September 9, 2007

We began our day bright and early to the smell of breakfast, bread (I don’t ever want to eat store-bought again after this trip!) with homemade jam, over-easy eggs, kudu sausage, and juice! We quickly packed our bags and filed into the Kombi where we had a day filled with driving. We drove to a remote village high in the mountains called Nieu-Bethesda where we drove on a gravel road for an hour and a half. So if that is indication as to how in the middle nowhere we were! We went to a house of Helen Martin, who is the person who made this little freckle on the map famous and a tourist spot to visit. Helen Martin (or Miss. Helen) is famous for her Owl House, that she created in the between from the 40s until the 70s. She was a woman who battle depression and caring for an alcoholic father. She was treated by the town as though she was a witch, and she slowly secluded herself in her house and yard, where she let her imagination and creativity flow through paint and sculpture. Her backyard is filled with sculptures of people, animals, churches, and owls. The yard is called “Camel Yard” for the many camels and nativity/religious scenes she has sculpted throughout the back of her house. Inside her house, she desperately hated the darkness, so she began to paint everything, walls, ceilings, and doors bright colors, and took crushed bits of glass and adhered the pieces to the wet paint to reflect candle light throughout the house. It truly was an amazing sight to see everything in the house bright with vivid color and all covered in glass. Miss Martin died in 1976, when she took her own life in her kitchen after battling crippling arthritis and failing eyesight. It was a very eerie experience walking through this woman’s house and looking at her sculptures, it makes you want to know what she was thinking and what thoughts were going through her head as she was working on all of these things.

After we completed the Owl House tour, we went on a Karoo Fossil Safari…if a fossil safari doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what possibly will! First we had a young man give us the tour of the exhibit and the riverbed where they have recovered fossils from 253 million years ago from the Permian Period, and he was passionate about his work…however it was difficult to understand his him through his thick accent, and quite frankly, I am not into fossils. It was interesting to see the fossils in the ground still in the wild, but I really have no interest in how the lines on the rocks were formed and petrified mud cracks! It was nothing against this man or his life’s work, but I believe I reacted in the same way as I did when my dad dragged us to see the petrified tree in Yellowstone last summer.

After scanning the dry riverbed for fossils, we went to a local café to grab a drink and back in the kombi we went to go to Ganora Farm for lunch and to see the caves with the rock art of the San People. The artwork was dated to have been painted 6000-8000 years ago and it was still well preserved on the rocks. There were animals, people, and stars and dots, indicating that the shaman who painted them was in a trance. We were told that there were three shamen in the groups, one that was responsible for prayers for rain, hunting, and danger and they only paint what they see when they are in a trance. It is not an indication as to what will happen in the future, rather visions that they see.

We ate lunch at the farm outside on tables, and then we were given a tour of how sheep are sheared and the process a farmer goes through to separate the wool. It was very interesting to watch him separate the wool into seven different sections, indicated by parts of the body it was from. We were able to feel the wool and the lanolin that the wool produces that is used in cosmetics and lotions.

After the farm tour, we piled into the kombi for a four hour ride back home to PE. We bought icecream and snacks on the drive and the time was passed by reading homework, trying to finish my Jodi Picoult book that I started on the plane and just hadn’t had time to read until this trip, and the girls giggling and signing Disney songs! We were hoping that Alex and Katherine would do a repeat rendition of Beauty and the Beast, but Alex was not to thrilled! When we got home we spent the night packing, catching up on emails, and exchanging pictures.