January 16th – Day 1

Our first stop was overlooking Swartland (“blackland” in Dutch). The landscape includes renosterveld natural vegetation that has been depleted, and only 0.2% has been conserved non-intentionally on steep slopes unsuitable for agriculture. Wheat, barley, and recently grapes are grown on this Malmesbury shale fertile soil. Soil erosion has been a huge issue since colonization. In this area bad crop practices have proven to be reversible. In the valley we could see Fair Cape Dairy, a very environmentally friendly dairy company.

Our second stop was for lunch at Velorenvlei, at the Ramsar Wetlands. There was a sign for white flamingoes but we did not see any. This area used to house much more wildlife, including hippos, lions and leopards. Colonial impact transformed the landscape dramatically: natural vegetation was burned and cleared, this opened up very sandy soils that were susceptible to wind erosion, and this increased sedimentation rate. Today farmers use strip planting method, which involves leaving rows of natural vegetation, in order to lessen wind erosion. Throughout this area and along our drive you could see circular shaped fields, due to the irrigation method that rotates around. The farmers use the river water which is slightly salty, and after a few years the soil is so salinated that the field has to be abandoned; this is very unsustainable.
   

Our third stop was at Elands Bay. There is a cave here that hosts indigenous San people cave paintings. It is one of the most important archeological sites in South Africa. There were drawings of geometrical patterns, hands, and animals such as the eland and fat tailed sheep. The eland is an ancestral animal with connections to the spirit world for the San people.  You can’t see the legs because they used white paint which has faded. The fat tailed sheep was the first animal to be domesticated in the region. An interesting fact about this area is that there is a large sediment of cray fish that was deposited in a short period of time. Red tides (caused by dinoflagellates deoxygenating the water) caused cray fish to literally walk out of the water. The San people harvested tons of them and now they form a substantial sediment layer.
   

We spent the night in Springbok, a funky little town. Overall we drove north most of the day and saw some beautiful land, and lots of grapes and rooibos (for tea) being grown. We learned how to distinguish table grapes from wine grapes. Table grapes are hung so that the bunch grows uniformly downward.  For wine grapes that doesn’t matter.