Wolkberg photos - day 4

Packing very slowly

Water - plenty

I quess it is a bit hotter that usual

Probably looking out for snakes

Catching a breather

Aahh, some shade next to water

Almost there

That is a face of relief

Enjoying the view, or should I say the shade

Beautiful!

Wolkberg - day 4

Slowly wakening to the sun actually tepting to microwave my tent it was time to render all my abilities to stand up and get out of the tent. It was a glorious morning with Thys dossing next to the camp fire we made (it was a case of emergency) the previous night. He was motionless and I actually thought he was outdone by lethal scorpions or some sort of spider, never the less he was persuaded to life by much apreciated coffee from Elize, who I might add is the lady who gritted through this malicious hiking trip and still had today to cope with- well done girl!. As far as everybody was concern, nobody was in too much of hurry today as breakfast time was dragged out to the outmost by means of prolonged preperations, discussions and packing routines. It was going to be a scourching day and some peoples bags just din't seemed to get any lighter and was still in the excess of 25kg. So we set of to the second last day of our trip and the idea of going back into the direction we set off 3 days ago hit me in the gut like a angry giraffe kicking you because you burned his gonads with a cigaret whilst he was drinking water. It was uphill, and i mean all the way!! It was hot and i mean the type of hot that only a Salma Hayek in a skimpy bikini can pull off hot, if you know what i mean? Water bottles was filled as we anticipated that we were going to get thirsty and very thirsty we did. After a couple of hours our party of 5 was quite spread out across the field as each one got into their own zone and stopping to chit chat was not on top of our minds, at least not on mine any case. I reached the river crossing at the last bit of "flat"section before we pushed on to the paces we left our cars, and took a power "nap"and refilled my system with all the energy stuff i had to my consumption. 30min later the rest joined me into wich we sommer made a lunch break for the day. Out of the valley with all our protection from the sun now gone, so it was only the god of sun - Ra and us all they way back. About 3km from the "fisnish", as this has become a race for me in my mind i sort of dozed in and out of dizzyness and i thought by myself that damn it is hot out here and glanzed at my temp meter and was amazed to see 40C. I could not see any red flags hoisted so i thought the meter was busted. LOL Am i there yet brought a new meaning to it as it seemed never ending. Well, evetually i got back to where the cars were parked and i was relieved to say the least. I slipped off my bag, got some fresh water, remebered that there were still a bottle of litchi flavoured water in my car with 2 packet of doritos, mmm heaven is upon me. After getting rid of my boots and socks I took some pictures, laid in the back of my boot and took some more pictures. Aprox an hour later my "team mates"arived with might I say some "expressions"on their faces. Ice cold black label makes any thing beter. I even believe that black label will cure aids

Wolkberg photos - day 3

Thys boiling some water for coffee

                                         

Misty morning

Thats how you carry a 26kg pack

Essential strapping

It's a warm day

Group photie

Wolkberg - Day 3

Waking up ontop of the platoue in what seems to be a very cold, wet and misty day was not surprising to say the least. Thys was the first one up and was already boiling some welcome water for the first of many cups of coffee and cappucino. Our bodies were certainly very unhappy with us at this stage and noticeable moans were heard as the others turned in their tents, from sore muscles we hoped. We predictably continued with the normal routine of coffee,biscuits and breakfast and sticking to my planned rationing of food was out the door, as i could not remeber exactly what day it was as you quickly start to forget these things, although I have marked all the zip lock bags as mon,tues,wed etc.Mental note: next time I will mark them day 1,2,3 etc. Day 3, and we need to make our way around Serela and off the mountain onward to our next camping sight. We proceeded through the marsh field down a steep declined single track. Sun decided to stick its neck out. We all halted and instinclively took all things wet and tied it to our packs in the hope to get some shirts and socks dry. Ater about 2 hours hike it was time to do some strapping to ankles and change into somewhat dryer socks. We came across a split that would take us down to the MCSA hut or continue onward into the river valley, where we needed to be to pick up a single track to link us back onto the route we came in from. Easy. We took a direction fix and plotted our self on the map. We decided to push through to the river where we will have lunch. The next 2 hours to the river was all slightly downhill. We came across a nice section where we decided to take a dip and cool off as the tempratures were somewhere between 30 - 38C. The water was ice cold but refreshing, up to the point were Kobus realized he was swamped with minature leeches. So that was the last of the cooling off idea. We had lunch at the river. All set and up we went with a jeep track for approx 2km when we realized that we were on the wrong track. It was clear that we were in for a hell of a day. We backtracked untill we found a "suitable"section to drop down to the river. We continued to follow the contours on the right side of the bank on what we could say "looked'" like a track, weather it was for cattle, antelope was debatable. Soon afterwards we were faced with some serious obstacles in our way in the form of what seemed to be a mix between bushveld, river, grasslands, swampland, reetland and anything in between. For an extended period of time I was cursing the dude who decided to plant thousands of "brandblaar", "wag n bietjie", "haak en steek" in this "hiking trial"we were on. Did I mention that I was in knee pants, big mistake! After zig zagging across this "war torn country" a couple of times it was inevetable that the machete's and hiking poles were utilized to "open up" some form of gap we can walk, or should I rather say bundu bash through. I can confidently say that after about 3 hours of this "pleasant" escursion the sense of humor levels were at about 3/10. That actually plumitted to -5 when we had a close encouter with MR Puffadder half way through the valley. That, funily sped up efforts to get out of this valley. We were very fortunate to at least see a white crossed eagle gliding in between the cliffs above us. At some point Thys spotted the actual sinlge track that we needed to be on, up to our right hand side. We followed the track battered and bruised until we reached the area where the 3 rivers join. At that stage the daddy of baboons also did not like our presence and were very agitated with us.The sun was now speedily leaving us and dusk was upon us. We still needed to do about 4-5km to get to a suitable camping site. Very determined that we were very close we proceeded on, crossing steams and rivers witch at that time I stopped counting how many of them. A voice, I believed was Iwano's, murmered something about 40m to go. I heard Thys silently cussing us at about 1km passed the "40m" mark. At around 19:30 somewhere we eventually reached camp with feet that was no more and surely tears pressing in some eyes. Distance done today was in the region of 25km of unpleasant terrain.   

