Scaling Steenberg Peak — a 2.5 hour circular route at Silvermine

Scaling Steenberg

I must be hon­est and admit that we did this hike in reverse. Well, not exactly reverse, but we opted for the clock­wise dir­ec­tion, whilst the hike, when you take the time to read the descrip­tion, actu­ally recom­mends that you take the anti-clockwise route in order to the avoid the rather obvi­ous uphill slog to Wolfkop – 'The anti-clockwise dir­ec­tion avoids a long slog up the Wolfkop steps'.

But hey, all things being equal, we felt we got a good deal from our hike. And the advant­age of doing it this way (the clock­wise route, against recom­mend­a­tion) is that you get to see really great views over the Constantia Valley and Muizenberg far sooner than the other more sedent­ary ver­sion of the hike.

I must just add that it takes plan­ning (some­thing we're not always great at) in order to set off for the Higher Steenberg Peak along the recom­men­ded jeep-track past the water­fall at Silvermine's Gate 2. This is because the hike is so obvi­ously sign­posted at the start of Gate 2 in the other dir­ec­tion, away from the jeep track – so I think we can be for­given for going the way most people would go.

After leav­ing our car with the more than jovial car guard in the park­ing lot (your car is safe with him), we obeyed the sign and headed up towards Wolfgat. Map in hand, sun begin­ning to head for its mid­day pos­i­tion in the sky, the first few minutes of the hike were lovely, filled at this time of year with fyn­bos, and the path eas­ily discernable.

Photographs — Left: Initial Path / Right: Sign post

After roughly 15 minutes of ambling, the walk starts to take a pretty steep turn as one heads up the Wolfkop steps. For most fit hikers this would qual­ify as a mod­er­ate incline, but we are any­thing but fit and rely instead on our nat­ural enthu­si­asm for walk­ing to get us up hills and down dales. Not a bad strategy but when it comes to scal­ing great heights, not recommendable.

Nonetheless, the views even from part-way up are well worth the exer­tion. Ou Kaapse Weg stretches out below one and the vista extends across to Silvermine West, Constantia, Elephant's Eye Cave and the back of Table Mountain all the way to Devil's Peak, depend­ing on the level of the light (hazy days are not as great).

From the top of Steenberg Peak there are unin­ter­rup­ted 360° views that are awe inspir­ing and well worth the steep steps to reach it. On the one side one can see all the way to Long Beach in Noordhoek, and on the other all the way across Marina da Gama and Muizenberg to False Bay. This is where we broke for reflec­tion, some­thing to nibble, and to drink in the views. How lucky are we to have this on our doorstep?

And the rock form­a­tions in par­tic­u­lar are fant­astic. Some are stacked in a way to emu­late caves, oth­ers look so pre­cari­ous, as if they may at any moment tumble from the pos­i­tion they have held for who knows how long. No sur­prise then that there was a pre­val­ence of liz­ards sun­ning them­selves on the rocks. Blue headed iguanas and other smal­ler ver­sions were obvi­ously not fussed by our pres­ence and soaked up the neces­sary rays really close by.

You head up the gully between Splitkop and Steenberg Peak. Because most of the ini­tial hike takes place on the north­ern slopes of Silvermine there is a pre­dom­in­ance of the most incred­ible fyn­bos. Vygies were already begin­ning to show their faces to the sun, clusters of flower­ing fyn­bos in yel­lows, purples and pinks grouped together gave pause for thought, whilst the path now lev­elled out, even if it was still climb­ing as we headed onto the sea­side of Splitkop, and allowed us to drink in the beauty fur­ther still.

Photographs — Left: Vygies / Right: Rock formations

Most of the veget­a­tion on this side of Silvermine was burned in what is known as the 'great fire' of 2000. As a res­ult much of it is young and you can see hun­dreds of flowers around the year – par­tic­u­larly pro­teas, and moun­tain dah­lias. Pick up a copy of Cape Peninsula by Mary Maytham Kidd if identi­fy­ing the plants and flowers is import­ant to you.

One of the most won­der­ful aspects to this hike is that great swathes of land here is utterly undeveloped. When one is not look­ing out over the city one's frame of ref­er­ence is instead the joy of being com­pletely emersed in nature in a way one can sel­dom do. There was no sound of man. No sight of man. And this not even 30 minutes from home...

From here one can extend one's walk to include Muizenberg peak (if you want to make a day of it), where you will be able to add views over Kalk Bay to your list of sights, but we chose instead to des­cend past the radio masts and met up with the ori­ginal jeep track to head towards Junction Pool, even if we did miss it!

By this stage of the hike we were begin­ning to flag and a stop for lunch was def­in­itely in order. We found a spot down next to the stream, the sound of run­ning water a balm for our tired legs, and the food a way to rein­vig­or­ate ourselves.

The lat­ter part of the hike joined the path that is used by many for walks over week­ends (the jeep track). This wasn't a week­end so we were lucky enough to have the place to ourselves. This part of Silvermine takes one past Maiden Pool and back to the car park at Gate 2. It is easy to walk, has beau­ti­ful views, and runs par­al­lel to Ou Kaapse Weg for some way, allow­ing unusual views out over Noordhoek.

Photographs — Left: Path towards end of hike / Right: The views

Highlights of the hike:

• if you want a chal­lenge, take the clock­wise sign­posted ver­sion. If you're after a more sedent­ary walk, go anti-clockwise
• fant­astic 360° views!
• gor­geous rock formations
• abund­ant fyn­bos in late winter – ericas, pro­teas, vygies
• able to pic­nic at numer­ous spots along the way, so take your lunch/snacks with you

Things to remember:

• in sum­mer, start as early as pos­sible – it gets hot
• take along hats, sun­screen and plenty of water
• not a hike for young children
• dog-friendly

For more des­tin­a­tion inform­a­tion see:

• Cape Town Hiking Trails
• Western Cape Hiking Trails
• Things to do in Cape Town
• Cape Town Accommodation
• Western Cape Accommodation

Strolling the pipe track

Pipe Track Hike

The pipe track, above Clifton and Camps Bay, can be a leis­urely stroll or a strenu­ous jog, depend­ing on your needs or your mood of the morn­ing. It is easy to reach, easy to fol­low, rel­at­ively easy to walk (depend­ing on the pace of your hike) and great for kids.

It is also one of the most soci­able hikes I've been on. It is very sim­ilar to the Constantia Nek con­tour path from Constantia to Kirstenbosch – a hike with very few ups and downs, and extremely pop­u­lar with loc­als and their dogs. If you walk it on a week­end expect to pass or be passed by another party at least every five minutes, if not more fre­quently, espe­cially if you're on the pipe track around midday.

On a per­fect wind­less winter's morn­ing, the pipe track is up there with going to the beach; a stroll in the park comes to mind it is so pleas­ant to do. And the views are the reason you head up here. The start of the walk is at Kloof Nek. Don't get con­fused as we did and assume that there is a park­ing lot for this walk alone. There isn't. You turn in at Kloof Nek as if you are going to head up Table Mountain in the cable car, but park at the bot­tom park­ing lot on your left.

Crossing the road to reach the steps up along­side the water­works' cot­tage is prob­ably the most dan­ger­ous aspect to the hike, and you will more than likely start along­side at least another two or three parties set­ting off. The route you fol­low is from Kloof Nek to Slangolie Ravine (roughly an hour and a half each way) but you can at any stage of the walk, turn back and head home, which is part of the joy of the hike.

Once you're up the hill, the pipe track runs level with the path almost all the way, although you only see snatches of it. To your left is Table Mountain – not an aspect that is famil­iar as it is the west­ern flank of the table – but you do get to see the cable cars enter and exit the top port. Alongside ini­tially, and then behind you, is Lion's Head in all its splend­our and, as you pro­gress, the Twelve Apostles extend ahead of you. The com­bin­a­tion of moun­tains and sea is heady stuff.

Right from the word go you are aware both of Camps Bay and why the hike is named the pipe track. As you round the first bend, you will see the pipeline as it crosses a small rav­ine, and will likely stumble across a series of aque­ducts along the walk (don't expect any­thing glam­or­ous, they're simply cement blocks on which a series of num­bers are pos­ted in red). Water still runs through these pipes, which brought Cape Town its first clear water in 1938. Before that any water com­ing into Cape Town was brown, in sim­ilar fash­ion to the water one sees in numer­ous streams in the moun­tains around Cape Town.

A little fur­ther along the walk, you will pass beneath a brick build­ing called the Woodhead Reservoir, the Kloof Nek fil­tra­tion plant. Much of the walk is shaded by a series of stone pine trees, enorm­ous as they stand along the pipe line.

There are one or two dips along the path, but the major one to look out for is the plunge (if you can call it that, as it is really slight) into Diepsloot gully, but this is quite far into the walk. Up and out of it and you head into a couple of quar­ries and the Matthew Jackson Gully, now closed to the gen­eral pub­lic, but which was fre­quently used as a route up Table Mountain (incred­ibly steep but it would not have taken too long if you were fit).

The views out sea­ward are incred­ible. From up here you would eas­ily see whales in the bay, if there were any, and we watched as a few people headed onto the beach below – little ants in their toy­land cars, as my four-year old son described them. The moun­tain side was strewn with little winter dais­ies, also known as Euryops abrotan­i­fo­lius, and the odd pro­tea still in the bud stage.

