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Sj visit 2017

Friday July 21 Away for the weekend: Part 1: The Bain's Kloof Pass

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.

Packed all the our warm clothes and then into the cars and set off

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.

Heading upwards.

Pulled into an observation point before the start of the pass.

Onwards and upwards.

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.

Some debate as to whether the road crash barriers should be described as teeth or tombstones.

All a bit worried about the missing teeth.

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.

a large rock that overhung the road

We were low enough to pass through unscathed.

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.