Day 1 now was something of the past and with the body starting to "talk"to us it was evident that this was not going to be your normal multi day hiking excursion. The morning of the second day loomed outside my tent with the constant drizziling of rain outside. It is 05:00 and time to prepare some coffee, and to mentally start preparing to tackle the day with wet boots. I thought that waterproof boots meant it was waterproof but to our surprize it seems it was not meant to be submerged, but anyhow we were determined and we were not going to let such a minute issue fase us. So the stove was hard at work, boiling water, wich there were plenty of, and the rest of the guys and girl started to arise from the "dead" to start preparing breakfast. Steaming coffee with biscuits and rusks were the order of the day with a mix of muesli, pro-nutro and oatso easy. I could not believe that one of the guys actually packed a 2lt carton long life milk, I suppose that some luxuries just can not be left behind as so wiith the bottle of chilli's that was carried around for 5 days. After breakfast it was time to pack up wet tents and gear. Getting dressed in wet weather gear was unquestionable, and off we went. It was a tough hike through thick wet bush with another 10 or so stream crossings without the option of staying dry. 2 hours later we entered a forest and I had  to pinch myself now and again to realize that we were not in the Brazalian rain forest. So we proceded up through the forest, up and up and up and up and up and up and later on we were still making our way up. It seemed that we would never reach the topline as the trees growing in this forest seemed to be kilometers tall. 6 hours later we reached what we believed to be the top and end of the forest, but to our horror it was not to be. Ahead or should I say above us lay the actual climb to the top of the plain to Serala peak. Did anyone brought ropes? In our faces we were presented with a skyward cliff that needed to be scaled to reach the plato. After carefully and prayerfully climbing and heel hooking, and with the occasional  passing on of backpacks here and there because it was simply just impossible to climb with them we eventually made it to the top with tears in some eyes. I was thinking by myself at that stage that we were quite blessed due to the thick mist and clouds that witheld the view initially from us whilst climbing the cliff because when we were standing on top of this plato it cleared up and a feeling of "holy crap" this is high started to sink in! We all stood in awe while taking in and enjoying this spectacular scenery. We truly have a majestic Creator and all honor to Him! Lunch was next on our agenda and we tucked into some biltong, cabanossie, droewors, biscuits, cheese wedges, jelly babies and tuna. What a view from here while enjoying south african biltong and good friendship. Hard to beat I thought! We arrived at our camp site for the night next to a river that dropped over the cliff some hundred meters down, hard to say how far as the thick mist did not allow us to see right to the bottom. Dinner was prepared around the tents with the temp dropping to a mere 11'C, quite nippy for summer time I thought. As a avid Blue Bulls supporter and made sure that I listen to the curry cup final between the Bulls and the Cheetahs on my cell phone and plug in speaker. Victory for the Bulls, good company, awesome scenery and drinking "watang"... can get use to this!!

Wolkberg photos - day 1

Wolkberg hiking

Myself and 4 (3 males & 1 Female) others embarked on a hiking trip deep in the Wolkberg nature reserve just outside Tzaneen in the Limpopo province for 5 days. We arrived at our starting point after 6 hours drive from Johannesburg. I must mention that going there in a normal sedan is probably not the best decision i've ever made, but non the less we got there in one piece. Upon arrival we found 2 gents sitting in an office were we had to fill in the registers and pay the fees ( R100.00pp) After the formalities was dealt with we took our gear from the vehicles and done our final checks on the kit and gear. We then took some photos and off we went. After about 10 min's hiking I realized that the half eaten meat pie we bought at the last stop was still inside the car and I had to go back and get rid of it as I imagined how the car would have smelled after lying in the sun (30-35C) over a 5 day period. That out of the way we hoped that that was to be the last of any bad luck we would have on this trip, as we soon found out not to be the case! Weather predictions for the next few days was to be wet, wet and very wet. Did I mention that we were going to get wet? So off we went and we immediately start to drop down into the valley approx 800m down. I thought, ah nice, downhill, but totally forgot that 4 days later and quite more tiring that now we had to come out the same way, but that for later. having a 25kg pack on your back and dropping this steep into a valley takes its toll on the knees as any hiker will tell you that going up is better that going down. Halfway down the valley we had our first stop at a perfect spot next to a 15m waterfall. Bags off, snacks out, and resting the feet a little bit, nice! We took some photos, packed up and off we went. 4 Hours later, and after crossing about 20 river crossings of various depths with "regular" water stops in between we reached our choice of an overnight spot, "democratically" decided in a state of wetness. Did i mentioned that it was going to be wet? We proceeded to pitch the tents, get the food going and get the gear as dry as what the conditions allowed us. All of us at that stage probably thought weather they had packed enough socks for this trip.