03rd December - More Photos of the Floods

Its hard for someone who has not seen our big dams empty to grasp the enormity of the change that occurred on 1st December after all of our rivers started flowing after a five year dry period, so I have put some shots of the dams before they had water in, as well as some larger resolution panaramic shots of the dams and rivers after the floods; clicking on the panaramic images will bring up the higher resolution picture.

Sohebele Dam:

The first image was taken in August and shows two of the Sohebele lions approaching Sohebele dam from the west. The large grassy area at the back of the image is the 'dam'...

The second image is that of a herd of buffalo also feeding in the 'grassy' Sohebele dam, early in the winter of 2009...

...and then, after the rains, this is what Sohebele dam looked like! The top image is taken from the western side, and the lion image was taken close to the large tree on the right hand side of the image, on the other side of the water!

...the other two images are taken from the eastern side of the dam and show the inundated dam wall!

Argyle dam:

This herd of buffalo was photographed feeding in the grassy bottom of Argyle dam, also in the middle of winter; the dead trees would have died when the dam was built and the flood water drowned them; to me it was almost unimaginable to picture this dam full of water...

...yet when i drove past after the rains, i was greeted with the scene of the dam slowly filling up, as is shown here...

Later in the day, much water had already flowed into the dam, but the water level was still rising, adn continued to do so overnight, stopping about 1.5m short of the top of the dam wall! I will try and post more shots of what it looks like now, as it is considerably more impressive than how it is pictured here!

Nhlarulumi River:

For any guests that have visited Motswari, they know the Nhlarulumi to be a bed of sand, and cant imagine what it looks like to have water flowing along its course, well wonder no more!

This image was taken the afternoon after the rains, just north of Vyboom dam wall...

...and this was what it looked like at the low level bridge when one drives into Motswari, just before Ingwelala! The bridge could not be crossed for almost 6 hours, but the water eventually started subsiding and allowed the debris to be cleared and the vehicles could again pass. The water continued to drop in level over the next few days, and by Monday it was reduced to a trickle, maybe only about 3-4m wide, and no more than 30-50cm deep, but it is at least it is still flowing!

And there you have it; water in the Timbavati, what a different feel it has!