The event is a nice traditional bring and braai.
I will be supplying:
Fire
Green and potato salad
Bread rolls.
Mieliepap and Sheba
You will need to bring:
Meat
Your own drinks
Any GC's ot TB's you'd like to share with the rest of us.
We are fortunate enough to have some goodies sponsored by Sylvia from one of the online geocaching stores and we will be having a few lucky draws during the braai!!!
Fires will be started at 11:30 am.
It will be taking place at the Ngodwana Dam Lapa so no excuses about the weather!
If you are thinking about making a weekend outing of it, there are guest houses at Kaapsehoop (with lots of caches located close by) as well as camping fascilities at Elangeni Holiday resort (about 10km from the dam). Unfortunately no camping is allowed at the Ngodwana Dam as it is a privately owned dam.
This dam was built by Sappi to supply the pulp and paper mill located close by with an adequate supply of water for use in their production process as well as supplying drinking water to the villages in the area. There are 3 villages situated here namely Ngodwana, Mbokodo and Jabulani all together housing around 10 000 people. Before the dam was built, water was drawn from the Elandsriver in order to make paper.
The river feeding the Dam is called the Ngodwane river which in isiSwati means "You are now alone" refering to the union of the Elands- and Ngodwane rivers, becoming one. It is an earth fill type dam, the dam wall is 44m high and 450m in length. This creates a capacity of 10,400,000 cubic meters of water with a surface area of 87 hectares.The catchment area for this dam is 229km2.
The interesting thing about this dam is that it filled up almost overnight! It was completed at the end of 1981, just before Hurricane Domoina struck the country. With the huge amounts of rain brought with the massive storm the dam was filled up in no time.
Various species of fish dominate the dam with Bass, Baber, Carp and some Yellow fish being caught on a regular basis. Once a year there is also a four species fishing competition which draws fisherman from all over Mpumalanga. A small crocodile has also been caught in the dam a few years back but since then none has been seen. The threat of Bilharzia is ever present in stagnant water here in the Lowveld and although the dam is not bilharzia free, there are areas which have been engineered to mimimise the risk of contracting the disease and which allows you to cool down in the clear water.