Dragon Mountains

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Sunday 3-27 to Tuesday 3-29
Well, the honeymoon in Africa is over. The first few days were great and Kruger was amazing, but then we went to Swaziland and were thoroughly unimpressed. Our accommodations were filthy and customer service seriously lacking. Add to that the fact that we were seriously ripped off by the travel agent we booked our trip with in South Africa and you have two very unhappy campers. We’re trying to work through it, though. We have two days in St. Lucia on the coast of the Indian Ocean. It’s beautiful here, but sadly the waves are too rough to swim in the ocean and the estuary is filled with crocs and hippos (which to our delight, we got to see swimming around); so needless to say, there’ll be no water activities for us in St. Lucia. We’ll just use this time to move past the infuriating anger at the travel agent (NEVER EVER book with Go Self Drive if you’re in South Africa) and finish our plans for Europe. Ugh. Hopefully the rest of the trip will get better from here.

Wednesday 3-30 to Friday, 4-1
Animal safari time in Africa is over. Next phase: scenic mountain countryside. We visited central Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains) for a few days and stayed in a beautiful bungalow overlooking the foothills. The landscape here is very unique, unlike anything I’ve seen before. You travel through rolling hills of wild grasses and the occasional shrub (perfect for all the cows in the area), then off in the distance are huge table top rock formations. Luscious green plateaus that tower over the tiny local towns. I’ve been doing my share of the driving (quite a challenge to learn how to drive on the left-hand side amidst horrific stretches of potholes) and it’s been interesting trying not to miss the road while taking in the scenery. ;o)

Oddly enough, everyone here (or rather the black population here) seems to walk everywhere. There are road signs prohibiting hitch hiking, but everyone seems to do it. You can’t go far on the road without passing intervals of people waiting to catch a ride. In most other poor countries we went to, most people have bicycles to get around; there’s not much hitching. But here, rarely did we see a bike. The majority of people have to try and catch a ride to where they’re going. Perhaps it’s due to the terrain. If they bought bikes, it would be a very challenging ride to try and make it up and down all the rolling hills. But if that’s the case, they must have a very fluid sense of time here. There’s no way you could promise to make it to work or to a function at a certain time if you’re reliant on the kindness of strangers to pick you up. We passed most hitch hikers, and just kept on going, but it was hard to ignore the massive amounts of people that need a ride – especially the old women and little kids. But we did give in and offer a ride to one of the park guards (broke Trent rule #1). After more than an hour of riding with us over incredibly bumpy and unpaved roads, past herds of cattle blocking the streets, we dropped him off at our turnoff, where he still had 20 more miles to go if he could find another car to pick him up. Not an easy way to travel.

Drakensburg turned out to be a nice relaxing layover and a break from constant driving. During the day, we hiked out to waterfalls (got ridiculously sunburned) and went to see a falconry show at a local raptor rehabilitation center. Black eagles are frickin’ HUGE by the way! The largest bird I’ve ever seen. Oddly enough, when the caretaker let her off the lead to show us some aerial moves, the bird flew away and refused to be called back down, no matter how many chicken necks the guy tried to lure her with. The bird was still flying way off in the distance an hour later when the show ended. The eagle so terrified some of the other birds in the show that they didn’t perform well at all – afraid the eagle would swoop down and eat them. I wonder when they were finally able to get her back down that day.

We also visited Giant’s Castle, where we saw a collection of ancient bushman cave paintings – anywhere from 5000 to 150 years old! It was really cool to see something that old. Most of the paintings were of local animals, images of hunting or of sacred shamans, people dancing or heading off to battle. But one painting actually depicted bushmen facing off to Western soldiers. It was interesting.

At night we watched beautiful sunsets and enjoyed the deliciousness that is rooibos tea, while gazing up at a sky full of stars. It was the first time on our trip that we could see the Milky Way and it was the first time in a long time that I saw stars actually twinkling! The lightening storm above the hill tops made for a very beautiful starry backdrop.

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