Lisa Call

Cradle of Humankind

Today was a trip through a rhino and lion reserve to the Cradle of Humankind – one of eight World Heritage sites in South Africa.

The Cradle of Humankind Site comprises a strip of a dozen dolomitic limestone caves containing the fossilized remains of ancient forms of animals, plants and most importantly, hominids.

At least seven of the twelve sites have yielded hominid remains. In fact, together these cave sites have produced over 850 hominid fossil remains, so that to date they represent one of the world’s richest concentrations of fossil hominid bearing sites.The scientific value of this area lies in the fact that these sites provide us with a window into the past, to a time when our earliest ancestors were evolving and changing. Scientists have long accepted that all humans had their origins in Africa.

 
We received a private tour by one of the archaeologist around the above photographed dig site. Very interesting stuff for sure.

Animals

As we had to pass through a game reserve to get to the dig site we got to see some animals also the way.

Rhinos and Warthogs

Cape Town Zebras

Zebra, Sable Antelope, Ostrich and maybe something else

Landscape

I love the grass prairie in this area, which they of course do not call a prairie but something else – probably something with the word “veld” (for felt) in it. Either way the landscape is beautiful and definitely inspiration for my South African Impressions art project.

Travels

I take a lot of photos out of the bus windows as we travel down the road. Hundreds of them. When I get home and have a proper computer to work on I’ll be sorting through them all and putting all of my photos up on smugmug.

Here’s one of my favorite roadside photos from today’s journey. It’s not perfectly focused as many of these are taken at 100 km/hr but they are okay-ish.

Need a muffler?

The sign says “Mr Exhaust” and the post to the right in front of the white pickup are all the mufflers.
 

The Bushveld Animals

On Saturday Laetitia and her husband took me to the Bushveld, a sub-tropical woodland ecoregion of Southern Africa, an area with well-grassed plains (ie the Veld or “Felt”) dotted by dense clusters of trees and tall shrubs.

The Bushveld is one of the most mineral-rich regions of the world, which is very cool, and even better (at least for what I wanted to see) this area had a lot of animals also.

We went to Dikhololo, a private resort and game reserve where they have removed the Big Five, ie the animals that might want to eat me – the lion, the African elephant, the Cape Buffalo, the leopard and the rhinoceros.

Although technically these are the animals that are the hardest to hunt (I suppose they are more likely to trample not munch). Not that one wants to have a pack of wildebeest chasing after them but at least it seems safer as they are smaller.

Either way the point was we could get out of our car and walk around and get close to the animals without a fence between us, which was pretty cool.

We saw around 10 species of animals and I have photos of them all but will only process a few while on my trip.

We saw a group/herd/gathering of 10 giraffes. Really beautiful graceful animals.
 
 

A sable antelope – beautiful creature.

And of course lots of zebras – love love the stripes.

I can’t recall the name of these antelope but they were putting on a demonstration of head butting. It looked rather painful but they were pretty entertaining.

The Bushveld Landscape

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Hartbeespoort Dam

After the animals we checked out the Hartbeespoort Dam area. Beautiful also and also some nice art galleries.

The Weather

It’s winter in Africa at the moment so it’s not hot and humid. On the day we went to this game reserve they were having an unusual cold snap and it was exactly that – cold. Brrr.

But we were very fortunate because it rained much of the day but only when we were in the car. When it was time to get out and walk around it would stop raining.

So I had nice overcast skies for photography but didn’t end up getting wet. Excellent timing for us.

Right as we got home we had some beautiful hail – very very unusually for this part of Africa in winter:

Sunday

Sunday was a relaxing day with Laetitia and then a drive to Johannesburg for the start of the tour. I met up with the group Sunday evening and we are in full group tour mode. I can tell I’m going to have to get a lot of sleep as we have a full itinerary every day.