In-between Ruins And Waterfalls

One thing is sure, a great deal of South African history and culture can be found in ruins.

One of my more recent expeditions, I came across some ruins of old South African colonial houses, and I couldn't help but wonder what those walls have seen in their lifetime up until the point that they were deserted.

Here are some captures of one of the houses that we came across, and with some imagination I am sure you can imagine the splendor in which it once stood.

In these pictures you can see very little of its former glory, but it shows clearly the strength and resilience of these walls, built with hand made bricks each about two and a half times the size of conventional current day bricks. I was fascinated also by the fact that other than what was physically broken down with force, there is no damage do the walls or foundations. Not a single crack, despite the fact that it has been left to the elements. They sure do not build houses like this anymore.

And despite the chaotic state of this house, there were two beautiful features that stood out above the rest, and almost completed the mental image of what it must have been like to live in this house so many years ago, and the one thing was the remnants of the garden. Slightly to the back of the house there was a rockery that still had some planted flowers blooming after all these years, unlike the other indigenous plants, these imported ones remained uneaten and still flourishing due to their hardy nature and undesirable sap.

The other thing was the view that this home had. Being a double story house I can just picture having coffee on the top porch while looking at the sunrise over the valley. It must have been majestic. Makes you wonder all the more, why anyone would leave such a place.

But this was not the only abandoned house that we came across during this excursion, the second house was slightly more modern, and seemed to have been vacated more recently, this time it was not the house itself that fascinated me, but more what I found outside in the yard behind the house.

In fact I saw this old Volkswagen pickup before I even noticed the vacant house, I fell in love with the old Volkswagen split windscreen minivans from the first time I laid eyes on one, and when I saw this one, all rusted and neglected I simply had to go in to have a closer look. Sadly it was not the minivan that I thought it was at first, but it was still such a beautiful forgotten gem. and my first thoughts were "how would I get it home?"

Needless to say the wreck stayed right there along with any illusions of conjuring up the time and/or finances to get her back into running shape, and soon became nothing more than a distant memory as we progressed further up the mountains.

But I felt better about it quite soon, you see there are two things in this world that can cheer me right up in a heartbeat and that is wildflowers and waterfalls, and on this day, I came across a very rare wildflower commonly called the African daisy, and because of its contrasting bright orange/red color in a pale backdrop of greens, also got dubbed (directly translated from Afrikaans) the sore eye flower. they are not a common sight in the area I was in, and they really were a sight for sore eyes.

While having a closer look at the flower, I also noted some very strange looking hairy eggs on the bottom of another plant close by. I still haven't figured out what insect they belong to, but I thought I would share the pictures anyway - maybe you find it as entertaining as I did.

And then Last but not leas of course we made it to the waterfalls, where we sat down to have a nice lunch before heading home.

I would say, all and all - a pretty amazing outing.