Suurberg

Anthony Hitchcock and Peter Swart, 12 December 1998

Introduction

Anthony Hitchcock began his quest to track down some quartzite caves in the Suurberg mountains near Addo Elephant Park after reading an article by Christo Swart in an old SASA bulletin. The article is written in Afrikaans and describes two caves in the Port Elizabeth area. Anthony began by searching topographical maps for the Boontjies River, mentioned by Christo Swart, but to no avail. He telephoned the Eastern Cape section of the Mountain Club, who could not help, and eventually resorted to the telephone directory, and called the first C. Swart he found. This was not the C. Swart he was looking for, but he knew of Christo, and passed on his telephone number. A rather surprised Christo Swart turned out to be the person Anthony was looking for, but unfortunately could not remember much about the caves, and could not remember where they were. So it was back to the maps to look for the farm near to Boontjiesrivier.. Anthony’s enquiries did eventually reveal the name of the owner of the farm, Mr Jimmy Truter. We made contact with Mr Truter who was living in Somerset East. He told us that he took people on tours of caves on his farm. He was happy for us to visit the caves and we arranged to meet up with him in Somerset East after the SASA constitution meeting in Prieska in November 2006.

So in November after attending the meeting in Prieska and visiting Campbell’s Cave near Richmond we arrived in Somerset East at the door of Mr Truter’s Estate agent business. Mr Truter was not available, and the locals where suspicious of two strange people arriving out of the blue, and asking about holes in the ground. They relaxed when they found out that we were not from the government, but were actually on holiday. The man at the agency could not understand why we did not have our, 'vroutjies en visstokke' wives and fishing rods with us on holiday! If there was anything we learnt on that trip it was that we must take our fishing rods on holiday and bring our wives along to make food and provide refreshments (coffee and beer).

Finding no joy in Somerset East, we headed for Suurberg itself. The 1:50 000 topographical maps did not show any river called Boontjiesrivier so we decided to ask the locals. We met an old weather-beaten farmer and his assistant named Baardman, who did not know of a place called Boontjiesrivier. We all poured over the map looking for Boontjiesrivier wondering where it could be. We knew that the caves were on a farm leading off from the old Suurberg Pass. The farmer finally shed light on the problem after much discussion and head scratching. He realized that Christo Swart had translated the place-name into Afrikaans and the map reflected the English name, Bean’s River. Once this was established he knew exactly where we had to go and informed us that the turnoff to the caves was at the top of the pass, which we had just descended!

We drove back up to the top of the Suurberg Pass and found the road to the farm named, Revue, and finally found Desember, the farm caretaker. He looked after the farm while the elusive farmer was away on other business.
After attempting to follow Desember's rather vague directions to the caves, we gave up, and returned to the farm to camp for the night. The next morning, Desember took us onto an outcrop of rock, and into a tangle of undergrowth, to the mouth of a cave. After a few minutes scratching around, we decided that this was too small to be the cave described in the bulletin. While I investigated the cave further, Anthony scouted around the surface, as the broken rock plates in the area created the impression that there were more caves to be found. Within a few minutes, Anthony had found one of the caves described by Cristo Swart. I then found Cycad Cave, and Desember showed us the bat cave, also described by Swart (1962).

Area Description

The Suurberg were formed when horizontal beds of quartzitic sandstone tilted and thrust upwards. The broken edges of these plates can be seen running along ridges, parallel to the direction of the mountain. The caves have formed in an area on the edge of one of the thrust lines, where the plates have not yet moved much from the horizontal, but have been jointed and broken as the mountain pushed up, and a deep valley formed.

None of the caves in the area showed any signs of water induced development, but were rather all formed along mechanically widened joints in the sandstone beds.

Survey

We spent the day surveying the caves, which was probably the best thing to do as the atmosphere outside became hotter and more humid by the hour. We began the survey of the Bat Cave to the ominous sound of thunder. It was raining heavily when we left the cave and walked up the hill to our tent. The thunderstorm was all about, water was flooding the ground and everything was wet so we decided to pack up and leave. Two lads clad in nothing but steaming underpants spent the next hour negotiating the flooded dirt road to the pass. The car became stuck a few times so we braved rain, storm and mud to push our way out. Our troubles were not over because the causeway at the base of the mountain was flooded and we had to take a long detour to get onto the road to Port Elizabeth.

Conclusion

As our trip was so short, we did not have time to explore, but in the short time we were there, we did find 5 caves. I expect there are more waiting to be found.

Bibliography

Swart, Christo, SASA Bulletin 1962, New Caves in the Port Elizabeth Area.

Suurberg Caves

Access: The caves are situated on the farm Revue, at the top of the Suurberg Pass.
1:50000 Map 3325BC Coerney 33:15'30", 25:40'30"

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