Being out and about at first light is often richly rewarded in South Africa’s wild places, as was the case with this memorable encounter with a spotted hyena near Letaba Rest Camp, in the Kruger National Park.
“Early Bird” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
Just below the tennis courts at the Forever Resort at Loskop Dam, on a piece of land jutting into the watery expanse, there’s a big old thorn tree standing next to the water. The tree’s extended root system, exposed by the action of countless waves, is the perfect perch from which to enjoy the most spectacular sunsets over the dam and the hills that surround it. Though cloud cover on the distant horizon obscured the setting sun on Good Friday, we got enough of a taste to be sure that this was the spot we’d want to spend every evening this Easter…
Saturday evening had an altogether different feel to it though. Very welcome rain had been falling almost the entire day, and dark, broody storm clouds and a constant drizzle were our companions that evening.
And then came Sunday’s sunset! On our tree-root front-row seats we were bathed in the glorious golden glow of a perfect bushveld sunset.
As a Christian family celebrating the cornerstone of our faith, we felt profoundly blessed for being together in that spot at that point in time. Life doesn’t get any better than this.
Our long weekend of family fun on the shores of Loskop Dam flew past in the blink of an eye…
We’ve just returned from spending the Easter long weekend at the Loskop Dam Nature Reserve, and we’ll be telling you all about our time there in the weeks to come.
“Blur” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge.
Our New Year’s visit to Golden Gate Highlands National Park marked the final stop on our three-week long bush holidays. For this final leg, we were joined by Marilize’s parents and my sister and brother-in law at Glen Reenen Rest Camp.
Glen Reenen, Golden Gate Highlands National Park, December 2014
This Park may have been proclaimed originally to safeguard the awesome mountain scenery, but the hills and valleys are also home to a pleasing variety of birds and animals. We found most of the game concentrated towards the east of the Park, around the Basotho Cultural Village.
Golden Gate’s magnificent scenery and hidden jewels are best enjoyed along the many walking trails traversing the area. Have a look at the posts we dedicated to the Brandwag, Echo Ravine and Mushroom Rocks walks, three shorter hikes that are ideal introductions to this mountain ecosystem.
Golden Gate Highlands National Park was another highlight of the trip and a perfect setting to conclude a wonderful holiday. Quality time spent with dear family saw us home in good spirits and strength for the year that lay in wait. And just to be sure the Park is still as beautiful as we remember it, we’ll return soon enough. We simply can’t stay away from a place this magical.
We didn’t think three weeks in the bush would fly past as quickly as it did. We started of with two nights at Chelmsford Nature Reserve, then three nights at Ithala Game Reserve, three nights at uMkhuze Game Reserve, three nights at Lake Saint Lucia, five nights in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, one night at Midmar Dam, and finally four nights at Golden Gate Highlands National Park. By the time we reached home back in Pretoria again, we had covered a distance of 4022km between and in some of our favourite South African wild places. An epic December bush holiday indeed.
Our route between 13 December 2014 and 3 January 2015 (map drawn from Google Maps)
Fleeting beauty at drying pools in the Shingwedzi River, in the northern Kruger National Park.
“Ephemeral” is this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge theme
If the trail to the top of the Brandwag Buttress is the most popular of Golden Gate Highlands National Park’s walks, and the Echo Ravine trail the most spectacular of the short walks radiating from Glen Reenen, then the Mushroom Rocks trail is the easiest and least demanding. And that’s a good thing, because you can concentrate on finding the little jewels hiding among Golden Gate’s flowing green grasslands and gawk at the amazing scenery without using it as an excuse to catch your breath 😉 . The only challenging section of the trail is the crossing over the Little Caledon River, especially in summer when the Park experiences most of its rainfall and even more so when lugging a couple of cameras, binoculars and water bottles along…
What better way could there be to ring in the first day of a new year than exploring new places? Especially after ending 2014 on a literal high atop the Brandwag Buttress? That’s why Marilize and I decided to undertake the Echo Ravine trail at Golden Gate Highlands National Park that day (Joubert was out exploring other pastures in Golden Gate with his grandpa), a walk we’ve not done before. We were not disappointed that we did, the scenery on the way to, and inside, the ravine is simply awe-inspiring and in our view this is one of the best short (taking an hour or two to complete) walks in the Park. It’s not an easy walk, requiring you to clamber over boulders at several stages, especially as you near the head of the ravine, but the rewards are entirely worth the effort.
We wanted to do something special to end 2014. We couldn’t think of any better way to spend the last morning of the year than getting to the top of the Brandwag Buttress, the icon of the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, even if the weather did not play along as nicely as we had hoped.
The walk to the top of the immense Brandwag (Afrikaans for “sentinel”) formation is the most popular of Golden Gate’s trails. You can walk the Brandwag route in less than an hour, but to us that would be missing the point; you have to take time to appreciate the scenery along the way and the grand views from the top. There are two routes to choose from; one starting at Glen Reenen Rest Camp and the other at the Golden Gate Hotel and Chalets, and combining the two; going up one way and down the other, really is the way to go.
The crystal clear and unquestionably fresh mountain streams at Giant’s Castle Game Reserve, in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park
“Fresh” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge.
There is only one way to truly appreciate the amazing diversity and breathtaking beauty of the flowers that occur in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, and that is on any or all of the Park’s walking trails. This is a gallery of just some of the fragile blooms we enjoyed while exploring the Park during our December bush holidays.
We’ll be dedicating upcoming installments of de Wets Wild to three of Golden Gate’s easiest walking trails.
DeWetsWild 