this morning we crossing over swartberg pass at 24 kilometers long and climbing to 1575 meters above
sea level it connects prince albert in the karoo with oudtshoorn in the klein karoo it's a national monument
and thomas bain's last project this is definitely one of south africa's most iconic mountain passes
the labour used on the construction of the pass was all convict labour tronk is
a jail i'm not sure whether it was an actual jail for misbehaving workers slash prisoners
and apparently according to the sign it's a tronk which is the jail
and that's the road up there there were over 200 convicts coming from
different backgrounds including lawyers stock thieves smugglers among others
droe watarfall
not always dry
it's really really spectacular uh where we've come from is down there you can see the pass coming
up there is prince albert and we're getting in a southerly direction that's going to go
up there all the way to the summit up there and then we go down again to oudtshoorn the hell
it should be for another journey gamkaskloof it's only four wheel drive vehicles you can't
go there in a normal car and they say it's two hours but it's probably takes a bit longer than
that but we'll see that in another video look out for that one so i'm just walking down to
these ruins in the late 1880s this would have been july or august in
winter there was a massive snowstorm up here and the roof of the building where the convicts were
housed collapsed and a whole lot of them died so there's not much left in stone walls
it was a tough life
there was no
compassion for prisoners back then
this is actually called die top there's a hiking trail that goes up there as well
this is the old toll in the old days
traffic coming past you would have had to pay a toll before continuing on towards oudtshoorn
and back on to the tar road
that's it for now thank you so much for watching and if you did enjoy
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