On top of South Africa
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
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88
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Trip End
Sep 20, 2006
Amphitheatre, Drakensberg, South Africa
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
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Mary and Joy drove us down to Pretoria where we collected a hire car to drive ourselves off to the Drakensberg. Joy sent us off with a goodie bag of lasagne, chicken pate and pasta salad, and had even mamaged to pick up some of the printing for WWS that we'd sent off just before leaving. So we were able to see the WWS Christmas card and a few other things which was great.
It took about 4.5 hours to drive from Pretoria to Amphetheatre in the Northern Drakensberg - we checked into the Amphitheatre Backpackers which is a great place with a fantastic view of the mountians. The weather was really good the whole time we were there, bright and sunny, no clouds and not too cold. They were doing a lot of controlled veld burning to stop it all catching fire and destroying everything, so by late afternoon it was all looking rather hazy and smoky.
We were there for 3 days - the first couple of days we did our own walks. We walked from Mahi Camp in the Royal Natal National Park to the Crack which was a hard walk but with spectactual views. The following day we went to Cathedral Peak and did part of the walk to Rainbow Gorge before returning to the Didima Centre to meet a guide who took us on a hike to see some rock paintings. That was a bit of a cardio-vascular workout that one! The rock paintings were stunning - not the oldest in the Berg at only jusy over 100 years, but beautiful just the same, painted by the San Bushmen who don't exist in that area anymore.
Our last day was spent on a hike from the backpackers to the Amphitheatre itself - a spectacular formation in the ridge of the Northern Drakensberg range. We started off in the Sentinal car park with a great view of the Sentinal peak. We walked along the track to a steep gully and scrambled about 300m up to the top of the mountian. It was bally hard work but we managed it and were well rewarded by the view from the top - we were standing on top of the Amphitheatre. We had a picnic lunch before walking on the top of the mountain (it's flat, like table mountian) to where the Tugela Falls runs over the edge of the mountian down the sheer cliff face. It's the second highest waterfall in the world (after Angel Falls in Venezuela) and the highest in Africa although it wasn't very spectacular when we saw it. Winter is the dry season so it was only a trickle over the edge!
Tomorrow we head for Durban.
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Well, so much for our 'Three Lions' omen! We watched England go out of the World Cup on penalties - that's becoming something of a tradition!
