Thursday, Sept. 20th-21st. Somerset West to (and at) “The Retreat at Groenfontein”.

Posted in Port Elizabeth (our old home town) on Sept. 30th.

Moving Day! We were off on the next leg of our vacation. We traveled up the N2 from SW to Swellendam and then took the Tradouw Pass over to Barrydale. For those who were with us in 2005, this is the pass that was closed and caused a major diversion for us. This year it was open and was a spectacular drive. We stopped at a view point and Angela fell in love with a dassie. We stopped for lunch in Barrydale at “Clarke’s of the Karoo”. I detected an English accent from the proprietor and on enquiry, he revealed that he came out to South Africa “with McBride’s (19)75 lions and decided to stay”. I did not have the temerity to ask him if he was a player or a spectator! A very annoying “feature” of all the roads we are traveling in SA is how many of them are under repair. When they repair the road, they close down the side of the road they are repairing for miles and make the other side a one way road. Then they have a stop sign for one end of the section while they let the vehicles at the other end through and the line of vehicles gets longer and longer until all the vehicles have come through and then you get to go down the single lane. These “stops” have notices that say “Wait time 30 minutes” (people get out of their cars and chat to each other) – and some of these are so called National Roads – the equivalent of Interstates! We encountered one of these after leaving Barrydale, which, in fairness is not a National Road.

On to Calitzdorp and then 20K of dirt road and we arrived at “The Retreat at Groenfontein”, a little piece of heaven on earth! (http://www.groenfontein.com) We were met by our hostess, Marie Burton and after moving suitcases to our rooms, went for an evening stroll before dinner. The Retreat is a guest house (a converted farmhouse) in the middle of the “Karoo”. It is dominated by the close proximity of the Swartberg Mountains, while being surrounded be smaller hills/mountains as well. It is a place of utter peace and tranquility, with only the birds and running water in the streams to hear.

Our host, Grant Burton joined us on the veranda for sundowners and then, as is their custom, Marie & Grant joined us for dinner. The main course that evening was an ostrich casserole which was delicious. Fortunately, it was a beautiful evening and we were able to have dinner on the veranda. By chance, we were the only guests on this particular night, so we were able to catch up on all the news of The Retreat with Grant & Marie and enjoy some good wine with them. We slept well!

An excellent new feature of The Retreat is the fact that that Grant has gone out into the surrounding hills following the animal paths, marking them and clearing them where they may be a bit overgrown or dangerous. He has created linking paths from farm paths and created a map of all the trails around The Retreat. There is a Green Lizard Trail, a Yellow Lizard, Klipspringer, Baboon and others, each of different lengths and difficulty (don’t try the Baboon Trail unless you can climb like one!). The trails are also interlinked, so you can join one trail from another and make it a longer walk. By walking all the trails, you can actually walk a complete circle around the farm buildings and view it from all the high points on the surrounding hills. The next morning, this is what I set out to do.

Alison & Angela started out with me on the Blue Lizard Trail, which was a good walk for them just by itself. When we were at a point where I was sure they could find their way back to the house, I left them and continued on each of the trails mentioned above. I had been planning to get back by 1PM but not being a baboon (no comments please), took a little longer on that trail than I anticipated (I couldn’t find the way down!). Anyway, as I arrived back at the lodge, I saw Grant on the veranda with his binoculars, but he may have just been looking at the birds! We had a very nice lunch followed I think by a siesta.

Marie had been telling us about the Rock Pool Trail which we thought we had already completed the evening before and is an old trail that we have done before. However, having now seen a drawing of the trail in map form, we realized that what we thought was the rock pool was actually about 600 yards short of the real rock pool, which was across the stream we had stopped at, across yet another stream and then a scramble across more rocks, to find the “real” rock pool at the bottom of a small waterfall.
Marie told us this rock pool was deep enough to take a plunge in and we should give it a try, subtly inferring that we didn’t need to take any swimming gear. Alison and I set out once again on the Rock Pool Trail and this time we went all the way! We were trying to set up the camera so that we could take a picture of us together in the rock pool, but it proved impossible due to the downward slope of the rocks and if we put the camera any further away, I wouldn’t have made it back to the pool before the timer went off. All this palaver was going on while we were absolutely “kaalgat”, shivering with cold, and laughing hysterically. Eventually, we had to take pictures of each other in the pool individually, but I cheated a bit and took pictures of Alison before she actually immersed herself in the pool. I am going to sell them on eBay. It was great fun (who said we were old)?

Back to the house for sundowners and dinner again. Of course we had to show the pictures to prove we had been in the pool – from the look on Grant’s face I think I showed him the wrong picture!
This night there were other guests, a couple from Knysna who were there for the first time. They had only checked in 90 minutes before dinner but had already tried to extend their stay for a third night – to no avail as the guest house was full – such is the lure of The Retreat.

I have also almost totally neglected to inform everyone of the number of photographs of birds that Alison has taken on this trip so far. In Kruger, it was at least one bird for every animal and far too many to put on the blog. However, we will find space for the lovely Malachite Sunbird in the garden at The Retreat.

Grant and Marie have two pure bred Staffordshire Bull Terriers and of course Alison also fell in love with them. When they look at you with those sad eyes, they sure look a lot like Clare’s Meathead.

We left the next morning with promises of returning in 2009!