Royal Natal, Drakensberg

I had to practice living out of a backpack, so I spent this weekend camping with the folks and their friends at Mahai Campsite in the lush green Royal Natal National Park in the northern Drakensberg.

Entrance to Tugela's Tunnel Gorge.

To start the weekend off, we did a token walk up the Queen's Causeway to the Cascades on the Friday, then did Tunnel Gorge on Saturday. The Drakensberg in mid-summer is normally very hot and insanely humid. It was a normal day on Saturday! But was a very good walk (chokkas full of sceeeeenery) and there were plenty of people about but we were as close to South Africans as it got -- the tourists were out in force. Admittedly, though on the way back we were accosted by a SA couple who "forced" us to have a G&T right there at the entrance to Tunnel Gorge (friends ahead had primed them that we couldn't say no). They whipped out an unopened bottle or Gordon's, a six-pack of tonic, and a six-pack of dry-lemon, and seconds later were drinking G&Ts in the Thukela (Tugela) Gorge forest! Thanks Stephan from Pretoria!

Kloofing up the tunnel

Sunday saw my Mum shake me out of bed at the Crack of Dawn (before 05h30!) to hike the infamous Crack and Mudslide trail. This involves ascending a section of the little-berg via a narrow, rocky kloof, traversing across the top (watching the Gudugu falls hurtling over the precipice), and descending via a narrow, muddy kloof using many chains, chain-ladders and wooden ladders. It certainly looks like the Mudslide is no longer an advertised route since it is a bit precarious --- I have been rock-climbing up less vertical cliffs than that! We were back before twelve to start the drive back to JHB --- don't take the toll-road --- the old road is faster (despite the potholes), cheaper, less traffic, and more picture skew!

The trees in the Mudslide housed thousands of weird caterpillars. This on landed on my leg.