Chris Meistre

Bernadette decided to organise a weekend away for us and a few friends. We decided to go to Bergplaas, which is in the Baviaanskloof. Bernadette and I have stayed over in this mountain hut before, but knew we wanted to go there again, and for longer. I left the booking and organising to her, as she always does it so well, and we were set to go on the weekend of 8-10 August.  It was also to be referred to as “Weekend at Bernie’s”.

We just need half an excuse to travel into the Baviaanskloof because we love the area so much.

So on Saturday morning at around 8:30 Bernadette and I left in the Pajero, and Barto joined us in his Triton. We were actually amazed at how much stuff can fit into a short wheel base Pajero It always seem like we take along too much stuff, but while packing you always think you need all the stuff you take with.

I wanted to take the longer route to get to Patensie, so we headed towards Longmore forest. If you take the road running past Culturama towards Longmore forest and you carry on driving you eventually get to Hankey. This is a drive worth doing, and currently it’s very green around that area. Makes for beautiful scenery.

Before we got there though, we stopped off to buy wood. Normally we would buy a feed bags and be happy with that, but Barto decided this time we’ll take a bakkie load of wood with. And…. we did

On the way there we met a couple of guys driving through on their Mountain Bikes, but besides that, for about 2 hours we didn’t have any other people or vehicles on the road. That’s the way we like to drive.

As we get closer to Loerie and Hankey, there is a turn off we’ve taken before.  This leads you to a dead end, or at least it was supposed to take you to Loerie, but the road has been grown over.  I took this road anyways to show Barto, as it has got beautiful views as you driving along the edge of a cliff.

From here we headed off towards Hankey.  From Hankey to Patensie we took another gravel back road before stopping off in Patensie to fill up and get our last supplies before heading into the Baviaanskloof.

A quick stop at Kondomo to sort out our permits and all the other stuff that’s associated with it, we headed into the kloof.

I immediately noticed how much worse (in terms of potholes) the road has become.  This suites me, because the fewer people are able to get into the Baviaanskloof, the lesser the chance is of someone doing something there that will make the area inaccessible to the rest of us.  I’m referring to the beach ban and other bans.  It might sound selfish, but it’s always a few people that spoil it for every one else.

We stopped off at a few places to take some photos.

Just before we got to Combrink’s pass, which is the first pass you get, we saw a VW Polo in front of us.  We asked about it when we got to the reserve’s manned gate, and they said they warned the person that they won’t be able to go through the passes with such a low car, but the guy didn’t want to listen.  Later on we met up again with them after we had over taken them and then stopped off alongside the road to see if this Polo was really going to go through with it.  At a deepish water crossing we stood and spoke to the guy while he was contemplating whether to not he was going to attempt it.  We warned against it before we left.  Nothing was heard from them again, so hopefully they turned back.

When we got to our destination, Bergplaas, we quickly offloaded before we started with the fire for Barto’s potjie he was going to make us.

Gordon, Jessica and Stephen joined us about an hour after we arrived.    While waiting for the potjie to be ready, we enjoyed the afternoon and evening relaxing around the fire.

After a nice evening we all headed for our beds.  During the night the wind came up and we could hear it howling outside.  As we were on top of a mountain, it was probably a lot worse than we thought it would be.

The next morning we all woke up lazily, and had this as a view when we went outside:

I can get used to waking up between all the mountains.  It’s excellent to look around you and not seeing any evidence of life around you!

After breakfast Gordon, Jessica and Stephen headed back to PE.

The rest of us decided to go for a walk around the farm.  Barto went to show us the old farm house ruines.  You could even see where the flower beds used to be.  We checked out some foot prints near the dam and then headed back for a lazy day around the hut.  Barto and I went to drive around a bit while Bernadette caught up on some reading.  I headed back a short while later to catch a snooze.

When Barto got back we had lunch, and then again I went for snooze

When I woke up Bernadette asked me to take some photos of her, so we headed towards a couple of the ruines.  With her doing all the settings and me just pressing the button to take the photo, it came out quite nicely.

After the photo shoot it was time to head back to the hut for another fire.

The evening was again spent relaxing around the fire, with Bernadette and Barto trying out different techniques of photographing the moon and stars.

When we woke up the next morning, we reluctantly packed up and headed back home.  Damn, wish I could live like that every day!