If you travel eastwards on the R63 from Graaff Reinet, you drive along fairly flat terrain all the way through the town of Pearston. You will only encounter the first significant change in elevation 20km east of the town when you start to ascend the Bruintjieshoogte Pass on the way to Somerset East. The pass is named after the surrounding Bruintjieshoogte mountain range which lies between the Sundays River, Renosterberg, the Groot Winterhoek Mountains and the Sneeuberge. The range forms a watershed for the Little Fish River (a tributary of the Great Fish River) and the western side of the Blyde River (a tributary of the Sundays River). The highest peak in the range is 1,757 m above sea level.
It was on top of this pass I found myself at the end of a beautiful early winter day in June. Barely a breath of wind moving, a chill in the air and the sun heading for the horizon. I found myself a safe spot to pull over with a beautiful view across the plains of the Karoo Heartland all the way to the mountains near Graaff Reinet.
The sun started to make its way down towards the horizon and I started looking for the best sunset photograph.
I even crawled around the long grass and probably got my favorite photo of the whole trip.
I was hoping the sky would get a proper range of reds, yellows and oranges, but unfortunately the clouds just didn’t want to play along. Still, I wasn’t disappointed at all. A Karoo Heartland sunset never ever disappoints.
