We had earlyish start & drove to Bethal which is a reasonable sized town in the middle of a plain, it seems a largely agricultural area. Once we had left the Mpumalanga district is was a long boring drive, requiring the passing of a multitude of huge trucks.
The only excitement of the day was me getting a speeding ticket this morning on the outskirts of a small place called Sabie. A large mining truck/trailer unit waved me past as we hit the only straight patch for ages and it was downhill. Unfortunately as I was passing him the speed limit changed (signs obscured) and sure enough there was a speed trap awaiting at the bottom. Obviously a happy hunting ground for the traffic department. Bugger!
The traffic management systems here take some getting used to. The speed reduction signs usually go 100, 80, 60 all within about 250 metres so if you are travelling at 120 (which is the open road limit) you can be in the 80 or 60 zone before you even realise it. I'm usually a decelerate kind of driver rather than stand on the brakes but you don't get time to do that here. There are no give way signs or roundabouts, instead you will find 4 stop signs. Everyone stops and basically the first to arrive goes first then you all take turns; sounds easy but it can be very confusing, especially when there are vehicles turning across the traffic. To further complicate matters you'll be driving on a major road/main highway and suddenly face stop signs every time a side road joins the main road. SA drivers are like Kiwis; impatient and aggressive. We've seen some close calls.
As we move further south the smog pollution gets worse. You cannot see the horizon clearly, everything is a sort of pale tobacco colour. But there is an upside: the sunset was unbelievable. Usually photogs want clouds which colour up once the sun has dropped but in this case it was the sun itself. Check out the unedited image below. The only change I made was to remove a dot of white light in the foreground.
Tonight we are staying at a wedding/convention venue & wondered what the hell was going on when the GPS directed us down a road that turned into a building site. But sure enough at the end was an impressive gate and then a half mile dirt road and another even more impressive gate & we arrived. The upside is that it is very quiet ...& dark. The downside is that it was a mission to get out and find a restaurant. I'm rather baffled that 3 nights in a row we've been the only patrons at restaurants. Where is everyone?
The only excitement of the day was me getting a speeding ticket this morning on the outskirts of a small place called Sabie. A large mining truck/trailer unit waved me past as we hit the only straight patch for ages and it was downhill. Unfortunately as I was passing him the speed limit changed (signs obscured) and sure enough there was a speed trap awaiting at the bottom. Obviously a happy hunting ground for the traffic department. Bugger!
The traffic management systems here take some getting used to. The speed reduction signs usually go 100, 80, 60 all within about 250 metres so if you are travelling at 120 (which is the open road limit) you can be in the 80 or 60 zone before you even realise it. I'm usually a decelerate kind of driver rather than stand on the brakes but you don't get time to do that here. There are no give way signs or roundabouts, instead you will find 4 stop signs. Everyone stops and basically the first to arrive goes first then you all take turns; sounds easy but it can be very confusing, especially when there are vehicles turning across the traffic. To further complicate matters you'll be driving on a major road/main highway and suddenly face stop signs every time a side road joins the main road. SA drivers are like Kiwis; impatient and aggressive. We've seen some close calls.
As we move further south the smog pollution gets worse. You cannot see the horizon clearly, everything is a sort of pale tobacco colour. But there is an upside: the sunset was unbelievable. Usually photogs want clouds which colour up once the sun has dropped but in this case it was the sun itself. Check out the unedited image below. The only change I made was to remove a dot of white light in the foreground.
Tonight we are staying at a wedding/convention venue & wondered what the hell was going on when the GPS directed us down a road that turned into a building site. But sure enough at the end was an impressive gate and then a half mile dirt road and another even more impressive gate & we arrived. The upside is that it is very quiet ...& dark. The downside is that it was a mission to get out and find a restaurant. I'm rather baffled that 3 nights in a row we've been the only patrons at restaurants. Where is everyone?
Check out that hill recession. Sabie is in the middle about where the smoke is
I'm scoping out possible locations for tomorrows sunrise, check out the colour of the horizon
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