The lush smell of metalasia in the heat of the sun as we pro­gressed reminded me of ripe figs, its smell linger­ing on our clothes as we brushed past bush after bush, and the joy­ful play of purple, yel­low and white fyn­bos blos­soms in the soft light of winter lightened even the most mel­an­cholic amongst us.

The walk winds on, con­tinu­ously above Camps Bay until you hit Blinkwater rav­ine  (formerly known as Stinkwater) where, after about two hours, due to numer­ous stops en route (a walk with a young child is never straight for­ward) for snacks, fruit and water, we col­lapsed under a series of big pine trees.

Whilst my son and I stared out over Bakoven whilst seated in the lower branches of the pines, and watched a yacht pull in and drop anchor in Camps Bay, whilst pre­tend­ing we were a fairy queen and her prince, who draped my hair in vari­ous twigs and made me meals in the fairy kit­chen at the top of a huge gran­ite rock, my other half con­tin­ued briefly through a forest and out beneath the Blikwater peak. Just here above the sub­urb of Rontree (I hadn't heard of this sub­urb before doing the walk) you can join the pipe track in Theresa Avenue. It is more of an uphill but you get to do the walk the other way round – towards Lion's Head, although I would recom­mend doing it the way we did, from Kloof's Nek.

Highlights of the hike:

• not chal­len­ging at all – a dead easy hike (although there were those who jogged there and back!)
• look out for the numer­ous benches along the way
• fant­astic views!
• able to pic­nic at spots along the way, so take your lunch/snacks with you

Things to remember:

• in sum­mer, start as early as pos­sible – it gets hot
• take along hats, sun­screen and water
• head down happy val­ley after­wards to Camps Bay and have a swim in the sea  – a per­fect day's outing

Useful Links:
Western Cape Hiking Trails
Camps Bay Accommodation
Kloof Nek Accommodation
Cape Town Accommoation

Follow the yellow brick road – the yellow route at Helderberg Nature Reserve

Helderberg Reserve

Lying at the foot of the Helderberg is a large nature reserve. But this moun­tain does not stand alone. When one takes in the vista from the reserve, you are prac­tic­ally sur­roun­ded by moun­tains — testi­mony to the fact that the Helderberg Nature Reserve lies enshrouded by the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve and its incred­ible range of moun­tains. Both of these reserves can be found in the north west­ern reaches of Somerset West.

The Helderberg Nature Reserve, access­ible via Verster Avenue off Reservoir Road, is a per­fect space for pic­nics. Just after enter­ing the gate of the reserve (you'll pay a R10 entrance fee per head) you'll see the start of pic­nic blankets and bas­kets as they lit­ter the large expanse of lawn, and a jungle gym in the upper reaches. In sum­mer, I'll wager the place is packed. Even on this, a sunny winter's morn, fam­il­ies with chil­dren are gathered here in fair numbers.

Amazing how one's needs are sub­jec­ted to those of one's child, or per­haps you haven't exper­i­enced this par­tic­u­lar par­ental haz­ard? Picnics for me are usu­ally in fairly remote parts of pic­nic areas, nestled beneath a tree away from the hordes. Not our pic­nic at Helderberg. By the time we arrived, hav­ing stopped to pick up a selec­tion of pic­nic fare en route, we were starving, and one look at the jungle gym meant we had no choice but to sit close enough to mon­itor the com­ings and goings of chil­dren – fur­ther away would not suffice.

Picnic finally unpacked and the sun on our backs, we sat altern­at­ively watch­ing other pic­nick­ers, or listen­ing to the shouts of chil­dren on swings. Not too bad. I can do the par­ent thing, as long as I get to eat my food in rel­at­ive peace. And the trees and grassy area, peppered with the first ink­ling of spring flowers – little pink num­bers that raised their heads barely higher than the level of the grass in which they grow – was beautiful.

Photographs — Left: The approach to held­er­berg Nature Reserve / Right: Proteas

Next to the jungle gym, which finally got our undi­vided atten­tion after our meal, runs a gurg­ling stream and birds con­stantly dip and dive over­head. Tree climb­ing then became a more attract­ive ven­ture than the jungle gym, which is chiefly aimed at younger tod­dlers, and we began to gather together our food as our main aim was to wander the paths of Helderberg.

There are seven walk­ing trails in the reserve, each of them given a dif­fer­ent col­our and ima­gin­at­ively called the yel­low, black, blue, red, green, pink and brown trails. They range from the yel­low 2.2 kilo­metre walk, which takes you roughly 35 minutes to com­plete, to the pink route, which leads you right out of the reserve to the west peak and dome via what's known as the por­cu­pine but­tress. This walk is around 13 kilo­metres in length (my cal­cu­la­tion, so don't quote me) and encom­passes the yel­low, blue, red and green trails as each builds on the next as they head up the moun­tain. It is easier to see this visu­ally, have a look here.

It doesn't take a fool to work out that the yel­low trail is prob­ably your best bet when you have but a couple of hours left of sun­shine and a child in tow. The gates to the reserve open as early as 7.30am and in sum­mer it is def­in­itely a good idea to walk early, but in winter, you can quite hap­pily set out at what ever time, bear­ing in mind that the sun takes a dip behind the moun­tains pretty early in the after­noon and the chill sets in.

Photographs — Left: The Yellow Route / Centre: Yellow flower / Right: Picnics

Head through the stone arches with the res­taur­ant to your left, and you'll see a num­ber of altern­at­ive paths you can take. The yel­low is quite clearly marked. What soon became appar­ent though, is that this whole sec­tion of the reserve closest to the park­ing area, is littered with numer­ous paths that inter­weave and cross one another con­stantly. What looks like a straight for­ward path on the Walking Paths pamph­let you can pick up in the Visitor's centre, soon becomes a bit of a shambles or a maze of adven­ture, depend­ing how you wish to view it.

Actually, I think we stumbled off the yel­low path rel­at­ively early on. On read­ing other hikers' accounts it would appear that the walk is really well sign­posted with little wooden sign­boards marked with a yel­low foot­print. We weren't watch­ing the path well enough, obvi­ously. Nonetheless, our walk was wonderful.

The Helderberg Nature Reserve is a mass of vig­or­ous fyn­bos and indi­gen­ous flora. Proteas at this time of year fea­ture heav­ily and, with photo time, the walk took us about an hour as I kept stop­ping to cap­ture the beauty of pro­teas and ericas, some of which towered above me. And the views out over moun­tains were equally breathtaking.

Photographs — Left: "Have time to dream" at entrance / Right: And more proteas

Almost instantly we were in the reserve proper, and away from the excited shouts of chil­dren and the man­i­cured lawns of the pic­nic area. I felt lib­er­ated. Being out in nature in this way imme­di­ately reawakens in one the joy of life. All of us feel this to some degree. Which is why walks like this are so pop­u­lar, and why we seek out­door ven­ues like this nature reserve.

Whilst we didn't get to spot any of the reserve's duikers, bron­te­bok and steen­bok  (not sur­pris­ingly given that chil­dren make a fair bit of noise), we did see count­less num­bers of birds, gentle water pools, the odd water bird and enjoyed time out in the fynbos.

Highlights of the hike:

• really easy to achieve, with the option of adding fur­ther loops to make it a little more challenging
• easy to find paths
• fant­astic views!
• able to pic­nic on the lawns, so no need to take your lunch with you

Things to remember:

• don't leave the hike too late in winter, or the sun will beat you to it
• in sum­mer, start as early as pos­sible – it gets hot
• take along hats, sun­screen and water
• fin­ish the hike with a drive along the Helderberg wine route and stop off to taste some wine!

'Have time to dream. To think. To enjoy peace and quiet and the won­ders of life – the sea, the moun­tains, the fresh air.' - quote at the entrance to the walks.

Useful Links:
Somerset West Attractions
Somerset West Hotels
Somerset West Accommodation
Western Cape Accommodation

The Botterboom Hiking Trail

Botterboom Hike

The Botterboom Hiking Trail is, in its entirety, a two and a half day hike and was designed to give adven­ture to both ser­i­ous walk­ers and cas­ual out­door enthusiasts.

The region, steeped in his­tory, is excep­tion­ally pretty and the trail takes in all aspects of this; so there’s a little bit of some­thing for every­one.  The trail takes one back to 1870’s when the first rail­road to the north was con­struc­ted through the moun­tains of the Hex River Valley — this became the main form of trans­port to Kimberley for the Diamond Rush period.

Hikers will be treated to a large vari­ety of indi­gen­ous plants on the trail so look out for Botterboom, Aloe, Ghwarrie and Namaquakoeniebos.

The hike begins at the Veldskoen Padstal and you must obtain a per­mit from here before you start the trail.  The first day leads you up and along the top of the moun­tains near Osplaas and rewards you with pic­tur­esque views of the val­ley and Matroosberg Mountains.  As you des­cend, you will cross the rail­way line and then spend the night at Scooby Doo hut.

