When it rains in Nieu-Bethesda – Featured Blog

A couple of weeks ago I headed up to Nieu-Bethesda in the Karoo Heartland with a colleague for a tourism meeting.  En route we encountered the Fish River in full flow at Jansenville, puddles and pools next to the road approaching Graaff-Reinet and a very wet village at our destination.  The word Karoo comes from the Khoi language and means Place of Thirst, very appropriate for this arid region.  So it’s not often that you see puddles of water in the road throughout the village.  Something I photographed with pleasure.

But puddles in the road wasn’t what drew the oohhhh’s and aaahhhh’s from us though.  It was the Gats River that runs through the village.  It wasn’t just running strong, it was running very high as well.  So high in fact that it was over the low water bridge.  Seeing all this water in this arid region totally made up for the fact that there wasn’t any sunshine and blue skies to take nice pictures, which was part of the mission for the two days we were in town for.  Tourism meeting and nice pictures to use to promote Nieu-Bethesda and the Karoo Heartland.