Evil or death is more difficult to find than you may think. Even if you know it is present, you struggle to identify it. But you can feel its presence in the air – it makes your skin crawl and your hair stand on end. You know it is there. BUT WHERE?!
Anette and I arrive at our son’s place in Edenvale, Johannesburg. Tomorrow is his 29th birthday. We have been looking forward to celebrate it with him. He has been living in Joburg for 16 months now and it is a very special day for us. He suggests we all visit the Monte Casino Bird Gardens in Fourways for his birthday.
The selection of birds they house at the Bird Gardens is amazing. Most of it is tropical and other exotic birds you do not encounter in South Africa. Many of them are so colourful that you sometimes have to look twice to see if they are real. After an hour or so, we come upon the reptile collection which is housed in a special building. This is definitely not Anette’s cup of tea and she prefers to stay outside while us men go inside. We dare ourselves to find the most menacing-looking snake. We see black and green mambas, cobras, pythons and many more. But then we reach the glass cage of the Gaboon Viper. The inscription says it is extremely poisonous and has the longest fangs of all snakes in the world. But it is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it has escaped from its cage and is now stalking us from behind!! We feel a cold chill run up our spines. Suddenly we see it moving amongst the leaves and branches in the cage. Its head is moving towards the glass against which our noses were pressed a second ago before we jumped backwards in horror. It is the most ugliest, frightening and menacing animal I have ever seen! It’s got horns on its head and with a tongue that is constantly exploring its environment looking for threats and prey. From a webinar hosted by the SANParks Honorary Rangers last year, I can remember that snakes can actually see better than humans. They can see in the visible as well as the ultra-violet and infrared spectrum. Bad news if you stumble upon him by accident. We conclude that this guy holds our record for the ugliest and most dangerous looking snake.
After joining Anette outside, we go for lunch in the main casino building. Good food, but I find these casino buildings with their restaurants and theatres, set within an artificial environment with street lights and even stars and clouds painted on the ceilings, very depressing. I hate to spend time inside buildings while the sun is shining brightly outside.
We depart for Bela-Bela about an hour’s drive north of Pretoria on the N1. It is the home of a number of hot water springs of which Klein-Kariba is one. Klein-Kariba, although very Afrikaans, caters for all ages and backgrounds. Although you can do anything from swimming, fishing, other sports and game watching, we decide to have a quiet weekend by ourselves just braaing and telling stories. I have a lot to catch up with my son after 16 months. The time flies by. We spend a long weekend and on our return, just before joining the N1 South again, we stop at the farmstall “Toeka se dae“. Their vetkoek is to die for. Then we head back to Joburg to take on the long road to Stellenbosch the next day.
We take a couple of days to complete the trip back to Stellenbosch, sleeping over again at my daughter’s in-laws on the farm near Koppies in the Free State, as well as in Beaufort-West where my own in-laws live. About 20 km or so before Richmond, we stop at the Karoo Padstal, an original farm stall that also has rooms to stay over in.
We reach Stellenbosch after a couple of days of road tripping. This tour took us an entire month and we enjoyed every moment of it! South Africa has so much to offer. We cannot wait before we hit the road again (not knowing that our next trip is not too far into the future…).
