The Great Karoo

The Great Karoo
Originally uploaded by soucouyant.

It's just beautiful.

So many fences, though. Guess who owns the land? Remember the Voortrekker story?

A voluntary redistribution of land by the government is underway, in an attempt to avoid, as we heard many South Africans of all races say, another Zimbabwe.

(Zimbabwe was in the news the whole time. Weird to be back here and not to have heard anything at all about it.)

After we left Pretoria, our furthest point north in central South Africa, we turned due South, headed for Bloemfontein, SA's third official capitol. We had a bite to eat there, and then continued on through the Karoo.

We pushed on and chose a place to spend the night -- Colesville. And it WAS cold! FREEZING.

We drove through a tiny township into the tinier town at around 6 in the evening. The place was deserted, but we were spotted by some young entrepreneurs who raced to catch us to get some "spare change." We pulled in the gate and went and saw the inevitable old white lady who ran the place.

The first thing Naomi wanted to know about was the heat. The temperature outside and inside were the same, testament to this being the enormous winter coat and thick wool scarf our older white friend had on as she sat in the livingroom.

Lady: Oh, yes, darling, there's heat, of course, a nice pad in the bed.

Naomi: What about when we get OUT of bed?

Lady: Oh, yes, darling, don't worry, you'll be quite warm.

Naomi: We'll be warm all right. IN BED!!

I gently guided her by the elbow before our older white friend's face was in too much danger of being slapped. "What is wrong with these people?" hissed Naomi.

Indeed, that mattress heating pad was rather toasty, but only IN BED. It was too cold to even brush our teeth in the morning. We peed, grabbed our stuff and ran ahead to the car and its blessed out-of-bed heating system, narrowly missing the entrepreneurs as we high-tailed it out of town.