Hi
Everywhere we go we seem to take the clouds with. Taking rain to KZN and Limpopo province is one thing but delivering plenty of rain to the middle of the dry karoo is another. My Eastern Cape trip was ended 4 days short and in 7 days in the Eastern Cape I got 2 live snakes and 1 D.O.R. Absolutely horrible! I did get plenty of nice butterflies (the actual target), 18 SARCA records (mainly lizzards) and climbed some incredible mountains though.
The trip started brilliantly with this big "ball python" that crossed the road at 9:00 AM in the free state. I unfortunately didn't measure it but from other pictures (not posted) it can be estimated to be about 1.6m - 1.7m long. There weren't any good natural vegetation to photograph it in seeing as there were miles of mielie fields on either side of the road.
Also, some tortoises from the Eastern Cape. I am not sure what the double picture one is. The closest I can find is an angulate tortoise but it doesn't look anything like the Namaqualand specimens I have seen and it would be the extreme of its range (near Pearston). Any ideas?
And just to add some colour, here's one of the goggas we were after:
A male large silver-spotted copper (Trimenia argyroplaga)
So because of a lack of reptile pics I thought I'd show some locality photos:
The Winterberg (the red arrow shows where most of the lizzards including Cordylus, Agamas, Pedioplanis, etc were found). It is a fairly difficult hike and you can see the clouds arriving...
The Naudesberg Pass near Graaff-Reinet. Must be a puffadder heaven.
Another mountain near Bedford looking over the Winterberg. I got 0 reptiles there even though it looked very promising.
The western end of the Sneeuberg near Aberdeen. The blue sky is misleading and because of the weather we never went up any of the mountains. I'm still thinking Bitis inornata...
And then a warning to all road users. Small roads are safer than the big ones. As I was driving along in the Free State on the N1 an oncoming truck threw a beer bottle (yes a BEER bottle) out of his truck and hit our windscreen. I LOVE SHATTERPROOF! It could have been my head. I had a big fright and wasn't in a state to go chase after the @#&^@% that threw the thing so I got no number plate.