Day Two of the hike starts on the lower moun­tains and moves its way up the Appaskop (to a height of 850m).  The view is splen­did and you are able to see the entire Hex River Valley.  If you are a more exper­i­enced hiker, there is an option to hike across the old rail­way bridges to the Kaffrarian Rifles Monument and on then to Tafelberg which is the highest peak in the region (1100m).  The bonus of this route is that you get views of not only the Valley but also the Koo Valley to the east.  Overnight accom­mod­a­tion is provided at the Tunnel Railway Station – tents, fire­wood and fresh water are provided.

The final day meanders back down the Osplaas Valley and fol­lows the rail­way ser­vice road back towards Veldskoen Padstal.

As always, make sure you take warm cloth­ing, sun block and plenty of drink­ing water!

More Details:
For more inform­a­tion con­tact Worcester Tourism on 023 348 2795.

Useful Worcester Links:
Worcester Attractions
Things to Do in Worcester
Worcester Self Catering
Worcester Accommodation
Western Cape Accommodation

Walking above St James – a perfect child-friendly Cape Town hike via the Old Mule Path

Kalk Bay views

I'm hope­less with a map. Whilst someone in the know can under­stand that little yel­low lines close together indic­ate steep­ness, I go into fuzz land when faced with similar.

It goes back to school Geography, where the sight of a map used to send me into par­oxysms of anxi­ety only evid­enced by those who knew that sweat on my brow fol­lowed by my con­sist­ent fum­bling as I turned the map upside down in a bid to 'see' was an indic­a­tion that I was just not get­ting the picture.

And the map we use is really very help­ful. If you look closely it even tells you where there are steps and where it is stony or smooth – kind of them, hey? And it marks all the cairns, caves, pic­nic spots and even res­taur­ants you might need to pat­ron­ise after a walk.  Wish I'd had this map at school!

Nonetheless, it was just as well that even my bet­ter half bungled the start of our hike on Sunday. Our inten­tion had been to hike up Echo Valley. Beautiful hike. Head up a steep incline above Kalk Bay and then onward and upward climb­ing along Spes Bona Valley. Lovely. But not with a four-year old in tow. Instead the walk kind of dis­covered itself and ended up being just per­fect, as was the weather – I am cease­lessly amazed at the flaw­less­ness of Cape Town sunny winter days!

Muizenberg views

Instead of start­ing above Kalk Bay at the Echo Valley board, we ven­tured forth a little sooner above St James at Ou Kraal (just past Bailey's Kloof sign board) on Boyes Drive. I had already men­tally pre­pared myself for a climb but instead we stumbled on the Old Mule Path that is basic­ally a con­tour path up above St James and Kalk Bay. Most of the walk is pretty easy and the views are stu­pendous! Our little one was beside him­self and nom­in­ated him­self as hike leader – wasn't dif­fi­cult given that he's fit­ter than either of us.

From the Mule Path one can see right over False Bay from Muizenberg to Simon's Town, although not all at once. Only after los­ing sight of Muizenberg does Kalk Bay and then Simon's Town make an appear­ance. Sunday's sea was a mir­ror and en route we past a Shark Spotter, his jer­sey already set aside, as he enjoyed the sun­shine. And days like these must make his task par­tic­u­larly easy. A fin would stick out like a, well, like a fin really. And no, he hadn't spot­ted a shark yet. Good thing too, as Muizenberg was already teem­ing with surfers. I made a men­tal note never to encour­age my son to take to the waves!

The Shark-spotter

Our path took a slight ascent, after which we reached a cross­roads with an accom­pa­ny­ing cairn (not the usual assemblage of loose stones; this was cement and stone and indic­ated the dif­fer­ent paths we could fol­low). Choosing not to wander Willy's Weary Wait, or ascend into Spes Bona Valley and on to the Amphitheatre, we took a right along another rel­at­ively level and well main­tained path that took us back on ourselves to St James Ravine via Dog Rock and some rock slabs, neither of which I saw, by the way (but that's what the map says).

Periodically along this route we would meet other parties. The Old Mule Path is obvi­ously extremely pop­u­lar. It is also the gentlest ascent of the Kalk Bay moun­tains and the path winds its way gently and slowly to Ou Kraal. You can walk as far as you like and then turn back, con­tinue on and down Wandering Willy's Weary Wait (more often than not cor­rup­ted to Weary Willy's) and into Kalk Bay – it appears that Wandering Willy's Weary Wait is a small weir with huge old wild almond trees. Or you can ascend up fur­ther onto Kalk Bay Mountain where there are over 100 caves.

King Protea

Somewhere along our loose gravel path we stopped for lunch. The entire path was teem­ing with fyn­bos, pro­teas — includ­ing the King pro­tea, which was a real find — sun birds and beau­ti­ful water­falls and streams. At lunch a few sun birds came in so close to us that you could tell they did not fear humans as the ones in my garden do.

Shortly after lunch we joined a Hilltop Path that took us on to Bailey's Kloof. This is where things got a wee bit hairy. If you want to include this part of the walk then make sure that your chil­dren have their wits about them, as it con­tours a cliff face and a fall here would not be wise. This said, the path is beau­ti­fully main­tained and rock slabs have been placed as steps to make it easier for you.

Descending the cliff face in a diag­onal line, we passed a couple of late starters, includ­ing a dog in a ruck­sack, intent on get­ting up the moun­tain fast, which you can do if you ascend like this from Bailey's Kloof. It's just a real upward trek, so you'll need to be fit. We were really glad we hadn't opted for this ver­sion of the hike.

Safely around the cliff face you're faced with two options – a steep des­cent into Bailey's Kloof, or onward at a more sed­ate des­cent back to the Ou Kloof sign, where we star­ted. This des­cent takes you through cool for­es­ted parts of the moun­tain, along­side a gush­ing spring, which was a lovely, if cold, way to end the hike.

All in all, with more than a couple of stops, the hike took us three hours.

Highlights of the hike:

• rel­at­ively sed­ate and manageable
• beau­ti­fully main­tained paths
• eas­ily achiev­able by kids (four years and older)
• fant­astic views!

Things to remember:

• take along your own food and water, par­tic­u­larly in summer
• in sum­mer don't leave the hike for mid­day or later or you will fry!
• in winter don't attempt this if there is fog
• take hats and sunscreen
• fin­ish up with a drive down to Kalk Bay and a stop at the Olympia bakery for their Danish pastries

Photo Gallery — click to view enlargements

Useful Links:
Cape Town Attractions
Western Cape Hiking Trails
Cape Town Accommodation
Western Cape Accommodation

A walk at Silvermine — so much more than a breath of fresh air

Silvermine Gate 2

Beautiful Silvermine nature reserve forms part of Table Mountain National Park and hugs the greater part of the Cape Peninsula moun­tain range from Constantiaberg to Kalk Bay. Whilst most Capetonians know gate one — on the right-hand-side of Ou Kaapse Weg when trav­el­ling towards Fish Hoek — very well, where one can pic­nic, walk around the dam or join the hike to Elephant's Eye, fewer people know that there is also a second gate, on the left-hand-side on Ou Kaapse Weg when trav­el­ling in the same direction.

For those with any sense of geo­graphy, this is also known as Silvermine east, but since I struggle to dis­tin­guish my right from my left on a good day, using this ter­min­o­logy is Greek to me. Suffice it to say, it's on the other side of the road as you come around a bend, so look out for the left-turning arrow on the left that indic­ates that a road joins Ou Kaapse Weg, and you shouldn't over shoot it!

And you'll probaby need one of these maps, if you want to find the little pool that we missed. On second thoughts, if you're any­thing like us and deep in heated con­ver­sa­tion, not even a map will help you!

Silvermine Reserve

This part of Silvermine has two advant­ages. One, it isn't as well known as gate one, although there are a fair num­ber of people that will pass you by on the path, but you won't have to fight the crowds the way you can at gate one on a lovely week­end. Two, if you are with chil­dren, you reach streams and pools pretty early on in the walk, so there are rewards for little feet right from the word go.

Walking in Cape Town at the begin­ning of winter is simply sub­lime. When the sun is out (and this is rather imper­at­ive) the days are incred­ible, as are the views. We had left our walk 'til pretty late in the day but the com­bin­a­tion of sky and fyn­bos was breath­tak­ing. All around us was the sound of gush­ing water, not sur­pris­ing given that it had rained solidly for about four days! But unex­pec­ted was the odd burst of col­our in amongst the fyn­bos, as little pink, mauve and yel­low flowers emerged. I had thought these were an indic­a­tion of spring?

And the sky was an intense tur­quoise, the clouds stretched as if a fine linen begin­ning to show the strain of stretch­ing across a table or win­dow too large. Against this, the moun­tain peak (more like a hill) before us looked incred­ible, and as the light began to wane, the sight of trees, fyn­bos and birds, includ­ing a sun­bird that allowed me to get really close to him, provided beauty so intense it was dif­fi­cult to take it all in.

Silvermine Reserve

Perhaps it is because I am so aware of the threat under which all of this beauty finds itself. Cape Town is a biod­iversity hot­spot, which, although this might sound like a trendy mar­ket­ing term to lure vis­it­ors to the city, actu­ally means that most of its flora is threatened with extinc­tion. Seventy per­cent of the fyn­bos we see whenever we're on a walk is endemic to the Cape, which means it is found nowhere else on earth – have a look here for an overview.

