Graaff-Reinett

We hadn't even heard of this place before, but everything we'd read about it made it sound like it was worth the extra bit of effort to get here. It involved driving through a very dry area know as The Karoo, however the other very dry area this day was our fuel tank. I (Phil) take full responsibility for the events of this morning. For some unknown reason (which in retrospect can only be put down to stupidity) we (i.e. me, Phil) didn't fuel up in Grahamstown, presuming there'd be a petrol station very soon back on the highway. Cutting a long story short, there wasn't. The low fuel warning light was (still) on, unsurprising, as it had been illuminated for 20 or so kms on the way into Grahamstown the day before. We drove 30kms this morning and still no petrol station in sight. My positive mantra "oh there'll be one round the next bend" had rapidly turned into occasional expletives punctuated by bouts of nervous silence, during which only my sweating could be heard. We reckoned (as you can't be 100% certain without a good map, again, stupidity) that the next town, that may or may not have a petrol station, was about 40 or 50kms away. It was only a matter of time when the inevitable question was aired, "Do we turn around and backtrack 30kms to Grahamstown or do we keep going?", for all we knew there could be one just round the corner, we'd refuel, have a laugh and then continue on our way. But we were pretty far from laughing at that point. The fuel gauge needle hadn't moved now for about 20km, it couldn't point any further below the E for empty, which was also summed up the state of my vacuous head for making such an error of judgement. We spotted a private game park on the side of the road and we asked the guard how much further the next fuel station was and we explained that we were dangerously, dangerously low on fuel. We'd obviously turned off the ignition whilst we were chatting, not to waste what little fuel we had remaining. The guard told us it was close and he asked to see the fuel gauge. He looked through the window at the horizontal needle, "Turn it on" he asked, I told "On or off, it has the same reading, it's empty". "Turn it on" he asked again. The only effect turning the engine on (apart from using up more fuel) was to re-illuminate the fuel warning light. As soon as this light went on he said "Ah! You will make it!". I have no idea where his optimism came from, from simply seeing that light flash on. Maybe many African guys just know these things, after all you do see a lot of African guys pushing cars around, but that wasn't a image I wanted in my mind. We weren't sharing his optimism, we asked him to call someone who actually knew which town was closer, he did this and told us Grahamstown was the closest town. So reluctantly we turned around hoping that we had 30kms worth of fuel remaining, otherwise we were in big trouble.

It must have been hilarious to watch; we were crawling along the highway doing about 50kph, we were virtually coming to a stand still when driving up the many hills with just enough momentum to take us over the brow and then coast down. It was a very nervy not to mention slow 30kms. Terrible thoughts were running through my mind and making the situation worse, adding to the potential humiliation and frustration of running out of fuel. I liken it to sunburn, 100% completely avoidable (if one was smart and savvy), but if it occurs there's not only the humiliation of the naivety but also the pain and distress it causes. Either way you end up with a red face. Anyway. Somehow we limped back into Grahamstown as we did the side to side swerving thing to hopefully slosh the remaining drops of fuel into wherever it needed to go. It had been a very stressful morning and we were still in Grahamstown. I learned a valuable lesson this day, not only does a stitch in time save nine but also 'don't be a f@#*ing idiot Robson'.

So with a huge smack of deja vu we left Grahamstown again, back down the same old road we were becoming quite accustomed to. Just for the record, if we hadn't turned back to Grahamstown we'd had to have made another 45 kms to the next petrol station, so....would we have had enough fuel left to make that extra 15kms???? Possibly, but possibly not.

Anyway the rest of the way to Graaff-Reinett was an amazing drive, for the most part The Karoo is very flat and scrubby, but in the distance we could just make out some mountains, and it was towards these mountains we were heading. It was actually escarpment, escarpment of all shapes and sizes, peaks, plateaus, singular cones and long stretches (really putting my geological nomenclature on the line here), anyway, it was amazing, very moon-scapesque, I'd imagine.

The town itself was in the middle of a C shaped cradle of this escarpment and is the fourth oldest (European) in South Africa. There were some cool Cape Dutch arcitechure especially the beautiful Dutch Reformed church in the middle of town.

Just out side of town was The Valley of Desolation allowing cool views within the escarpment itself, some great rock formations and huge finger-like columns, it was quite a cloudy day which made everything look a bit more sinister.