Since our return from the states we have been doing more travel to see new areas outside Cape Town. One of these was a trip to the Winterhoek mountain area to our friend Grant's country farm called Rock Haven.
Rock Haven is shared by Grant's family and his brother in-law's family. They are farming it for growing lavender, bucchu and pelargonium from which essential oils are extracted. It is not far from a place called Porterville and you drive through a lovely small pass to get there. Jeni invited us to join her on this trip where Nik, Grant and she were going to look for rocks to use for Hyme and Percy's headstones which will be put up next February. The farm is in an area near the foot of the Cedarberg range which is one of the places Percy, Hyme and others hiked all over to find rock paintings. In fact a well-documented one called the Galleon is on the property and we hiked to see it. photo left
Of course no weekend in the country can be had without a braai (barbeque to us Americans) and we had a great one on Saturday night. We cooked up chops, boerwors and chicken - yum!
Since we went in mid August, evidence of Spring arriving was all around us during the weekend. We had a wonderful time hiking and seeing new things in bloom. The small blossom is called a babiana and the bright yellow flower with its companion beetle is a gazania, I think. On Sunday morning the farm manager led us on a short walk during which he named and told us the practical uses on many plants - seeds, flowers, leaves and such. It was such an amazingly beautiful space far away from everything and we could see so many stars. In fact, we are booking their on farm cottages to stay on next Easter.
The rock formation were so cool; these are just a few of them. I've chosen one of the scenes as my new blog post headliner, so to speak. and in 2 weeks time, we'll be heading up the West coast to Namaqualand to see the Spring flowers - where the flowers should be stupendous. Look for pics.
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