I am getting behind here, it's now end October and I still haven't got this story together. Let's go: It was a new area for us, this one was discovered by Frans. After some initial rejections and complaints it was accepted and we went.
Arriving there on Friday night at just about sunset. We had taken the long way around in order to miss the tollgate, which would have charged us R55.
There was only one hike and we did that on Saturday. Initially lead by one of the locals to make sure we find the path we marched off. The country is mostly bush with some open veld and lovely gorges. Marching south we soon came to the round thing on the map. Here we spotted a short cut which was offered to the not so energetic. That was from the round thing over to the 'ronde kop', about half took up the offer, and the rest marched on.
A problem was that we only had one map. Not a problem since we do have digital cameras, we took a shot of it and could use it by looking at the display of the camera. Eventually we also reached the 'ronde kop' and later went through the gorge, which was devoid of any water. Here we made a mess up on the way out and lost the path again for a while. Not to worry we were near the road and could have just picked up the road to get back home.
Going past the windmill it was noticed that it pumping and we could re-fill our bottles. That was very welcome, because I for one had started to ration my water. From here it was on the road and back to the homestead.
The farmer's wife keeps one of the old houses as a museum with all sorts of old household goods on display. And she sold us some mampoer, not the strong stuff but one watered down and sweetened with coffee cream, honey and other things.
The evening entertainment was Frans asking tricky questions of when was the first microwave oven put on the market? The sort of questions one wouldn't know the answers to but could make some intelligent guess.
Sunday was set aside for a mampoer tour. This was on a nearby farm, where Johann showed us his equipment and told us about some of tricks of the trade. It was very entertaining and interesting.
Going home we took the dirt road south from Groot Marico rather than paying the R55 for the tollgate.