In search of fossils

Many millions of years ago, the wildlife here was very different to what we can see now.

While spending any time in Beaufort West fills me with the type of dread I experience locked into musty, moth-balled wardrobes, we should be grateful for their role - actually one William Quinton who, in the 1950's started the campaign that lead to the Karoo National Park, just outside the windiest town in the land, being founded.

Like the Cradle of Mankind outside Johannesburg, this ancient land's recorded history leans back 225 million years to even before dinosaurs, to a time when smallish animals, relatives to what we think about dinosaurs anyway, roamed. If the interpretive plates in the Fossil Walk are to be believed, and why shouldn't they be, mammals and humans descend from the Therapsids, while birds descend from the dinosaurs.

Take time to really 'get away from it all'

How's this for a break with a difference.

click to enlarge

After six hours in the car from Cape Town, the drive just before and beyond the Du Toit's tunnel is bewilderingly beautiful, and we didn't have the sitting bones to be in the car any more than we had to. So we decided that rather than drive through the park's wilderness areas, we would walk within the confines of the rest camp. This is one reason why you must spend more than one night here. As I gaze out at the hills and hear the warbling of redheaded finches, the drone of flies overhead the hum from my computer's fan and nothing else - this is a place I don't want to leave.

Flora, fauna... and fossils

Just one of the fossils you can see.

Had we been on the game drives (and guided drives are available for parties of four or more at an additional fee) we might have seen lion, red hartebeest, mountain zebra, gemsbok, grey rhebok, klipspringer and eland. Black rhino are also found here as well as a high concentration of Verraux's (black) Eagle. There's a bird hide overlooking a wetland just beyond the reception building but the Fossil Trail is truly unique because of the number and quality of fossils displayed.

Faultless

The Wolwehok's (hyena traps) are also well preserved and while they contributed to the extinction of the brown hyena during early farming of the land, they are of cultural and archaeological significance.

Not the height of luxury, but clean and comfortable - and everything works.

There are 22 chalets that are perfectly adequate. As a traveller who prefers the deluxe over the simple, this accommodation, graded three-star, holds no appeal but equally cannot be faulted in terms of the neatness and cleanliness. Everything was in working order. There are two single beds in the unit and a sleeper couch. The kitchen has a three-plate freestanding oven, a kettle, microwave and a good sized fridge and freezer. There is a tiled bar/kitchen counter and four stools. Outside there is a large built-in braai and a table with four chairs. The bathroom has a bath, shower separated by curtain and loo.

For more information go to http://www.sanparks.co.za/parks/karoo/