Time for a holiday

Thu 21 July 2016 - Central Drakensberg mountains

With a healthy breakfast start and fantastic shower we left Maropeng hotel to make our way south bypassing Pretoria and Jo’burg to our final travel destination before we head back to the UK. We’ve decided to take a week’s holiday returning to the Drakensberg mountains which we enjoyed so much weeks ago. This time we are heading to the Central area for 6 days of hiking if the weather allows, not forgetting it is still winter here so we anticipate minus nighttime temperatures.

Our route started on the N3 Durban highway with good quality tarmac roads and plenty of traffic moving around the outskirts of the two cities, we’ve not experienced this volume of traffic for months. We elected to leave the highway to take the scenic route passing through the northern Drakensberg area and passing the Phatt Chef hotel we had stayed some weeks ago at in preparation of hiking Sentinel Peak but had been permanently closed the same day due to hikers being attacked by some Lesotho locals.

In Winterton we did our last supermarket shop treating ourselves to some of the foods we have enjoyed in SA not least their rusks then headed to Bergview to find our lodge, River Crossing where we are staying for our last 6 days. Michelle and Ernest greeted us on arrival, introduced us to their african cat, Hunter and gave us a detailed tourist map of the area. We explained we were here for some good hiking and they shared the unfortunate news on the local weather, which is expected to turn very wintery in the next day or so, even the possibility of some snow.

Our lodge at River Crossing...

...and the view.