Augrabies Falls in January 2021

I was plodding along nicely in Feb, getting back into the swing of attending to Skimming Stones, then suddenly whisked myself off to Canada. Now I return to early January 2021. If you ask me where my favorite place in South Africa is, off the top of my head the first answer will be Augrabies in the Northern Cape. I’m not sure why it has such a special place in my heart but there is something infinitely powerful about the contrast between stark desert and water. Our first visit was part of our magical mystery tour of a honeymoon (despite pretty much every plan being upended). We have seen the falls at a mere trickle around 80 cm/sec and a magnificent flood of about 2500 cm/sec in 2010. This year when we were there it was about 250 cm/sec but increased dramatically shortly after our visit.

It is hard to imagine that the dassie is the closest relative to the elephant
A kalahari giraffe

In early February all the dams before Augrabies filled up and the flow jumped dramatically but as this coincided with me high tailing off to Canada on the 16th of Feb. The weekend after I left the flow was in the region of 2500 cm/sec, 10 x more than when we were there just a month previously. Cliff contemplated taking the children and his parents for a visit to see the falls in flood but the rain dried up. I’m really hoping that the dams don’t empty too much between now and next rainy season. I am already longing to go back.

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