, the sunrise greeting the day was beautiful and not a sound was to be heard as the day was dawning.After a good cup of coffee (or tea for yours truly), we took a short walk around, had a quick bite for breakfast and embarked on an hours walk on the wooden pathway down to the falls and surrounds.
What a sight to behold!
And the sound of the water is unbelievable. The Hottentots were right when the named it !oukurubes (the noise making place)!
The Orange river roars headlong into the gigantic gorge, with a rising cloud of spray which can be heard and seen from a considerable distance away during flood season!
The river rages and rushes through the granite gorge for about 18km and drops over 300m in a series of rapids and small falls. The gorge is said to be approximately 240m deep.
Augrabies is regarded as one of the six great waterfalls in the world and has been described as being essentially masculine. Ruthless and brutal in a harsh and fearsomely arid landscape.During peak flood about 400 million litres of water rush over Augrabies every minute! Just imagine!
It most certainly is worth the trip and I would really like to be there during the high rain season to experience the magnificence of it all. It must be truly awesome!
The finest examples in the world of weathering on granite by water are to be found in this breathtaking, dry, unyielding but touching environment.What a beautiful place to be.....
And so, after being blown away by what we had just seen, our journey continued from Kakamas to the next little town of Pofadder!
Named after the Hottentot chieftan, Pofadder was once the centre for karakul and other sheep. In 1959 however, all the livestock was transported by the army to better grazing until such time that rains came to revive the astoundingly resilient vegetation. But, there are no gardens at the homesteads, instead people have been quite creative and have used old galvanised iron baths, basins and such like to plant their "gardens" and some places had the most brilliant shows of colour, which were so striking in the vast bleakness of the parched, bleached earth they live in.
