TRAVELBUCKET

TRAVELBUCKET

Tag Archive: visit Baviaanskloof

….. AND WE ARE OFF TO THE BAVIAANSKLOOF MEGA RESERVE

This will be our eighth escape to the magical world of the Baviaanskloof in the adventure province of the Eastern Cape!   From all of our trips we entered only once from the Eastern access gate and all the other times we entered through the Nuwekloof pass on the Willowmore side.   It does not make any difference from where you enter, the rugged beauty is always special to us.  On 15 March 2019 the catchment area of the Baviaanskloof had a down pour of about 75 mm in a time span of 40 minutes which caused huge damage to roads and alike.  Once through Raaskrans and crossing the first “drif” we noticed that big amounts of water rushed through the kloof.  Debris was hanging from trees to indicate the water’s reach.  This was the trend for the next two days – short and easy water crossing, longer water crossings, washed away… Read more >

KOUGA DAM, BAVIAANSKLOOF

On our recent trip to the Baviaanskloof – another World Heritage Site ticked – we made a slight detour to visit the Kouga Dam. The dam is situated about 21 kilometres outside the village of Patensie on the R330 in the beautiful citrus growing area of the Gamtoos Valley in the Eastern Cape. Although the end of the citrus season was near the air was still heavy with the smell of oranges as we took the gravel road of about 7 kilometres to the dam wall. Some of you will know the dam by its former name of Paul Sauer who was a prominent politician on the South African scene. However, after 1995 the name of the dam was changed to the Kouga Dam. The dam was built in 1957 for irrigation purposes in the valley and to supply drinking water to the greater Port Elizabeth area. Something that I… Read more >

WINSTON LE ROUX CABLE WAY, BAVIAANSKLOOF

THE STORY At the time that the farmer, Winston le Roux, embarked on building this cable way in 1967 on his farm in the Baviaanskloof (Eastern Cape) he was 33 years old.  Winston set out identifying the right spot for the cable way by consulting aerial photographs that was available from the Department of Agriculture. This was before GPS’s or drones arrived on the scene! Winston sourced the components of the cable from the nearby EP Cement quarries at Lime Bank, Loerie who operated an 11 kilometer cable way from the quarry at Lime Bank to Loerie station. The quarry did maintenance at regular intervals and some of the components of the cable way became redundant and Winston saw the opportunity to salvage it and build his cable way. More than 1 200 meters of cable were needed to cross the gorge at ground level. To bring the first wire… Read more >

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