We leave behind the beautiful beaches of KwaZulu Natal and travel inland to the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg or Royal Natal National Park, part of the huge and incredibly scenic Drakensberg Escarpment. The Drakensberg is South Africa’s highest mountain range with peaks at over 3000 metres. Hiking is the most popular activity here and your guides will take you on a lovely hike if you are not already busy with other optional activities
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
9th December 2013
So the thing about Overlanding is things don't always go to plan - our stated accommodation was not available so we stayed at the Amphitheatre Backpackers, lets just say it's an interesting place. For example in the toilets there was a sign that said if you just blow your nose or do a little wee don't flush. They had a rock climbing wall and a spa inside the bar area spa was emptied every day and refilled with allegedly "clean water", (the water was the colour of used toilet water) I was never going anywhere near it but Lisa put her hand in and said the water was boiling hot.
From what we could gather it was the favourite place for rock climbers to hang out. The owners and hanger on's were a interesting bunch of people, they were really nice but they are the people time forgot, Hippies from another time and place and let say people who would be taking other forms of Muti (traditional medicine) either in liquid form or via the peace pipe. The son of the hippy lady owner thought Lisa looked like his aunt back in Australia, I got some mileage out of that one.
After we setup our tent I played volleyball with the younger folk, Thomas, Simone & Jan. (pronunced "yan") Lisa lazed about reading her romance novel, yes that's right a Mill's & Boon special....Simone & Jan are a recently married German couple who apparently went to Vegas to get married, they speak very little English but its much better than my German. Jan is currently reading the English version of Harry Potter, he says that he can read English really well but finds it hard to understand / follow along when someone is speaking English. (probably because we speak too fast) However we seem to be able to understand each other.
I then went for a run with Lina, (who better to run with, if I have a heart attack I have a doctor on hand) we got to see my favourite bird, the Long-tailed Paradise Whydah. It is a small bird which is primarily black and has a really long tail, when it flies it's like it has a wave motion. As it turns out I'm a twitcher, for all of you not in the know, a twitcher is a bird lover who loves spotting birds and records the birds sighted in their journals. On our run we stopped and chatted to Ulla & Hartwig we suspect that they were being our chaperones, I'm not sure how old they are but they are extremely fit, there always off walking and he's always taking heaps of photos.
10th December 2013
Today we headed off in Otis to see the Bushmans paintings, our guide was very informative and knowledgeable regarding everything we saw on the way to the paintings but I suspect the more impatient punters in our group weren't that interested. I thought his story telling of the paintings was great, one story was of the man v's the king cobra. The cobra's venom was used for fighting where as another type was used just used for paralysing the animals.
Next a group of us decided to do the long walk to see the Tiger waterfalls, named because when it's flowing it looks like the teeth of a tiger. Now there are things that I don't get, for example why not call the waterfall Lion Waterfall? tigers aren't native to Southern Africa... As part of my survival plan I now ensure that a doctor is doing the same activities as me and is in close proximity at all times. So on this activity we had Lina, the other members of our party were Thomas, Michael, Hartwig, Simone, Jan, Lisa and the great man Rimson. Owen got the raw end of the deal, he had to drive the short walkers back to camp and then come and get us. I say its a raw deal because its about an hour and a half round trip.By the time we got back to camp we were wet and more than a little cold so we took the accommodation upgrade option and so ended the camping experiment.
For dinner Rimson prepared a chicken barbeque a feast fit for kings. From there we headed to the bar for some local Moloko this came in the liquid form of Amarula and to shoot some pool with the cool kids. It turns out that my miss spent youthwith Phil has finally paid off and Iv'e still got it, dispite my handycap (Lisa) we smashed all challengers and became the heavy weight champions of the world!!!
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