LET IT SNOW!

When the first snow of 2020 fell in the Western Cape, hundreds of Capetonians descended on the Matroosberg. Cyril Klopper followed them – camera and travel permit in hand.

There are no fewer than 70 offroad vehicles parked in kneedeep snow on the Matroosberg. Small groups of people cluster around the back of the open canopies of their respective bakkies, and coffee gets poured from flasks and handed out. The sun is shining brightly, and to one side a family is perched on a rock. They’re the only ones who managed to get their gas stove going and are grilling boeries – when the mercury drops to around 3 °C, cooking gas often won’t ignite that easily.

We’re in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and people are keeping a polite distance from one another – there’s no shaking of hands and voices need to be raised when you talk to a neighbour. Occasionally a kid or a dog carelessly runs from one vehicle to another before a parent or owner calls them back. Young adults laugh with delight as they slide down the northern slope of Matroosberg on boogie boards. Teenagers lie on their backs in the crisp snow, making snow angels with their arms and legs. Every now and then you hear the loud “prrrrt” of a whistle – it’s the Matroosberg’s staff warning someone that they’ve ventured too close to the Groothoek gorge’s vertical cliff. At 1 900 m above sea level, a blissful sense of harmony and togetherness prevails; it’s almost as if the virus cannot reach us up here on the the highest mountain in the Boland. TWO DAYS PRIOR, the Matroosberg Facebook page announced that it was snowing, but the storm was too severe, and people couldn’t go up the mountain yet. And so we got up early the next morning and made our way to Ceres where police roadblocks enforced the level 3 lockdown restrictions. Many Capetonians who travelled the nearly 200 km to the Witzenberg district had to turn back because the travel restrictions meant they shouldn’t have left the metropole for something as trivial as snow-watching. We were able to get through by waving our permit.