We encountered our first bout of really nasty weather this
week. We left the Wild Coast in a
drizzle and it soon became a 300 kilometer long deluge of rain and pea soup
fog. Add to that the horrendous road
construction with three separate one way traffic stops of over a half an hour
and it is no wonder that we did not reach our intended camping site on the 28th. We had a nice little hotel room in Kokstad,
however, and were neatly placed to get here at the base of Sani Pass (where it
continued to rain quite deliberately).
It is beautiful here and a great place to do some
hiking. Yesterday we embarked on an all
day hike, promising the kids a swimming spot in the river and a picnic. Luckily the morning fog burned off and we set
off around 10 am for a 5-6 hour loop hike called Gxalingenwa that starts right
here at the hostel. The first 45 minutes
were idyllic with blue skies, green rolling hills, and gorgeous views. It was reminiscent of my wonderful hikes back
home above treeline with my buds, Jenny and Heidi. Rock even said, and I quote “ this is great
hiking!”
And then things began to change… Rock screams and says he
was bit by something on the neck. We
figured he got his first bee sting and coaxed him on. A few hundred meters later we notice some
black flies and then Audrey gets bit.
Things turn for the worst at this point and we are swarmed. The kids are not happy, but we keep moving
and waving our arms, figuring that the flies will surely stop soon. How wrong we could be. We probably should have turned around at this
point, but there was a little reprieve and Mike even got out the video camera
to record us waving our arms, ha ha. We continued up the hill and then really got
hit. The kids are trying to run and swat
and scream all at the same time. Mike and I are yelling for the kids to keep
moving and keep swatting and the kids are screaming and crying…. Wow! We
sounded like a war zone. Mike finally
had a stroke of genius and got out the rain ponchos which kept the flies off,
but made us sweat like crazy. This
little bit of torture lasted, I kid you not, about 45 minutes!
We finally came to a little stream where the flies seemed to
be gone. So we took some time to filter
water (although the South Africans say you can drink the water here in the
Drakensberg right out of the stream) and regroup, thinking that the flies could
come back, but there was no way we were turning around now! The hike became positively lovely after this. We hiked through a cave, and down to the
river where we had lunch and a chilly swim.
The rest of the hike was beautiful and we even scared up a troop of Chacma
baboons – that was awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment