The Meiringspoort Heart

I know * The Meiringspoort Heart * is a mouthful for this little Heart. But, in its defense, there is special significance attached to the inspiration for using a Heart shape here. In fact, I did square it up then decided against this. Clearly, I LOVE heart shapes ( who doesn’t?! ).

Ever since I was a young child I noticed how often Nature mimics Heart shapes. This is not so unusual. Yet for me, they pop up unusually frequently in unlikely places, like the foam in my cappuccino! 💗When I was a little girl, living with my Grandmother after my Mothers death, I’d ask my Ouma about this and her reply was always “ God is reminding you to love”. Well, since those innocent childhood days my faith has been deeply eroded, yet my Ouma’s words ring loudly in my ears still whenever a Heart shape appears in an unlikely place.

The second reason I chose to crochet a heart, is, of course, the sequel to our short adventure into the wilderness...well, The Karoo. Which I love! 💞 I shared a bit about our eventful get-a-way in my previous post about De Rust. Meiringspoort is a spectacular pass, a gorge really, linking De Rust to Prince Albert ( another delightful Karoo village ). I mentioned then that my husband has a fear of driving on high passes. I have the opposite phobia, the fear of looming mountainous overhangs! We decided to have lunch in Prince Albert on our second day in De Rust. You know, a quick uneventful dash through a gorge, as one does.

As we entered this historic pass, Meiringspoort, I rolled down the car window to distract myself from the looming overhead boulders, like giants leaning over a tasty morsel ( me! ) by videoing the gorge as we passed through. A river wound its way like a shed snakeskin through the sunbaked pebbles below, bone dry no thanks to the ongoing drought.

Also, seeing as the summer holidays were drawing to an end, it was busy! Cars, trucks, caravans all whizzing through, appearing oblivious to the awe-inspiring beauty. We took it slowly, admiring the earthy colours, a desert palette of beiges, browns, russet, and ochre. Small bouquets of wildflowers, miraculously defying the drought, sprouted between rocks, adding bursts of colour to this picture of stark loveliness.

We arrived in Prince Albert, deciding on a short walk around this Victorian village before lunch. It was blazingly hot. The heat from the pavements burned through the soles of my flip flops! Over lunch, we chatted with the café owners and played with their little dog, Buksie. An adorable rescued Terrier- mix who was now comfortably retired in the lap of luxury. In the meantime, the horizon darkened ominously. As we ate, the wind suddenly whipped up, seeming to drag the impending storm ever closer.

Nervously eyeing the darkening sky, we hurriedly paid up and decided to head back immediately to De Rust, confident we’d beat the storm. I insisted we stop at the entrance to the pass. Those billowing black clouds marching over The Swartberg ( The Black Mountains ) was too good a scene not to capture. On a lofty ridge, three mountain goats, silhouetted sentinels heralding in the storm. No sooner had we got back into the car when the clouds opened their sluice gates! It felt as if a ginormous bucket of water filled with ice-cubes was upended over the parched Earth. Marble-sized hails stones pelted our windows with such ferocious force I was sure the glass would shatter!

We turned on our hazard lights and crept ahead. Some cars had managed to pull into tiny spaces to the side of the road, sheltering from the hail under precarious looking rock overhangs! Waterfalls began to appear, some seemed to be shooting horizontally from the peaks such was the force of the water! We stopped, as did the vehicles behind us, the wind flinging the rain and hail around our car like a large grey coat. It was impossible to see any further.

It was pointless trying to capture the waterfalls at this point! I was also TERRIFIED! But if you look closely you'll see a few cascading down the rock face.

After what seemed an eternity the storm eased up to a manageable level and we all cautiously started our motors. The scene was like nothing I’d experienced before. Waterfalls, large and small, were gushing down every crevice gouged into those ancient rocks. Only a few hours before the wind had happily whipped up dust dragons in this very same place! Cars began to move slowly forward. No sooner had we got back on the road when we were forced to stop again. The road now completely blocked with debris, rocks, and sand, washed down the rock face, was impassable. I thanked our lucky stars we were not in the path of this when it happened. “The Men” got out of their cars and trucks ( by now the traffic was looking like a car conga line! ) and began moving rocks and branches away, eventually creating a narrow space for vehicles to nervously move through. Finally, it’s our turn. My husband is soaked, his boots and pants drenched! Some Men had stripped down to their shorts only! A bit of comic relief! The sound of water rushing madly between and over the bleached pebbles of the river bed was almost deafening.

Sadly, at this point, my camera gave up the ghost!

A precarious path cleared, everyone was confident the rest of the journey would be trouble free. For a minute it was, for around the next bend, a scene far more dramatic dashed our hopes. Here, an ample river, dotted with massive boulders, heaved furiously OVER a small bridge, meeting the rest of the deluge rumbling beneath it. And there we remained for the next few hours, waiting for the Over-The -Bridge waters to subside. Finally, to cut this long story short, we arrived back safely, albeit damp and filthy ( did I mention the soot-blackened waters, created from wildfires a week before? ) only to be met by our excited Hosts, with a “ you won’t believe what just happened!?” 

Apparently, the river running through the bottom of their property was now in full flash flood. Mmmm….we know where THAT came from! 😊  Our bathwater ran black, so a bath was out of the question. I managed to clean up as best as I could, got into bed without dinner and slept for 10 hours! In all, it was a perfect getaway! 😃

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Love,
Jen xxx