The crafts-people of Mpumalanga

In this region, like many of the rural areas of South Africa, there are not many jobs for people.  Many older Black South Africans didn't have the opportunity to have much education to begin with, so the government in Mpumalanga has created a number of craft areas to help create jobs for local people.  So each place we stopped had a number of men and women who make crafts and sell them in little stalls.  The government is in the process of building permanent stalls of concrete, but in one area, the stalls were like little shacks with tin roofs.  The crafts-people will carve and create the crafts, sometimes on the spot, and sometimes with their family members at home.  They use materials that they can, for the most part, find in nature.  This is a great place to get wood carvings and bowls, jewelry made from seeds and twigs and bone, and small statues and figures carved out of soft rock.  I'm including some photos here so you can see what it's like.  These are photos from several different areas.

This woman was in the process of carving a wood plaque with animal heads when I asked if I could take her photo.

This photo was of one of the areas where the government has built permanent stands.  Notice the woman on the right is wearing a skirt made of fabric with Nelson Mandela's face woven into it. The more rural we get, the more traditional clothes people are wearing, especially the women, who wear colorful cloths tied on their heads and around their waists.

The Three Rondevals

This incredibly beautiful area is in the Drakkenburg Mountains, where the Blyde River canyon has carved out some amazing rock formations.  This canyon wends for miles, and is in fact the world's largest green canyon system (and is third in the world behind the Grand Canyon and the Fish River Canyon).  The river has worn the rock unevenly, leaving huge circular stone mounds, covered in green trees, and looking much like the traditional thatch-roof houses called rondevals.  The so-called Three Rondevals is a particularly spectacular set of rock formations, and we had the chance to view them from across the river canyon.  It was a gorgeous bright and clear day, not too hot, but nice and sunny.  I'm posting some photos here, and although it's hard to tell the grandeur and scale, just trust me, this is a huge and deep canyon system.  It's also hard to tell from these photos, but the rock walls are stained red and yellow and dark green from various minerals, and the effect is as if they are splattered with huge blotches of bright paint.

Pancakes in Graskop

We spent most of the day driving towards Mpumalanga, the Drakkensburg Mountain area near Kruger Park.  We are staying in the little mountain town-- a Boer pioneer town--called Graskop.  It's built like an American old west town, with wide dusty streets, and low-slung buildings which now house little gift shops and small stores and restaurants.  Locals were selling locally grown fresh-roasted macadamia nuts on the street, and a few hawkers were selling crafts, especially bright colored carved birds on long strings.  We stopped in Graskop for a late lunch at the famous Harrie's Pancake House.  Dutch pancakes are an old traditional Boer treat, and the pancake house had plenty of sweet and savory deliciousness for us all.

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This is a photo of a lamb bredie pancake with pesto sauce.  Bredie is a kind of traditional lamb stew with tomatoes.

Baboons and Vervet Monkeys

Today was the first day we saw wild monkeys and baboons.  Of course, they were hanging around the rest areas because they have become somewhat habituated to humans (and our food!).  I made the mistake of sitting down at a nice shady picnic table, when I became aware of something moving toward me at great speed.  It was this baboon, who was beelining toward me.  I got up and slowly backed away, snapping photos of course.  Fortunately, the baboon realized quite soon that there was no food in the mix, and I got my table back.  Obviously, I kept one eye open after that!

This same rest stop had a number of these little gray vervet monkeys, chattering and mostly staying in the trees.  Given the opportunity, I have no doubt they would get into an unattended picnic basket, if they could beat the baboons there.  

The Mall of Africa

Here are a few photos from the GIANT and gleaming and brand new Mall of Africa:

The glamorous outdoor restaurant area, it's actually a V-shape, with two wings of high-end restaurants with indoor/outdoor seating.  The photo only shows part of one of the wings.  The tower under construction in the back of the photo is part of the mall, and we are several stories up.  You can't tell from this photo, but there is an amazing view of the skyline of Johannesburg over the edge of the courtyard.

Sterkfontein fossil site

We had the opportunity to go down into an actual cave at the Sterkfontein fossil site.  We had to put on hard-hats, and had a long long long staircase down into the cave.  There is a small interpretive museum at the site, as this was the place that found the first full austrolopithicus skull (known as Mrs. Ples).  This is also the site most rich with austrolopithicus finds in the world.  We also got to view the working site where Mrs. Ples was found, with a series of narrow walkways 20-30 feet above the site used by scientists to manage the dig.

Drimolen photos

We had a lecture by a PhD post-doc who works on the site at Drimolen and other nearby sites.  His work is on hand-held stone tools, but he has excavated at all the local sites.  This area is where the Australopithecus was first discovered, and Drimolen itself is the second largest fossil site for their remains.  In addition to a tour in the cave site, we also had a walk to a newly discovered site nearby (where we could actually see fossilized hominid remains still in the walls).  And we had the chance to view cast skulls from various hominids as we learned about human evolution.  

The Drimolen fossil site

The site at Drimolen is on a grassy hillside, with limstone pits surrounded by low scrubby trees and olives.  The pits are actually former caves, with collapsed roofs.  Several million years ago, these caves had small vertical openings perfect for shelter our hominid relatives. Inside these caves, many died and eventually turned to fossils over the years.  The Drimolen site has many layers, some of which are visible in this photo.  The central pillar-like stone is a type of plug made of debris that fell into the cave from the original opening.  If you look closely, you can see the white stones are all tipped in the same direction, showing how they slid into the debris pile over the centuries before hardening into the rocky plug that we see today.