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| Waiting for sunrise, south of Villiers, Free State |
Late summer / early autumn in South
Africa and on the the rolling, high altitude grasslands of Mpumulanga
and the Free State it's peak cosmos time. Sprinkled across the
landscape are spectacular displays of the white, pink and cerise
flower, Cosmos bipinnata.
It's been quite a few years since I
last made an effort to photograph this floral wonder. So on Thursday
this last week I left home an hour and a half before dawn, to get
early to one of my favourite stretches of South African road, the
R103 between Villiers and Warden. I wanted to see the sun rise on the
cosmos.
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| Cosmos bipinnata, as the sun rose above the horizon..... |
To orient you, here are 2 maps – the
first showing where the Free State Province fits in South Africa,
and
second is a section showing the North and Eastern Free State, with a
rather wobbly red line and arrowheads sketching out my route.
You can
estimate the scale of the map if you understand that the distance I
covered, on the loop from Villiers down to Warden, Harrismith, and
then through Golden Gate to Clarens and north again to Villiers via
Bethlehem and Frankfort, was a distance of about 480 kilometres. It
took me just over 12 hours to do the loop – that included lots and
lots of stops for photos, and a lunch break........
(and then I had the 140 km's to travel both ways in the dark, that morning and evening)
Needless to say, by the time I got home
that night, I had a “numb bum”, locked-up knees and a very stiff
neck after all that time behind the steering wheel!!
But what a great day I had.
The weather was perfect, clear skies
and no wind in the early morning, and by the time I got to the
mountains there were scattered clouds to provide enough shadows to
make the midday landscapes a little more photogenic! It was hot, but a
cool wind played across the green/gold mountainsides.
I managed to take 530 photographs and
also cover enough territory to have enough material for up to three
blog postings!
This is the first post .... (and a warning - it's turned out a whole lot longer than I planned)
Interestingly enough, despite being
such an attraction, our cosmos is not native. It's considered an
exotic weed where it grows on the roadsides and in neglected farmland
or disturbed areas. I haven't been able to establish exactly where it
comes from in Central/South America, but most accounts appear to
agree that it's introduction to South Africa was via contamination of
horse feed brought from Argentina (and/or Mexico) by the British Army
during the Anglo-Boer War, 1899 to 1902!
I took many, many photographs of the
cosmos and I will be using them for a long time to come. Here are
just a few. They give you a good idea of how beautiful the
countryside looks at this time of the year.
By 9.00 am, almost 3 hours after
sunrise it was getting too hot, too bright and having taken 200 pics
of cosmos, farms, grass and birds I needed to take a break from the
camera.
I carried on southwards. Not always on
the R103, I took several side roads to explore the farmlands, and
then it was the highway to Harrismith. By which time my flask of
coffee and two granola bars for breakfast on the road seemed to be a very long
time ago! Over a Mugg&Bean coffee and muffin I decided to carry
on exploring and go west to Golden Gate Highlands National Park.
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| the dirt track.... |
I've passed through
here once before, about 8 years ago, on a gloomy, cloudy afternoon –
not the best lighting to admire red, orange and gold sandstone
butresses.... Today was different, and the rock formations and park
itself will be the subject of a separate posting.
On this day I just wanted to get off
the main through road, explore a little.... and have my sandwiches
for lunch! Soon enough I spotted a dirt track on the left. No sign
posts at all, definitely no No-Entry markers. For the next 2 hours I
tested my, and my car's, 4x4 capabilities, did a whole lot of
wildlife photography, and enjoyed my sandwiches high up a sandstone
and grass ridge in solitary splendour. I didn't see a single soul the whole time – just mountain views and wary blesbok,
wildebeest, zebra and sprinbok. Bliss.
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| Skittish Blesbok |
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| My lunch spot |
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| The Brandwag Buttress, or Sentinel - a landmark feature of Golden Gate NP. |
I will post again about Golden Gate –
I have way too many photos of animals and rock formations to include in
this post, but I've put in the above photo as a teaser.... The
Brandwag Buttress is one of the iconic landmarks of the park. Magnificent isn't it?
It was mid-afternoon by the time I hit
the road towards Clarens. The sun was still high, and hot, and I was
tired. With the exception of a couple of brief pit-stops I just
carried on driving and vaguely admiring the passing scenery.
The first sunflowers I passed snapped
me out of that lethargy and I started paying attention again...
The Free State is predominantly a
farming province. The goldfields in the north are, by far, the
largest employer, but the rest (those that are not in the cities and
towns) of it's relatively small population (2.8 million), are
sprinkled across it's vast farming landscape. This explains why I saw
hardly a soul all day......
Lots of mealies (maize/corn), soya,
sunflowers, cattle and sheep. And hay bales.......
The eastern and northern parts of this
province, where the rainfall is relatively high, are natural
grasslands. Lots and lots of tall, lush grass, where it hasn't been
ploughed up for crops or grazed down by livestock. Due to our
extremely hard drought this summer, hay is in high demand. I saw
grass bales everywhere, even in the narrow strips between
crops.....
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| Farmer baling hay |
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| and a last picture of the cosmos....... |
Fortunately, in this featureless
land, the bales provided a nice focal point for the sunset. The egrets flying past also helped :)
A long 12 hours since it was first
light enough to start taking pictures!
I hope you enjoyed this rather long and
wordy post. The whole day, and the post, turned out to be a lot
more than just pictures of the cosmos!!
As mentioned earlier, I'll dedicate a
post to Golden Gate and I have material for another short one. Watch
this space over the next month!
Much to the relief of the browsers (giraffe, kudu etc.) Kruger's acacia trees start coming out in their spring leaf well before the rains arrive. 