The Cape floral king­dom, of which the fyn­bos is a part, is the smal­lest of the world's six floral king­doms. It's also the richest per area unit. What all of this means is that, with cli­mate change and the con­stant threat of devel­op­ment, we're going to see more and more of this del­ic­ate plant world dis­ap­pear. It's sobering...

The won­der­ful thing about hik­ing at Silvermine is that there are a num­ber of gentle hikes on this side of the reserve. What's more, you can get 'away from it all' pretty quickly and the sound of traffic from Ou Kaapse Weg is soon muted by the sound of water from the gush­ing streams, or simply because you've headed far enough away from the main road that you no longer hear it.

Silvermine Reserve

For those with chil­dren, as are we, this is ideal. Best of all there are kilo­metres of trails that explore the moun­tains between Ou Kaapse Weg and Kalk Bay, St James, Muizenberg and Fish Hoek, without hav­ing to slog up from Boyes Drive.

Here you'll find numer­ous caves – a hun­dred or more, if that's your thing — and pools – Maiden pool, Junction pool and Nellie's pool. There is also a walk to the amphi­theatre, which you can also walk as part of a cir­cuit from the reser­voir at gate one, which, des­pite being three hours, is an easy, gentle walk.

From gate two you can also access Echo val­ley, just above Kalk Bay, and, if you're very ener­getic, walk all the way across to Muizenberg peak, where the views over False Bay must be gor­geous (not that I can say this from exper­i­ence, mind).

Our walk was tri­fling in fact, by com­par­ison to the net­work of trails along which you could wander for hours, but the issue for us wasn't the exer­cise so much as the explor­a­tion, time out, and drink­ing in the views.

Silvermine Reserve

Our des­tin­a­tion, because we had little time before sun down, was Maiden pool, but you'll need to be on a sharp look out as it's fairly dif­fi­cult to find (if indeed this was the pool we uncovered) and unmarked so far as we could see. Ahead of you remains the water­fall, in full flow on our hike due to the rains.

Finally, in a fit of pique, hav­ing not found the pool fast enough to meet his hun­ger pangs, our little one sat down on the path and pro­ceeded to demand his snack. It was only after our nib­bling on crunchies and fruit and decid­ing to pack it all in as the day was soon end­ing that we stumbled across the pool on our way back to the car.

This isn't the end of the story, how­ever, we'll be back to explore this part of Silvermine further.

Photographs — click to view the Gallery:

Walking on clouds: Hiking in the Drakensberg

Drakensberg Hike

Not far from Johannesburg and Bloemfontein lies South Africa’s most majestic moun­tain range. The Drakensberg has for cen­tur­ies cap­tured the ima­gin­a­tion of South Africans and has become a haven away from the city noise. With many lodges, hotels and camp­ing sites you can choose your retreat and become part of this world for a few days.

There are many activ­it­ies such as horse­back rid­ing, hik­ing, climb­ing and cyc­ling on offer. This time we choose a day hike that we end up doing in two days because of the beauty we find on the moun­tain. Sentinel Peak is a hike we do at least once as a group of friends that sel­dom finds time to meet dur­ing busy year ...

Excitement mounts as we drive through the QwaQwa region and see the moun­tain and the day's chal­lenge before us. Witsieshoek is our first stop where every­one meets up and intro­duces the new crowd of first time hikers. Then we’re off.

Drakensberg Hike

The hike is only a six kilo­meter one and takes about three hours. Many people do it in one day but because of the many stars, Tugela river stream and beau­ti­ful morn­ings we decide to camp on the moun­tain. The first sec­tion of the road is a zig­zag of path­ways that lead you up to the first of many lookout points. Here we take a breather and the chat­ter of a crowd dies out as the moun­tains great­ness and beauty takes all words from your mouth. We sit, we stare. We struggle to remove our eyes from what we see before us.

The next sec­tion of the hike is easy, the road is mostly flat and takes you on a curve around the moun­tain. With the moun­tain on your left and the whole world as far as you can see on your right, excite­ment mounts again. The many hikers on the road are friendly and always have time to share their find­ings of the day.

We reach the most daunt­ing part of the hike. A fif­teen metre chain lad­der that looks more dif­fi­cult than it actu­ally is. When we con­vince those afraid of heights to climb they become com­fort­able and you can sense an air of accom­plish­ment by defeat­ing another fear. After the climb you are on the moun­tain and you fol­low the Tugela River stream to the Drakensberg Amphitheatre where we will set up camp.

Drakensberg Hike

There is a water­fall that falls more than fifty metres and as the crowd breaks up to either walk more or play in the cold pools of water we make a fire. It is already becom­ing chilly and here on top of the world there is almost always a breeze that makes one sit closer to each other.

Night begins to fall, the moon has not yet revealed itself and around the camp fire stare sky­wards look­ing at the mil­lions of stars one can­not see in the city. The con­ver­sa­tion changes as every­one for­gets real­ity and start chat­ting about dreams and beauty. This site is truly inspir­ing. The night cold catches up with us and one by one the crowd dis­ap­pears into their tents.

When morn­ing breaks I find myself in a world that I have only read about in fantasy books. I have been lucky enough to see what I see now only once and yet every time we come here I hope to see this again. On this morn­ing I do. Where the moun­tain stops it is as if you can carry on walk­ing as the clouds form a bridge between the moun­tain and etern­ity. Slowly the sun shows itself and the end­less cloud bank becomes a burn­ing walk­ing into the unknown.

Drakensberg Hike

In a row next to each other we gape at what the moun­tain has given us as gift. If you’ve never exper­i­enced abso­lute per­fect beauty and silence you need to see this. The world instantly becomes a bet­ter place.

Overwhelmed we break the silence and start the fire for a last cup of cof­fee before we leave on our jour­ney back to our own worlds…

What to take on this hike:
If you want to do it as a day hike just take enough water. It’s really an easy hike, even for begin­ners.
If you decide to camp I sug­gest you take at least one bag of wood (one always needs fire), your tent, hik­ing mat­tresses, sleep­ing bag and utensils to braai and make cof­fee. Pre pack your lunch and break­fast to sim­plify and lighten your load. Remember a really warm jacket or someone to snuggle with as the nights are excep­tion­ally cold.
There is safe overnight park­ing at the base of the hike so no need to worry.

Drakensberg Links:
Drakensberg Attractions
Drakensberg Accommodation
Things to Do in the Drakensberg
KwaZulu Natal Hiking Trails

Foot safaris in the Kruger National Park

Bush walks ...

Once you’ve sat­is­fied the urge to see the Big 5 from a noisy Game Viewer and got the pic­tures, then the time is ripe to enjoy nature on its own terms.

Foot safaris offer you unfor­get­table encoun­ters with creatures both great and small. From stalk­ing a herd of Giraffe to dis­cov­er­ing the mys­ter­ies of a Termite mound, these exper­i­ences become far more mean­ing­ful when you feel Africa through the soles of your feet. There is some­thing extremely hum­bling about siz­ing up a White Rhino who is glar­ing at you and won­der­ing whether there is a tree close enough to scale out of danger ...

A pro­fes­sional guide will brief you fully on the “do’s & don’ts” before you set off, to ensure safety and a reward­ing walk. He will instruct you to tune all your senses, because each and every one of them will come into play dur­ing the next few hours. The ramble will focus on the pat­terns of nature, the intric­a­cies of stalk­ing, the inter-dependant rela­tion­ships of organ­isms and, along the way, your trail leader with demon­strate his encyc­lo­paedic know­ledge of mam­mals, birds, plants plus any other item of interest that you may stumble upon ... includ­ing Big Game!

The walk doesn’t focus on how far you can go but rather what you can absorb — the beauty of bird­song, the fren­etic activ­ity of Harvester Ants col­lect­ing seeds or the patience of a Green-backed Heron as it hunts for fish.

Brief rest peri­ods become pro­duct­ive as you dis­cuss issues that have come up — it’s amaz­ing what put­ting one foot in front of the other along a game path does to clear the mind. The twinge of adren­aline also height­ens the senses.

And there is always a need for adren­aline – the “fight or flee” response is bub­bling at the sur­face. However, a good guide will put every­one at ease because he is so in tune with the bush and his sur­round­ings that his con­fid­ence exudes calmness. Our local Shangaan Ranger team has been liv­ing in this envir­on­ment cheek by jowl with these anim­als their whole life, so the only unknown for them are the trail­ists that they are lead­ing. Their col­lect­ive stor­ies would fill a journal and their obser­va­tions come not from formal edu­ca­tion but their own exper­i­ences and shared stor­ies. When they dis­cuss the medi­cinal prop­er­ties of a tree, bush or shrub, you can rest assured that they have used it them­selves. When they describe the uses of a piece of wood, be sure that they have put it to good use before.

So, there­fore, time spent on foot in a Wilderness area is the very embod­i­ment of a mem­or­able safari exper­i­ence. And this exper­i­ence can be appre­ci­ated at Mohlabetsi Safari Lodge. Tony and his team value the essence of a Foot Safari  and are priv­ileged to be able to share the Bush with their guests.

