COME AND GET IT!
The ghostly, ominous figures of mud-covered buffalo appear between low thorn bushes. Thankfully I’m safely in a game-viewing vehicle and not on foot. This is the first time I’ve seen the park’s buffalo, even though they’ve been here since the early 2000s.
The buffalo are on the left. The boundary fence of the park is on the right, along the R61 tar road between Cradock and Graaff-Reinet. On a morning like this, a minibus taxi driver might also catch sight of the buffalo. (This route is often used by Cape Town taxis ferrying people to the interior of the Eastern Cape.)
I’m with a friend from Cradock, art teacher Annari Oosthuysen. We’re on our way to climb the 1 514 m-high Salpeterkop. This sturdy Karoo koppie is also next to the R61, but there’s something hidden on its summit that you can’t see from the road. If you want to see the chessboard it’s famous for, you have to climb!
Our guide, Richard Okkers, drives along the rough jeep track to a point closest to the slope where we plan to hike up. As we get off the vehicle and ready our daypacks, the sun rises, touching the dolerite boulders above.
There are thickets of spekboom and we pause to look at how these plants – some growing to the height of small trees – have been pruned by antelope like kudu. A while later, after hearing a clink of hoofs on stone, we stop and look back. It’s an eland bull, head turned towards us, curious.
You need to be only mildly fit to hike up Salpeterkop. We reach the top after about 90 minutes. At the trig beacon, we
