Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

I was sick (thanks season change), hence the long pause.
Day 4 starts off with a quick pit stop at Williston. It's Sunday, so there are no people around except at the petrol station. I fill up with 63 liters of fuel while a guy with his Troopy, also filling up, has a stare-off with me between our vehicles.

I don't talk to Toyota drivers, so we're off to take on what I think is called P0568 road. It's the road with Quaggasfontein Poort and Snyders Poort.

The start of this road is horrible, and it feels like with every bump and shake, the patrol loses a couple of weeks' worth of lifespan. The roads in this area haven't seen such rains in quite a while, and there are a lot of places where the surface of the road got completely obliterated. Obliterated is a bit of an exaggeration.
The road gets a lot better about 20 km in, and it's back to the smooth Karoo packed gravel we became used to in the days before.

We also start seeing much more mountainous areas, and I get giddy thinking about the mountain passes that still await us. In all honesty, the two mountain passes I've been looking forward to the most are Ouberg Pass and the Matroosberg. Up until now, the passes and poorte seem to have just been normal gravel roads between some koppies.
A couple of kilometers before we reach Sutherland, the effects of the recent rains are much more visible. There are a few places where we have to cross muddy streams or the remains of what I think were temporary streams when the rains were in full effect. We also see where the roads were probably totally impassable but fixed up by the locals. I say locals because if Pretoria is anything to go by, it would have taken seven years to wait for the authorities to fix those roads.
As we exit the gravel road for the last bit of tarmac right before Sutherland, a very dirty Qashqai passes us in the opposite direction. I hope they made it to wherever they were on their way to.

Sutherland has a small OK that's closed. We're very low on our reserves of wine, and my wife asks the booking agent what we're supposed to do in this possible drought.
There's a very interesting pub and restaurant in town called "Boorgat restaurant, bar and guesthouse". This place has the most unique collection of interesting antiquities. The owner and his friend are sitting at the bar watching the F1.
Apparently, there's a loophole where if you order a bottle of wine, you only have to drink the first glass and then take the rest as a takeaway. We order two bottles because the wife drinks Merlot and I prefer Pinotage. It's because the Merlot is just not to my liking (even though, in reality, they taste the same to me).
All set with provisions, we head to the guesthouse on Middelfontein farm to have a rest before we go star-gazing at Sterland just outside Sutherland.

It's VERY cold in the evenings now.

Day 5 (part 1) starts early in the morning, and we are filled with excitement for the Ouberg Pass.

My wife is constantly looking on social media trying to find out if the roads are flooded, but there are conflicting updates from people who heard from others that the pass is closed.
I ask her to call someone at a lodge and get firsthand information from people in the area about the condition of the road.

She gets in touch with a lady who says they last drove there in January, they are currently visiting in Pretoria, and everything was open. That was before the heavy rains.

Her husband tells us that he has turned around from these kinds of things before and regretted it each time. I mention that we're in a Patrol, and he responds that we shouldn't worry then. "It's a very capable vehicle to do the pass."

We decide to put away social media and take on the road from Sutherland to the Ouberg Pass.

The road to the Ouberg Pass is quite undramatic. A few puddles here and there, but nothing worrisome.

There are a few river crossings we have to cross and my wife and I laugh at each other because the road is "flooded". Lekker windgat de-lux.
The Ouberg Pass from the east feels like an ordinary unassuming single-track dirt road, and when you reach the top of the mountain, the pass is presented to your eyeballs in a sudden unexpected shock. It's incredibly breathtaking.
We stop to take in the incredible view and try to take photos that can do justice to the view, but it's nearly impossible. This is one of those scenes you have to experience yourself to understand.
We stop at every rest area on the way down to take more photos, and I say to my wife, "This is probably going to be tougher going back."
Not even 5 minutes later, she assures me that she left her camera at one of the first stops at the top and that we need to go back. Incidentally, this was probably one of the U-turns I was most eager to do. The pass is indeed the same level of difficulty going up as it is going down.
The dirt road from Ouberg into the Tankwa is very well kept with very little corrugation. The flora is quite different from what we saw before the pass. Even the air feels more the Karoo-ey.
We don't see any other vehicles, and all the farmhouses we pass by have their doors and windows closed and locked. It feels very remote and secluded. Peaceful.
There is a river crossing just before the Tankwa River Lodge. It looks like all the other river crossings we've done today, but there is just a bit more water. As I drive towards the river, I can feel the road suddenly getting more slippery compared to the other crossings.
I stop in front of the bridge and ask my wife to walk over to make sure everything is still safe.
If you look at the filenames of the previous two photos, you'll notice that these two crossings are not even 3 minutes apart.

She says no.

I see a piece of concrete downstream that sticks out above the water in the middle of the river, and it looks very similar to the concrete that the other bridges were made from. We decide to look for another route, and I start reversing the Patrol.

And then, this happened:

Peter Connan wrote: ↑13 Aug 2023 05:16 ... miss them even by just one foot and you can sink down to the chassis in seconds. This is especially relevant on "twee spoor" roads.

... to be continued

Eish.