"You made my African dream come true! The dec­or­a­tions of our rooms and the whole lodge was charm­ing. The sur­round­ing sounds of wil­der­ness all around. Tony guided us under the stars, Lucky in the bush — all fas­cin­at­ing to us. The short rests between safaris, bush­walks and all the lovely food we were served, we spend in the gar­dens, pool area and in the nice out­door shower. Thank you for show­ing us a piece of your Africa. Mohlabetsi is a place to remem­ber — in my heart!"
(Catrin and Lars Lasson, Sweden, June 2009)

Mohlabetsi Safari Lodge

Mohlabetsi Safari Lodge

Tony and Alma warmly wel­come guests to their relax­ing and friendly oasis in the bush. Set in the vast Balule Nature Reserve, within the Greater Kruger National Park, this is home to a superb vari­ety of fauna and flora, includ­ing the “Big 5”. Enjoy the very best safari exper­i­ence pos­sible at this con­genial retreat. We will give you last­ing memor­ies of Africa’s spec­tac­u­lar wild­life. The Safari Lodge offers just 6 com­fort­able thatched eth­nic rondawels dec­or­ated in an ...

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Mohlabetsi Safari Lodge +27 (0)15 793‑2166 or +27 (0)83 255‑4956

Yellowwood trail, Kirstenbosch

Yellowwood Trail

If you're look­ing for a not-so-taxing, can-do-on-extremely-hot-days kind of hike, then the Yellowwood trail at Kirstenbosch is def­in­itely up there on the list, along with strolls through neigh­bour­ing Cecilia forest and Newlands forest.

It's also a great hike to do with chil­dren as it's man­age­able within a couple of hours, or can extend into a whole morn­ing of it as the delight­ful pools along the way are invari­ably filled with tad­poles or pebbles and a lit­any of other amuse­ment options.

Most import­antly the walk takes one through what remains of beau­ti­ful Afromontane forests in the foot­hills of the moun­tains at Kirstenbosch. Afromontane forest is typ­ic­ally found in moun­tain­ous regions, char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally in the Drakensberg, Mpumalanga highveld and Knysna, and filled with massive trees like yel­low­wood, Cape beech, iron­wood, stink­wood, hard pear, shrubs, ferns and a series of wild 'mon­key rope' vines that allowed the boys on our walk to give vent to every desire to imper­son­ate mon­keys or Tarzan.

The Yellowwood trail is one of four sign pos­ted trails you can do within the bound­ar­ies of Kirstenbosch. And the start of the trail fol­lows the road that leads into Skeleton Gorge, but it's well sign­posted so there isn't much chance that you'll con­tinue upward after the ini­tial incline of the walk by mis­take. Trust me, you're look­ing out for the sign that indic­ates you can head off at a gentler pace on the con­tour path long before it appears. About the time when the littlest one says 'mom, please carry me'!

You're also only in the sun for the ini­tial part of the walk, which is about ten minutes or so, and then you enter the dappled sanc­tu­ary of the forest, and there is an imme­di­ate sense of calm and cool, although it was fairly humid in the forest when we attemp­ted the walk. If you're quiet enough, you'll see any num­ber of birds, includ­ing owls, and the rust­ling of forest shrews, mon­goose and mice. We found a beau­ti­ful spe­ci­men of a bumble bee lying dead on the side of the path. Alright, not quite an owl, but oth­ers on the hike with us prom­ised they'd spot­ted one on their last time in the forest.

And that's the major draw of this walk. You can do it repeatedly without it becom­ing any­thing close to bor­ing. The won­der­ful thing about forests is that they're chan­ging all the time — trees fall, new paths develop and sea­sons change. Come here in winter and the river that was a trickle on our walk, is a raging tor­rent due to rain­fall, tad­poles give way to frogs, and we seek out the sunny patches, rather than try­ing to remain within the cool of the forest.

In total the Yellowwood trail is about 3 kilo­metres. Not much, but there is both a pretty steep ascent and des­cent, so if your knees are giv­ing you prob­lems, there are other paths you'll want to try first, and for the avid hiker, this is pretty much a waste of time if you're look­ing for exersion.

It starts on the path just oppos­ite the fra­grance garden, or what remains of it as at the moment Kirstenbosch is replen­ish­ing these beds. This path, or rather track, is known as Smuts' Track, and pretty soon it hits a mod­er­ately steep gradi­ent that meanders along­side Skeleton stream and even­tu­ally leads one to Skeleton Gorge water­fall, upon which you stumble on the con­tour path. The water­fall comes from way above one from Skeleton Gorge, and those attempt­ing the far more ardu­ous hike, head off above the water­fall and higher.

Reaching the Skeleton Gorge water­fall, or trickle as it was on our walk, is some­thing of a bless­ing. You'll have just done the full climb into the forest and if it's hot, be badly in need of a cool off. Right at the foot of the water­fall is a pool that provides a lot of fun and a great place to paddle. It's a good spot for snacks and shoes off time too. You could see just how force­ful the water could be though, given that a couple of trees were stand­ing a little lower down, their roots exposed, and the sand around them eroded to within an inch of their roots.

The forest around us, unbe­known to us, was under­go­ing some­thing of recov­ery. Alien tree plant­a­tions were removed what must be close to 25 years ago as there is evid­ence that many of the ini­tial pion­eer trees, such as keur­boom trees, are busy dying, as they do after about this length of time. They will have provided enough shade to the true forest trees to allow them to grow unhindered. Hence the rather obvi­ous hard pear trees, which now have thicker trunks even than the keur­boom. But if you don't know what to look out for, the forest is simply a beau­ti­ful forest.

We were also aware of younger yel­low­woods – the trail's name­sake is not in evid­ence as mature trees, as many of these met a fate that had some­thing to do with the need for ceil­ings, floors and fur­niture (believe it or not, this would have been from 1652 to the 1800s when the ini­tial set­tlers hit Cape Town). Since 1960 this entire forest has been under rehabilitation.

A little fur­ther along you come to yet another stream, this one out of the deep shade of Skeleton Gorge, in the midst of scrub forest and a really good place for a dip, par­tic­u­larly if you're hot. This water is the typ­ical tea-coloured 'black water' that one evid­ences lower down in the gar­dens themselves.

Out of the water and back on the path, you reach what is termed a good 'view­ing site', which has some­thing to do with the fact that a major land­slide occurred here in 1996 bring­ing half the cliff away with it and totally des­troy­ing trees that were over 300 years old on the hill­side. But it does give one a great place to look out over the Cape Flats, Muizenberg and False Bay, as you begin to des­cend once again.

This part of the hike is again rather warm. The fyn­bos scrub through which we passed had obvi­ously suffered in the last couple of months and some of it was notice­ably scorched. By this time, you're begin­ning to dream about the tea you have wait­ing on ice in the boot of the car! The Yellowwood trail ends at the garden centre, close to the top res­taur­ant, quite handy if you've packed a pic­nic that just needs to be brought in from the car.

Useful Links:
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens
Cape Town Attractions
Western Cape Hiking Trails

Take a walk on “The Wild Side of the Drakensberg” — Wartrail Skywalk

Wartrail Skywalk

Since 1996 top ath­letes from South Africa and bey­ond have ven­tured to the little-known Eastern Cape Highlands to par­ti­cip­ate in what is prob­ably one of the toughest adven­ture races in the coun­try – The Salomon Skyrun. Starting in the pic­tur­esque town of Lady Grey, armed with their own sup­plies, a GPS and a map their aim is to run 100km across moun­tain peaks to fin­ish at Tiffindell Ski Resort. The top run­ners fin­ish in approx­im­ately 14 hours, ori­enteer­ing them­selves across the dra­matic route through day and night.

The guest house own­ers of the Wartrail and New England val­leys real­ised that it would be a trav­esty for this excep­tional route to be the sole pre­serve of extreme ath­letes. Thus, the little sis­ter to the Skyrun, the Wartrail Skywalk was devised to give us ordin­ary mor­tals the oppor­tun­ity to exper­i­ence the high moun­tain wil­der­ness at a more leis­urely pace. The Wartrail Skywalk is a fully guided slack­pack­ing trail, cov­er­ing approx­im­ately 60kms over 4 days. I was assured that all lug­gage would be trans­por­ted between overnight stops, so that I would only have to carry my day­bag. For me, a multi-day, sup­por­ted hike soun­ded much more civ­il­ised and achiev­able than a single day’s run!

As we trav­elled along the R58 from Aliwal North towards Barkly East the road twis­ted through craggy sand­stone out­crops and across intriguing river gorges. We left the tar road just before Barkly East and with it also aban­doned all traffic, noise and signs of civil­isa­tion for the next week. At the Kraai River cross­ing we stopped to pho­to­graph Loch Bridge, built in 1893 and a little fur­ther on we had a fas­cin­at­ing view of the Barkly East rail­way reverses, one of only two such engin­eer­ing sys­tems in the world. We turned into an impossibly pretty val­ley with tower­ing moun­tains on either side to arrive at the cosy Millard Mountain Lodge.

