rental car had seen a baboon, we were understandably very excited about it and then even more excited a little bit later when we saw a whole troop of baboon at the side of the road. [None of us actually capable of getting even a blurry duck photo of them however.]
Views were lovely but sj not at all impressed with the sheer drop to the side of the road, "maybe you shouldn't go to Greece then" said cj.
There had been warnings about maximum vehicle size at the start of the pass and all of us could understand the restrictions on width, and even length, but confused to see a height restriction until we came across a large rock that overhung the road which rather than being removed had simply been tunneled through.
Once we had cleared the pass, back seat passengers lost their exalted view of the road ahead given by the steep terrain but could view the fertile lands laid out to vinyards to the side where it was safe to look again.