Sabie
Trip Start
Aug 22, 2009
1
20
22
Trip End
Sep 26, 2009
Sabie, Mpumalanga, South Africa
Monday, September 14, 2009
Another nice early start as we had a lot of driving ahead of us – today we were heading towards Kruger National Park but first we are spending a few nights in Sabie. From Secunda we took the route – Bethal-Hendrina-Belfast-Dullstroom-Lyndenburg-Sabie. Along this route like most of the African landscape, it's extremely dry, you might see the odd black charcoal field and few cows. Some drivers absolutely horrified us overtaking on blind corners and will do 140km/h +, when its clearly at 120km/h limit.
We stopped off in Dullstroom for a stretch and wander through – we discovered another cheese tasting room so we bought more yummy cheeses, made from a local dairy farm. Even better we found a chocolate store (Shautany Chocolatiers), where I got some good Macadamia chocolate (which is almost finished already...) and Paul got some mint chocolate (of course!).
The drive didn't take too long to Sabie, so we dropped off our bags and gear at our accommodation here in Merry Pebbles. While we still had sunshine we quickly headed down to the Sudwala Caves. These are meant to be the oldest caves in South Africa, and they were pretty cool. We got a 45min guided tour through them which I'm glad we did as there was no way we were to know there was lights inside. Some areas we couldn't take photos as it would've startled the bats (yip they were there... shudder) but they were still really cool. Inside there were two seperate arena areas where apparently they have had shows inside the caves, we kept saying that would be such an awesome experience to see a show inside there, creepy but very cool!
Back at the Merry Pebbles camp site, we've got a really cute chalet near the river and we've just finished eating pizza near a little open fire we made out front, and using firewood supplied by the camp. Apparently Paul and his family have camped here in the past, and he tells me with pride where its the one and only time he's bet his dad at one set on the tennis court.