We were warmly wel­comed by Kate and Phil from Wild Mountain Adventures (and Rosstrevor Guest Fam) who settled us down with a drink on the sun-drenched ver­anda and told us a little about what was in store for us over the next 4 days. Each day we would be walk­ing approx­im­ately 15kms from farm to farm. Yes, there would be some steep climbs and des­cents but we would be able to take our time and go at the pace that suited the group. Phil and Kate asked about our pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence and cur­rent fit­ness levels and explained that there are dif­fer­ent route options avail­able ran­ging from the stiff ‘up and over’ to the longer but easier con­tour route around the peaks. This helped to ease the nervous ten­sion that had developed within our group dur­ing the jour­ney. Dinner was a deli­cious show­case of local pro­duce; juicy steaks, fol­lowed by fresh rasp­ber­ries picked straight from Millard’s bushes that after­noon. Members of the group who were hop­ing to lose a kilo or two on this hik­ing trip were begin­ning to real­ise that weight-loss was not part of the itinerary!

The next morn­ing we rose to nat­ural music with won­der­ful sop­ranos per­formed by the Cape Robins, the deep soul­ful bas­soon of the Sussex bulls and the sweet gurg­ling melody of the moun­tain river. God’s own orches­tra! After a tasty farm­house break­fast we set off with our guide for the day, Phil from Wild Mountain Adventures. To be accur­ate, Phil was the one provid­ing inter­est­ing inform­a­tion about the area. However, ‘Number One Guide’ and pathfinder was actu­ally Tinker the collie-cross who tackles her job of herd­ing people with enorm­ous enthu­si­asm. We took the ini­tial climb slowly, allow­ing for the fact that that the air 2kms above sea level is thin. But it wasn’t the alti­tude that made me gasp; it was the views which were truly breath­tak­ing. We enjoyed a packed lunch on top of the world, before mak­ing our way down to our new home for the night, Pitlochrie Cottage.

Joe Sephton gave us a warm wel­come and as we had pre-dinner drinks he regaled us with tales of the 1950s when his father Paul was one the first people to snow ski in the Eastern Cape. They made their first pil­grim­age to the slopes of Ben McDhui on horse­back and lodged in the stock-theft police sta­tion a few kilo­metres from the moun­tain. Now of course ‘BenMac’ as it is affec­tion­ally known loc­ally is home to Tiffindell Ski Resort. The theme of loc­ally pro­duced food con­tin­ued as Joe rustled up a deli­cious roast chicken and we settled on the stoop to admire the crys­tal clear stars before a well-earned sleep.

After break­fast we set on our way and Joe proved he is an awe­some moun­tain guide as well as a gen­ial host and an excel­lent cook. He was born and bred on Pitlochrie Farm and is a 3^rd gen­er­a­tion des­cend­ant of the ori­ginal 1860 set­tlers of the area. Speaking with pas­sion about his farm­ing oper­a­tion at Pitlochrie, Joe is clearly a true cus­todian of this nat­ural wil­der­ness, stop­ping fre­quently to point out a del­ic­ate flower or a soar­ing bird of prey. Once again, a steep climb star­ted the day, but the views at the top of Skidaw were ample reward for aching legs. He poin­ted out our next des­tin­a­tion, Balloch, from the top of the moun­tain and we wound our way down through the tree-lined val­ley, rein­vig­or­at­ing our tired muscles with a refresh­ing river swim en-route.

This was mid-March; the trees in the Balloch val­ley were gil­ded with the first signs of autumn col­our and the late after­noon light dappled the river in front of the guest cot­tages. We were intro­duced to Margy who would be hostess­ing and guid­ing the next leg of the hike and settled into the clean and well-appointed chalets. We were fast begin­ning to real­ise that the res­id­ents in the Wartrail area are a multi-talented bunch of entre­pren­eurs. Over the years Margy has built her own fur­niture, run a dress-making busi­ness, a trout-farming enter­prise, raised a fam­ily and now oper­ates a suc­cess­ful tour­ism busi­ness at Balloch. In her spare time (yes, she claims to have some!) she runs and moun­tain bikes reg­u­larly, tak­ing part in mara­thon races. To cap it all, she can also cook up a storm and we eagerly devoured her tasty lasagne before retir­ing for the night.

We woke with some nervous­ness as we had been warned that Day 3 was the shortest, but toughest part of the route. We were head­ing up and over the Balloch Wall, and nervous dis­cus­sions ensued as to whether the name came from the degree of angle or the men­tal chal­lenge that it involved. For the first hour Margy found some won­der­ful ways to dis­tract us from our fears by show­ing us some of Balloch’s incred­ible secrets. Rock form­a­tions that defied grav­ity, fas­cin­at­ing rock art sites that included a well-preserved big cat, huge sand­stone caves and even the ori­ginal ox-wagon that early set­tlers used in years gone by. We could have stayed on the farm itself all day, but we couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to face The Wall!

To be fair, we had been offered an easier con­tour route around Balloch Mountain, but des­pite the pre­vi­ous days’ hik­ing we were feel­ing well-rested and strong, so we decided to give The Wall a go. It is indeed a steep ascent, although not rock-climbing as the name might sug­gest. I con­fess I stopped for lots of extra pho­tos and spot­ted a num­ber of ima­gin­ary birds just to slow the pace. Margy was incred­ibly patient though and we never felt hur­ried as step by step we got nearer to the sun. A beau­ti­ful moun­tain reed­buck bounced ahead of us to the sum­mit, mak­ing the climb look impossibly easy. We reached the top with brim­ming smiles and a tre­mend­ous sense of achieve­ment that I won’t for­get for a long time. We were lucky enough go get a thrill­ing eye to eye view with a Black Eagle as it soared the moun­tain. During our pic­nic lunch the wind picked up and I saw Margy’s own eagle eye keep­ing a very close watch on the thun­der­clouds that had star­ted to gather. We made it to Reedsdell Farm as the sky grew omin­ously dark.

Within an hour we were treated to a dra­matic Wild Mountain storm of ‘hail and brim­stone’ pro­por­tions which included a spec­tac­u­lar nat­ural light show. We remembered Kate’s words at the start of the week that the only thing pre­dict­able about moun­tain weather is… that it’s unpre­dict­able. Late after­noon thun­der­storms do occur reg­u­larly in this highveld region, hence the guides were always care­ful to ensure that we arrived at our accom­mod­a­tion by 3pm. By early even­ing the storm cleared to pro­duce a stun­ning double rain­bow and then a balmy autumn even­ing. We eagerly tucked into roast Barkly lamb and retired to Reedsdell’s charm­ing sand­stone cottage.

The next morn­ing we had a bet­ter oppor­tun­ity to explore Reedsdell and to learn more about our hosts Chris and Kath Isted. Again, we were charmed by this enter­pris­ing couple who have cre­ated many strings to their bows. Chris com­bines tra­di­tional sheep and cattle farm­ing, whilst look­ing for oppor­tun­it­ies to diver­sify. Emu pro­duc­tion cer­tainly wasn’t one of the indus­tries that we had expec­ted to find in the Eastern Cape Drakensberg and Chris’ pre­his­toric look­ing birds were hugely intriguing.

Kath clearly enjoys rais­ing her delight­ful chil­dren in Reesdell’s moun­tain para­dise and com­bines this with her tour­ism busi­nesses. As well as the guest farm oper­a­tion she has launched a tea garden and Woolly’s of Wartrail craft shop at Reedsdell. As the name sug­gests, the shop spe­cial­ises in wool­len products and with the aid of a small grant she was instru­mental in found­ing the Masibambane knit­ting group. This lovely com­munity pro­ject has given local women the skills and resources to cre­ate their own products and thus earn an income whilst based on remote moun­tain farms. The qual­ity of the bean­ies and scarves for sale in the shop was very high and I am told that they are pop­u­lar with the Tiffindell ski crowd who des­cend to the area each June and July.

Chris and Kath employ a local guide, Tskholo, and he proved to be an abso­lute wealth of know­ledge about the tra­di­tional cul­tures and plant spe­cies. As we star­ted the final leg of the hike along a gurg­ling moun­tain stream he drew our atten­tion to wild flowers and indi­gen­ous bushes, explain­ing their medi­cinal uses. The views along the Edgehill val­ley under the stony-faced shadow of Halstone Krans were mag­ni­fi­cent and once again we were reminded why this is known as Wild Mountain Country. We had by now hiked for almost four days and not seen a single soul, bar the occa­sional farm hand. We cel­eb­rated the last climb of the week with a wee dram of whisky, mixed with the pure spring water we had gathered from a nat­ural foun­tain before mak­ing our way down to Bidstone farm at the base of the Tiffindell pass. We remarked again on the fact that each farm has its own unique char­ac­ter and Bidstone’s tree-lined garden over­look­ing the river was a delight. As ever we were greeted warmly, this time by Janet and Andy Viedge. A hearty beef strogan­off that even­ing was accom­pan­ied by a few bottles of red wine and won­der­ful memor­ies of the spe­cial week that we had enjoyed.

It is hard to pick a high­light from this stun­ning walk on “The Wild Side of the Drakensberg”. The food was excel­lent, the accom­mod­a­tion of a high qual­ity and of course the scenic hik­ing was lit­er­ally breath­tak­ing. However, if I have to single one aspect out it was the amaz­ing hos­pit­al­ity of the fas­cin­at­ing people that we met along the way and the gen­er­os­ity with which they shared their know­ledge, their farms and their incred­ible energy with us. What a priv­ilege to be wel­comed into this warm-hearted com­munity, if only for a week.

