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Published: January 19th 2009
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I've been told by two Dutch ladies in their late 50's that I look like a young George Bush to the amusement of everybody else at the table, the weird thing is they meant it as a compliment, what????. Now i'm afraid to shave in the morning in case I look in the mirror and ole gun slinging George is staring back at me.
We've been to the Drakensberg Mountains where we stayed in a valley at the foot of one of the peaks called 'The Monks Cowl'. When we got into the valley I was a bit disappointed at first to see that even right out here there are the South African standard format of resort hotels, golf and country club type places. But in the following days on entering the valleys of two other peaks in the Central and Northern Drakensberg range 'The Giants Castle' and 'The Amphitheatre' there were none of these scars on the landscape, so I was relieved about that. Conservation in South Africa is high on the agenda thankfully, but I reckon if left to their own devices many South Aficans would introduce golf courses and quad biking into every area of natural beauty
in the country turning the place into one big happy camping conference centre and casino theme park.
The peaks in the area of the Drakensburg we've been are all between 3000 and 3500 metres. You can't stay anywhere on a mountain overnight so that means you would have to do a peak & return in one day. I know when I've climbed Helveyln in the Lake District it takes 2 hours and that mountain is just under 1000 metres. So I reckon a peak here would take 12-14 hours return and its a hot climb because this region Kwa-zulu Natal is in the tropics, so I gave up on the idea thinking it would be too much of an endurance test. I was very tempted though, the views from the ground are great but I've seen photos in books and on the internet of cliffs and canyons you can only access from the summits that look amazing. Nevertheless we've done some great day walks here. I'm often surprised by the micro-climates you can get in South Africa, one walk started off in temperate forest like a UK forest, but after a half hours hike we reached a creek and
a waterfall where it felt so humid it was tropical, every tree, plant and insect was different from those in the forest just half an hour below.
It can seriously rain here during the summer months. One day coming back from a walk it started to rain like it does in the lake district in Winter, near where we were staying we saw a couple of women struggling in the rain up a road so we decided to offer them a lift as they we're getting soaked. There was bit of a language barrier and they could'nt tell us how many km's away they lived so I just drove up the road. After a few minutes the tarred road disappeared and the untarred road became very uneven I could hardly see the road because of the water. About then it really started to hammer it down but I couldn't risk taking the ladies any further because we have the smallest cheapest car they had at Avis rentals and it wasn't up to the road I'm sure. So we explained this as best we could and the ladies realised the ride was over, they accepted these facts with humility thanked
bird out of a dream
If you gave a five year old child a pallet of paints and asked them to paint a bird, this is what you'd get. us and got out of the car, I was so gutted I had to let them out in what was now a storm but I could have risked the car had I gone on. After that to get home we had to cross a river which ran under the road normally but due to the rain was a well above it by now so I had to dodge bits of tree and alsorts to get accross.
After this expierence I started giving lifts to whoever looked like they needed one, this breaks the test book rules about safety but the countryside is different to the city, I wouldn't do this normally near the big cities. There's well documented stark statistics regarding crime in South Africa but to put things into perspective I must have spoken to between 100 - 150 people in the last few weeks doing exactly the same things as us and no one's talked of having any trouble. One guy got his camera pick-pocketed in the crush at the Cape Town new years eve street party but that can happen in any city. I think you can't approach coming here scared to death by the media
image of South Africa you would never relax and enjoy it, also I think if you act like a frightened rabbit you could possibly make youirself a victim.
Since the Drakensburg we've been staying around the border of Durban's Southern beaches and the region called The Wild Coast. Durban's Southern beaches are a string of shaby resort towns interspursed with upmarket resort hotels, I find it all offensive to the eye, don't visit Durban's Southern beaches if you ever visit SA, its a bit like Blackpool for 100's of km's.
Luckily we are staying beyond all that at the www.yengeleparadise.co.za Lynn (well done as usual) found it in an independent travellers guilde, it's just within the backpacker price bracket (only 26 pounds a night) but thats where the similarity with staying in a hostel ends. This is actually a beach house, the owner lives downstairs and guests stay upstairs. But there's no other guests here right now so we have been playing house and imagining what it would be like to own and live in such a place. There's a clean double bedroom, kitchen and living area with patio windows that slide open onto a sun deck. The
drakensberg
'giants castle' peak in the background house is effectively in a jungle I've seen bush buck, duiker (very small antelope) and there's gangs of vervet monkeys that swing by every few hours and rampage over the roof. You live amongst other people all the time while travelling so its been nice to spend some time just me and Lynn doing nothing much really.
Next its back to Durban because on Sunday we pick up my Mum from the airport and head to the St Lucia wetlands for 10 nights.
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Annette
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Twa Peaks
God.....it,s a real fairytale adventure alright- watch out for that giant tho......a x