October Heat

Happy October! The month that usually ushers in the colder, windier weather that I’ve grown accustomed to in Scotland is of course a little bit different here in South Africa. With summer coming in a couple of months, today marked my first day at Klipwal of 100-degree weather. This is about the time the rains should be moving in as well, although they have had a very dry winter here and the talk seems to be that the rain won’t arrive until November this year. Apparently they get some pretty amazing thunderstorms in these parts so I’m very much looking forward to seeing those. So far there has only been a few dry lightning storms at night, which can be pretty dangerous with the windy, dry weather conditions here.

With the potential investors busy being shown around the plant this morning, I took some time in the survey office to organize some of their old maps before joining Lloyd and his gang in going to Kortnek. It has become quite a popular destination for me over the past couple weeks, and there is definitely something very intriguing to me about the wildness of the whole place. Riding in the way back of Lloyd’s packed Land Cruiser, I could read the temperature level as 42 for outside, about 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say it was a scorcher, and it’s only spring for them here. It was definitely taking its toll on the normally tireless artisanal miners at Kortnek. Most were sleeping under the shade of their makeshift camps or even at the entrance of the adit, as we found a few guys fast asleep as we poked our heads in.

One thing that caught my eye was an enormous dead lizard, and maybe somebody reading this can tell me what kind it is, but it was fairly startling seeing right on the path. It was about 3 feet long from head to tail and as you can see in the picture, it had a big piece of flesh missing from its body. Lloyd reckoned they probably whacked it with a shovel and were leaving it to dry a bit in the sun before cooking it for dinner. After they chatted for a while and we looked around at a lot of the holes being dug at the site, it was decided that the immediate area would need to be mapped to get the precise geometries of the ore bodies that they are mining there. That’s where I come in, so I’m sure I’ll continue my visits to Kortnek in the near future.

This weekend I’ll be driving the old Land Rover around the mine on Saturday and might pop into Piet Retief for some foodstuffs. Fishing down at the Pongola River is still on the list of things to do as well as getting out to the coast, seeing the animals at the nearby game reserve, and playing more soccer, but at the moment I’m happy relaxing in the shade. Meanwhile, I need to prepare for another evening of copious amounts of food and alcohol, as it’s the shareholders’ last evening on the mine before they drive out tomorrow and eventually fly back to Australia. Have a great weekend!