Photo Credits:
With sin­cere thanks to Perri Crossley, Greg Stokes, Carol & David Powter!

Contact:
Kate & Chris at Wild Mountain Adventures on +27 (0)45 971‑9064.

Suicide Gorge – the ultimate kloofing experience

Photo © CapeNature

We would have chosen the hot­test day Cape Town has exper­i­enced in years to attempt the legendary kloof­ing in Suicide Gorge in the Hottentots Holland Mountains near Grabouw. We had only looked for­ward to the hike for the bet­ter part of a week, and had done all the right pre­par­a­tions like get­ting our per­mits, set­ting out early, ensur­ing we had plenty of water and sun­screen, and trav­el­ling light, bear­ing in mind that this would be a strenu­ous day of it.

And then the forty odd degree day hit us with a vengeance ....

It used to take set­tlers in Cape Town two days to reach the gor­geous Hottentots Holland Mountains from the fore­shore, which today we can make in a little over an hour, par­tic­u­larly when one heads out early. The Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve, with its entrance close to the town of Grabouw, is not only a won­der­ful place in which to spend a day, it's also the site of two kloof­ing trails, or hikes that end in kloof­ing on most days, ours was to be the excep­tion for some of us.

The Riviersonderend Gorge is 24 kilo­metres long, and Suicide Gorge is a 17 kilo­metre cir­cu­lar haul.  Some people do both gorges on the same day – it is pos­sible and one can head from the one gorge on to the other — but given that we weren't kloof­ing fun­dis, we had decided to play it calm and safe and enjoy what we could of one of the gorges.

On a good day – balmy weather plus a few clouds to take the edge off the heat – the hike takes one deep into the moun­tain fyn­bos with some pretty amaz­ing scenery before reach­ing the gorge, aptly named per­haps because of the jumps (you have to be a pretty good climber to get back out, and the jumps vary from 3 metres to 16 metres), but really it's a beau­ti­ful space with a fast flow­ing tanninnnn-coloured river flow­ing through it, series of water­falls and ancient rock form­a­tions that have taken form over thou­sands of years of water erosion. But I get ahead of myself, for we were to exper­i­ence little of this gorge-ousness.

By the time we set off on the hike it was already appar­ent that the day was a scorcher. The heat was such that most of our walk was com­pletely exposed. Shade wasn't just a premium, there was no shade to be had AT ALL!! Certain mem­bers of our party were seen to dive peri­od­ic­ally under shrubs just to take a little of the heat off! (I exag­ger­ate not, since it was I most of the time!) It prob­ably didn't help that this part of the Western Cape was exper­i­en­cing a drought at the time. There were vir­tu­ally no trees, a few shrubs, it was dry, and the sun beat relent­lessly through­out the hike.

Our friends who accom­pan­ied us kept say­ing how beau­ti­ful the sur­rounds were usu­ally, and parties we met along the way reit­er­ated that this was indeed the case and that we'd just picked a par­tic­u­larly bad day. Well, good or bad day, some friendly advice: Do NOT attempt this hike on a scorch­ingly hot day with the idea that you have only to reach the pools in order to kick back, lie in the shade and cool off! Even the pools were in full sun and there wasn't even a sug­ges­tion of a tree under which to sit and cool off.

Interestingly on our return, I happened upon an account of the hike and the kloofs from a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive. In this account, prob­ably in the colder months, people had brought along wet suits, as once in the kloof it can become really cold and the chill sets in. That I chuckled is a grave under­state­ment. To crown it all, someone else had described the route as 'more of a swim than a hike', and that in extreme weather con­di­tions it could be dan­ger­ous. Whilst I think they were refer­ring to swollen rivers mak­ing off with you, I can attest to the 'dan­ger­ous­ness' of this walk dur­ing extreme heat.

Before the hike it was sug­ges­ted that a good, dry bag was pretty essen­tial to keep everything else dry, once in the kloof, but to be hon­est, we didn't do the jumps or swim once in the kloof. We were so pooped from the heat when we finally reached the kloof that it was only three of our party who leapt off, defy­ing death in the pro­cess – not so much the jump, although this was hairy enough – but the clam­ber back out on the slip­pery rocks, exposed to the heat of the day.

In fair­ness, and after some time to lose my ini­tial hor­ror at the over­dose of sun­shine, I can ima­gine that this walk fol­lowed by the kloof­ing is an incred­ible exper­i­ence. The jump looked really hairy, but if I hadn't been con­sumed with the inca­pa­city of heat exhaus­tion I am sure that I would have had a ball.

As to whether or not I'd do it again, well, I'll have to get back to you about that...

Contact Cape Nature:
Tourism reser­va­tions and book­ings
National callers: 0861 CAPENATURE (227 362 8873)
International callers: 0027 861 227 362 8873 / 0027 21 659 3500

Please note: The route is open from 1 November to 30 April.
Hikers should be fit.
Light foot­wear is advis­able, as well as a wet­suit.
Use a water­proof bag.

Useful Links:
Western Cape Hiking Trails
South Africa Hiking Trails
Things to Do in South Africa
South Africa Accommodation

The Swellendam Hiking Trail — a 6-day hike in the Langeberg mountains

The first time I went to Swellendam I ended up in a Native American sweat lodge.  Yes, I know that sounds like an excuse that you’d usu­ally hear from a guy try­ing to explain to his wife why he’s been out drink­ing all night, but this is true. Honest.

Our hol­i­day in Swellendam had star­ted very nor­mally. We had booked into a small cabin over­look­ing the kind of lush, peace­ful val­ley that one dreams about when star­ing at the 177^th email of the day.  We’d unpacked the stuff from the car and had tried to take in some of the tran­quil still­ness that sur­roun­ded us, but we are city folks and are rest­less by nature and so needed a little time to get into coun­try life ...

So we decided to go for a walk in the calm Swellendam after­noon, little know­ing that by that night we’d be painted in mud and con­tact­ing our inner totem animal.

Our walk led us to the most incon­gru­ous sight any of us had ever seen; a tipi vil­lage hap­pily nestled in the Swellendam val­ley. The own­ers of the camp invited us in and told us that a trav­el­ling shaman just happened to be stay­ing in the vil­lage that night and would be con­duct­ing a Native American sweat lodge. Which we later found out was basic­ally an incred­ibly long, incred­ibly hot sauna in a rather small space with a lot of other people.  The sheer strange­ness of find­ing a Native American cere­mony in a tipi vil­lage in South African farm­lands con­vinced us that we had to try it. The rest, as they say, is history.

But con­tact­ing our Native American spirit anim­als wasn’t the only thing we did on that hol­i­day, we also went on the Swellendam Hiking Trail, which was, in its own way, every bit as extreme, dif­fi­cult and sweaty as the Native American ceremony.

This is just out­side of Swellendam. Although rel­at­ively fit and with enough gear to attempt Everest, I’m hardly what you call an accom­plished hiker and was glad to have people with me for whom a 6-day hike was like a walk in the park.

There are six huts scattered across the trail that offer basic amen­it­ies, although fires are only allowed in cer­tain areas because of the very real risk of veld fires.  The veget­a­tion is pre­dom­in­antly fyn­bos (there was pine forest at the begin­ning and end of the trail) and there are amaz­ing views as you ascend the cliffs and beau­ti­ful sun­sets to watch from out­side the huts.

We didn’t see any game on the trail, but a ranger assured us that there were vari­ous spe­cies of bok to be seen if one was the right place at the right time.  We did see some birds of prey, how­ever, which gave me an excuse to rest while I watched on the some­times dif­fi­cult trail.

By far my favour­ite nat­ural fea­tures, how­ever, were the nat­ural streams and small pools which provided much needed drink­ing water and are the most pos­sibly the most bliss­ful things in exist­ence after hik­ing in the sun for hours.

This is one of the toughest hikes I’ve done.  I had to make sev­eral unsched­uled stops sev­eral to rest, much to the annoy­ance of the fit­ter hikers in our group. Portions of the route are incred­ibly ardu­ous and I wouldn’t recom­mend it to any­body who is hop­ing for a relaxed time in nature. Try a Native American sweat lodge instead.

Contact Cape Nature:
It is not neces­sary to reserve day vis­its but the Swellendam Hiking Trail and accom­mod­a­tion should be reserved in advance. Contact Cape Nature on:
National callers: 0861 CAPENATURE (227 362 8873)
International callers: 0027 861 227 362 8873 / 0027 21 659 3500

Useful Swellenda, Links:
Swellendam Attractions
Marloth Nature Reserve
Swellendam Accommodation
Western Cape Accommodation

The Strandloper Trail in South Africa's Eastern Cape

There’s a lot to be said for hik­ing. It’s a good way to exer­cise whilst sav­ing you from the exotic body odours and dubi­ous clean­li­ness of gym chan­ging rooms. It forces you from out behind the latest Youtube video of a cat fall­ing off a TV and into the great out­doors where our ancest­ors once roamed freely without the help of GPS.

