New Year's Day hiking

Strolling around an open area. I'd been camping in a very rocky area.












These buck, 'Klipspringers', are normally very skittish and bolt at the mere hint of a human.
When these first saw me they hid behind a small tree, I was in full view, I just waited in case I could get a nice shot. Eventually, they crept out and walked off, and I followed quietly and slowly, probably for over half an hour.
Despite my being in full view they didn't panic. I tried to hide my eyes though, maybe that helped.
And I was patient. These photos have not been cropped. Optical zoom only, of course. Still, I've never been so close to these critters in 22 years.




The buck were eating the fruit on the stems of this 'Stem-frugt' plant; these plants are all over, and I've never seen so much fruit on most of the bushes. Good rains recently, I guess.











































I've been hiking around here for 22 years and this is the first grass nest I've seen.









Some nice rock formations. The ripples are from shallow waters laying down layers of sand... about 2,200 million years ago. This continued for 300 million years.
Between 1,800 - 2,000 million years ago there was an igneous intrusion covering 65,000 sq km, very mineral rich, solidifying over the next 30 million years. The covering rock was, by then, tilted causing the angles of the cooked quartzite layers of the Magaliesberg Mountains today - kilometers thick. Then much erosion happened as did climate changes, pole reversals, continental break-up, ice ages...normal stuff.
The ripples shown seem to run all over the place - This one is unusual. Most others are very distinctly one direction only, and the size of the ripples vary. Some places have dried mud crack marks.



New Year's Day photo project.













Work: I don't get out as much as I used to.
But this was a nice little job... an emergency leak. First of its kind I've done, but pleased with the result... so is the client. There were two holes : one in the elbow (in photo), and another in the pipe next to it. Now to fill the hole and patch the tarred surface. The top joint is straight now.