Sevilla Rock Art and its wonderful sights brought back a rush of memories from 10 years ago when we decided to visit one of our favourite destinations, the Cederberg – to witness our seasonal spring flower display.
We decided to combine this flower getaway with some serious rock art excursions. This time we chose to engage the services of a professional guide, Mr David van der Westhuizen – who is also a rock art specialist and part of the Living Landscape Project.
To add a better understanding of this magical location, we chose our base to be Travelers Rest which is the farm on which these ten special sites are located.
With map in hand, and beautiful crisp spring air, we set off to explore and understand the true meaning and interpretations of these wonderfully crafted images that were made over 2000 years ago by the San people.
David has a wonderful insight to the reasons why and the understanding of these images. This was a welcome change from our first visit, where we simply could only admire the images. This time around, we appreciated a much deeper understanding of why they painted these images and what they meant.
A very unique sighting was these paintings representing monster-like creatures combining chameleons, mantis, giraffe and dinosaurian figures.
A common rock art painting, might represent only a portion of the object painted, due to the use of white paint. The white paint is the one colour that faded the fastest of all colours used for rock art.
Over and above the wonderful description of the various sites and their meanings, this excursion follows the Brandewyn River, and has scenic views of typical Cederberg landscape and rock formations. Being flower season we had the added treat of a beautiful array of seasonal flowers to compliment our excursion.
Today it is practically impossible to enjoy a sighting of wild elephants roaming the area, but many years ago they were a common sighting. Elephants were mainly painted in yellow and ochre and is fairly commonly painted around this area.
Upon our return route, the view changes and is again so beautiful looking towards the Pakhuis pass in the distance.
Looking carefully at the above image, you will notice a man hunting a small antelope. The fellow hunter is cheering with hands in the air, as if the hunt was successful. It is so interesting to see the story behind each rock art painting, this one being no exception.
We were hoping that this getaway would not bore the younger generation, but as you can see they were mesmerized by the story telling and its unique historical value that can be shared for generations to come.
Site nine had some very interesting, but typical male and female figurines, but it was also shared with us that this site is slowly deteriorating due to the falling rocks. It might not be around for too much longer, and we are privileged to witness this before it might disappear in time to come.
Site ten is unique because of it’s location, but also because of the images that represent a procession and a time-lapse. This site is not directly part of the site one to nine route (as you have to cross over the Brandewyn river), therefore it has to be followed from a different starting point at the Restaurant.
We chose to cycle to site ten and it was a short and pleasant 3 km ride along the river, and an easy find. It has been ten years in the making for us to finally also get to see site ten.
A night in the Cederberg is not the same with out playing with the shutter and some light art painting. Be sure to get your camera onto a tri-pod and enjoy the open shutter, you might even get to see the milky way in the distance too.
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Contact Travelers Rest
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