And roam they did, par­tic­u­larly in Southern Africa where being a nomadic tribes­man was the “in” thing for thou­sands of years. Maybe, as a South African, I’ve never really lost the desire to walk long dis­tances for no real reason and reg­u­larly under­take to explore the out­doors on foot. Whilst for most the word ‘hik­ing’ con­jures up images of high moun­tain passes, there sev­eral trails in South Africa that have a more coastal fla­vour. One such is the Strandloper Trail in South Africa’s Eastern Cape ...

The Strandloper Trail stretches from Cape Morgan in Kei Mouth to Gonubie for about 60km. “Strandloper” lit­er­ally means “beach­walker” and although this coastal trail def­in­itely takes in some real beach action, it also goes through forest and some steep cliffs mak­ing it per­fect for hikers who like a little vari­ety.  The full trail is a 5 day adven­ture split up into 5 dis­tinct sec­tions.  The trail can be tra­versed at any time of year, although the beaches do tend to get a bit crowded over the hol­i­day sea­son and some swear that the best time to do it is off-season.

Huts provide overnight stop­ping places and have adequate ablu­tion facil­it­ies and braai facil­it­ies, except Cape Henderson which is situ­ated in the forest and as such not con­du­cive to fire-making. Hotels and pubs along the route also provide many inter­est­ing and tasty options for meals should the pres­sures of walk­ing all day call for a hearty pub meal and drink.

The Pumphouse is the first overnight stop and is a strange indus­trial look­ing build­ing that used to be, wait for it, the pump house for a nearby mine. This is a really great place to stay and it’s almost worth doing the trail just for this. The Cape Henderson log cabin is another rus­tic overnight high­light. The rest of the hike takes you over beaches, across estu­ar­ies and through forests. If you’re doing the trail dur­ing sum­mer the oppor­tun­it­ies to swim are end­less and appar­ently there are even some spec­tac­u­lar snorkel­ing spots for those with a more adven­tur­ous attitude.

Remember to check the times of tides on a tide table so that you can plan your hik­ing times. There are also plenty of oppor­tun­it­ies for bird watch­ing and so remem­ber to take along a pair of bin­ocu­lars (as you should on any hike) to get a bet­ter view of the avian eye-candy.

This is a five day hike so come pre­pared, but it’s not as strenu­ous as some of the more moun­tain­ous hikes in South Africa and can done even by rel­at­ively fit begin­ners (like me). The Strandloper is a unique South African hik­ing exper­i­ence and is well worth the effort.

Reservations & Enquiries:
The Reservation Manager
Telephone: +27 (0)43 841‑1046
Mobile: +27 (0)83 285‑4773

Photo Credit:
Photo from www.panoramio.com/photo/12411745

Useful Links:
Eastern Cape Hiking Trails
Eastern Cape Attractions
Things to Do in Eastern Cape
Accommodation in Eastern Cape

The Swartberg Hiking Trail

"Die Top"

I’m not a born hiker. Some people seem to have a nat­ural inclin­a­tion to walk­ing long dis­tances, over uneven ter­rain, car­ry­ing heavy weights and call it leis­ure time. Myself, I’ve always thought that since our ancest­ors had no other option but to leg it every­where, we owe it to them to make use of the won­ders of man­made tech­no­logy as often as possible.

That said, I’ve slowly been com­ing round to the idea that scram­bling over rocks, with noth­ing but trail­mix and water as fuel, can actu­ally be a reward­ing and even enjoy­able exper­i­ence. The hikes I’ve done on Table Mountain, in Ceres and in such fantasy novel set­tings such as Hogsback have proven to me that there is much more to hik­ing than aching legs and blisters on the feet ...

Still when someone sug­ges­ted we do a five-day hike I was filled with more than a little trep­id­a­tion. And more than that the name of the sug­ges­ted spot, The Swartberg Mountains — mean­ing lit­er­ally ‘Black Mountain’ — sounds more like a place in said fantasy novel where you would go to des­troy a ring of pure evil rather than a place where you go to explore nature.

Photograph: Landscape Little Karoo in South Africa as seen from the top of swart­berg pass

The Swartberg hik­ing trail is in the Little Karoo (nearest towns are Oudtshoorn and Prince Albert) in the Western Cape, a place fam­ous mostly for its ostrich farms and The Cango Caves, the ancient Precambrian lime­stone cav­erns that kids and old ladies love to get stuck and lost in.  The trail is actu­ally com­prised of sev­eral inter­linked trails that offer vary­ing degrees of dif­fi­culty. A per­mit must be obtained from Cape Nature Conservation as only a lim­ited num­ber of hikers are allowed on the trail.

Be warned, the Swartberg can be rather unfor­giv­ing. Hikers must carry their own drink­ing water and be pre­pared for any even­tu­al­ity of weather. Extreme wind and rain while hik­ing is thor­oughly unpleas­ant and can occur sud­denly and without warning.

But enough of the scare­mon­ger­ing, with proper pre­par­a­tion the Swartberg hik­ing trail is an amaz­ing exper­i­ence turn­ing even the most cyn­ical city-dwellers like me into cer­ti­fied tree-huggers. When walk­ing for such long stretches the mind seems to quiet down and focus on appre­ci­at­ing the here and now. See I told you; tree-hugger.

The land­scape is truly spec­tac­u­lar and as the trail pro­gresses offers some true nat­ural gems. Multiple vari­et­ies of fyn­bos form the bulk of the shrub­bery that you will tra­verse and although lack­ing in large game, we did see some baboons and dassies, and the local bird­life is well worth pack­ing a pair of bin­ocu­lars for.

Overnight huts provid­ing dormitory-style bunks are scattered across the trail and provide ablu­tions and areas to braai. Forget gour­met res­taur­ants and 5-star chefs, simple braai food thrown on the fire and charred lightly on both side is, after a whole day of hik­ing, the most amaz­ing thing imaginable.

I really enjoyed it, but five days is a long time to hike and the Swartberg hik­ing trail is not really a beginner’s trail. I would recom­mend that rel­at­ive new­bies like me under­take to do a few lesser hikes before try­ing to tackle these ‘Black Mountains’.

Cape Nature Contact Details:
National callers: 0861 CAPENATURE (227 362 8873)
International callers: +27 861 227 362‑8873 / +27 21 659‑3500

Useful Links:
Oudtshoorn Attractions
Things to Do in Oudtshoorn
Oudtshoorn Hotels
Oudtshoorn Accommodation
Karoo Accommodation

Hiking in Hogsback

Our roadtrip up South Africa’s east coast had already been filled with adven­ture (and a few mis­haps) by the time we reached Hogsback in the Eastern Cape. Situated in the Amatola Mountains and named after three ridges which (appar­ently) look like the bristles on a hog’s back, Hogsback turned out to be one of my favour­ite places on our east coast trek.

Although there is plenty in Hogsback to amuse and delight, includ­ing The Labyrinth and the Eco shrine, our primary goal was to do some ser­i­ous hik­ing and take in the truly spec­tac­u­lar land­scape that the area has to offer.  With so many trails on offer we were at some­thing of a loss as to which hikes we could safely and com­fort­ably do in the two days that we were going to be there ...

Luckily people in the area are incred­ibly friendly and only too eager to help. We were soon advised by a local that we had to tackle Tor Doone, a peak which allows an amaz­ing view of the sur­round­ing area. Apparently Tor Doone is also pop­u­lar with bikers and we saw a few bikers as we began our hike, mak­ing me slightly envi­ous and also regret­ful that I had left my trail bike at home.

But one can hardly feel too regret­ful or depressed amongst the swathes of indi­gen­ous forest which resemble a lush land­scape on Middle Earth more than a typ­ical South African land­scape. No won­der then, as we learned after­wards, that legend has it that the Amatola forest inspired Tolkien’s vis­ion for the forest of Mirkwood in Lord of the Rings. Yellowwoods and white stink­woods are plen­ti­ful here and one really has to keep one’s eyes open in order not to miss any of the nat­ural richness.

After stop­ping for a deli­cious packed lunch and a sight­ing of sev­eral birds of prey that we circled lazily above us (some of our party said they were buz­zards) we con­tin­ued along the path and up to the Tor Doone peak. Although we were advised that the hike was easy enough, the Contour Path on Tor Doone was fairly tir­ing for inex­per­i­enced hikers such as ourselves but it was well worth the view of the area that we got from the peak. History buffs will also be inter­ested to know that a com­mem­or­ative plaque marks the remains below the peak where Fort Mitchell, a British out­post, once stood.

The second day of our time in Hogsback found us explor­ing the town a little and then head­ing out for a short walk on the grass­land plat­eau.  Although we didn’t get to see much of the local fauna, we were told that the endangered Cape Parrot can some­times be found in this area, as well as many other spe­cies of bird­life and mon­keys. Other walks in the area include a two-day cir­cu­lar hike (which sounds fant­astic) Elandsberg, the Gaika’s Kop,  one of the highest peaks in the area and a former Xhosa strong­hold, and hikes up the three ‘Hog’ ridges.

Useful Hogsback Links:
I ♥ Hogsback because …
Hogsback Attractions
Things to Do in Hogsback
Hogsback Accomoodation
Eastern Cape Accommodation