Karoo

Karooveld

Three Sisters in the evening and Colesberg in the morning.

On our way home across the stark Karoo, green from heavy rains and promising more of the same. Great times were had in Jozi with the incredible hospitality of our dear friends @sophdex and @ezlemoen … looking forward to seeing our foolish cats though. After which I’ll post more Kruger pics.

Klipspringers. Look at the little ballet hooflets. Found this as well, while scrolling through Lightroom. I got some great footage of Klipspringers over Christmas. Now I just have to bring myself to face Davinci and edit that stuff. In the meanwhile, here’s a pic I took in 2012 at about the same place in the Karoo National Park - Klipspringerpas. These are basically the Southern African equivalent of mountain goats. The name means ‘rockjumper.’ Those dainty little hooves do great work for leaping about cliffs and boulders.

A spiky plant that I know not.

All the thorny acacias in the Karoo are blooming with these tiny yellow pom-pom flowers.

Eland are pretty spectacular. The second-largest antelope (after the Giant Eland of West Africa). They’re recovering their numbers in South Africa after being nearly wiped out through hunting by the end of the 19th century. Gotta say, I found the operation and layout of my Fuji XE1 much more understandable from the get-go than the Nikon Z50. It’s really great for us olds who grew up on film gear that Fujifilm makes cameras that use film-camera control layouts as a starting point. Very lucky.

I also brought my little Fuji XE1. We arrived at the park pretty late and got to see the Karoo turn gold in the evening light. Course with the Fuji there’s no autofocus and no image stabilisation. So I felt I was pretty lucky to get anything close to sharp pics as these were all handheld grab shots.

Merry Xmas. Meet our new friend, El Gordo, a Bibron’s Tubercled Gecko (as far as we can work out). One chonky boi. We’ve escaped the plague in Cape Town to The Karoo National Park this year. No stops from Cape Town and the camp here is very sparsely populated for maximum social distancing. El Gordo has grown fat from the light above the braai that gives him a smorgasbord of tasty bugs. A big kudu with his corkscrew horns just wandered by the front of our place as I was pulling pics from the camera this morning. I’ve borrowed my dad’s new Nikon Z_50 and I’ll be trying to shoot some good quality footage with it over the next few days.

Sometimes we have to venture into weird little SA village pubs and meet the locals so you don’t have to. Throwback to a few years back on a winter night in Nieu Bethesda. Apart from the TV there’s not much to tell you it was taken after 1955.