Drakensberg, South Africa - Day 316

An EXTENSIVE day’s drive from Port Saint John to the northern part of the Drakensberg Mountains (probably 9 hours with a number of wrong turns in there), pulled into our guesthouse near the foot of Cathkin Peak near sunset. The Drakensberg Mtns (or at least the area where we stayed) have recently been deemed a World Heritage Site (c. 2001?), they form a good portion of the border with Lesotho (pronounced Le-soo-too), and they’re pretty spectacular to look at. You can do as much or as little of them as you’d like: we did a couple short day hikes from near where we stayed, Jonathan, our friend from Capetown had recently done a 10-day hike in the Drakensberg! I keep being amazed at how accessible they’ve made these attractions all around SA (I have visions of having to do a big long hike to see these places we’ve been going to but it usually turns out you can drive right there…)

Happened to be a Sunday night when we arrived; too late for dinner at the guesthouse, we headed out to find a restaurant… you wouldn’t believe the time we had finding one open on a Sunday night! (good old African time) Got a later start the next morning (Jen having come down with Tuberculosis or something), about 15 mins up the road parked the car at the “Monk’s Cowl” parking lot (named after one of the nearby peaks), $3 each for a day pass, picked a route that would give us a bit of height for a nice view of the area (brought us up to around 2000m elevation to the foot of where the “real” mountain starts), a good 2 hours up, another 2 hours back. Called it a day, headed back in time to do our very last sundowner in Africa’s wilderness. Boo.

A little miffed about only getting one hike in the Drakensberg in, made a special effort the next morning to get up with the sun, hit the trails one last time for a short walk before check out (5th consecutive day of hiking!!). This time just a 2 hour walk roundtrip keeping low, nothing too strenuous, taking us past a few waterfalls, etc. Just right! It’s amazing how many hikes are in fact possible – we could have spent a week hiking where we were, and that was one tiny part of the mountain range!

Packed up, loaded the car, departed for our final 4 hour stretch of the trip…