Magoebaskloof Trip - December 2023
Saturday, 13 January 2024 14:30
In December, I flew down to visit my brother in Johannesburg, from where we then took a road trip northward to a place called Magoebaskloof. Magoebaskloof is a strange place in a sense, as its climate and landscape is so drastically different to its greater surroundings. This is because the area is very mountainous and at the edge of a great escarpment. It doesn’t feel like South Africa at all. It’s lush green mountainous landscape is covered by thick evergreen natural, as well as large planted forest. A true gem of a place, with more green than a Namibian knows how to deal with!
We arrived just in time for a spell of weather to pass through the area. It was cool, rainy, and misty. The cool weather was a blessing, as the last two days of our four day visit ended up being sunny, which consequenty felt very hot, like I imagine Florida to be like in Summer…
We stayed in a beautiful farm house on a large and private peice of land. A view over a huge lawn with a small dam, private pine forest and a stunning view to the west, of distant mountains and hills.
For an afternoon walk, we took a short drive to a local forest called Woodbush Forest Reserve. This place is a mix of natural forest, some pine plantations, and some really tall bluegum trees dating back to the early 1900’s. Some of these trees are in excess of 80m tall!
The forest was a remarkable place, offering many different walking and hiking routes. The deep and dark forest in the gloomy weather was very atmospheric. The wet and slippery densly grown forest floor. The mist rolling through the tree tops, while huge water drops fall from the leaves above. Completely surrounded by pockets of incredbile ear-piercing chirping of cicada, so much so my watch notified me of my exposure to loud sounds when we walk through them.
The dark and wet conditions weren’t easy to photograph. I just kept my 28mm Ultron attached to the M11, with ISO set to 400 and the shutter to around 1/45th sec. This ISO value is where the dual gain step is for the M11’s sensor, so anything above that is essentially ISO invariant, leaving any additional exposure to post production. I set my camera to shutter speed times as slow as possible, employing electronic shutter as to avoid mechanical shutter shock. It worked out quite well. Post production was easy, and employing a neutral or ocasionaly a linear tone curve was good enough to cover the large tonal range between bright skies to the deep dark corners of the undergrowth.
I was surprised just how wet everything got during the forest walks. I was most concerned about the camera but that held up really well. I made sure not to get it too wet, carrying it around my neck only at times when it wasn’t dripping too fiercly. My camera bag however, looked like it got pretty wet but luckily the Billingham bag has water tight matterial that prevented any ingress of moisture. The weather here was so humid that I had to make en effort to dry out my bag back at the house. Nothing seemed to dry quickly. The Billingham bag was luckily not drenched, and it was only surface moisture that needed drying thanks to it’s water tight fabric. The M11 made it through several days of wet forest walks, without any hicups, including using the Visoflex a few times.
The few days we spent visiting magoebaskloof flew past quickly. Every day we had a 6km or longer walk or hike. We also drove through the eares on little half day trips, exploring rich farming lands, passing through avocado, litchi, mango, blueberry and macadamia nut plantations. Let alone the vast pine and bluegum tree plantations covering the greater area. It was a very memorable trip, and I’m very keen to visit it again.