26-Feb-2004 -- On a roundabout tour from Cape Town, a friend of mine Robert Thorne and I, planned to visit at least three degree confluences during a five-day outing. Travelling up from Cape Town, we night-stopped at Citrusdal for a planning session.

The next day took us into the Hantam Karoo through Niewoudtville. For the traveller who makes the effort, a visit to the waterfall outside the town provides a pleasant surprise. None of the rivers feeding it were flowing during our visit, but the pool had water in it. This must be quite a site during the wet season.

From Niewoudtville we went to Loeriesfontein, which lies in the heart of the Bushmanland region. They have a "Windmill Museum" here, and although the museum itself was closed, there is quite a selection of windmills in the yard. The farmers in this region rely on the windmills to pump underground water for their stocks, which are mainly sheep and goats.

After Loeriesfontein we left the tarred roads behind, and the gravel led us through this arid region to Granaatboskolk. This does not really qualify as a town, as it is actually only a confluence of roads. From here we relied heavily on our 1:250,000 detail maps and GPS to find roads leading to the Confluence.

In the early afternoon, we ended up on the farm "Teriris" of Rean and Minette Nel. After some explanation to the farm workers (the owners were away, transporting sheep to the market in Cape Town), we set out on the farm tracks. We managed to get within about 500 m from the Confluence, and a short walk through the knee-high shrub brought us to the spot. As can be seen from the photographs, this is very harsh country, with less than 200 mm of rain per annum, and extreme temperatures (it was 40° C in the shade during our visit).

We intend contacting Rean and Minette, and posting them this submission, together with directions for them to find the wooden stake we drove into the ground at the Confluence.

Continued at 30S 19E.