We’re spending the Women’s Day long weekend at Thendele, in the Royal Natal National Park. We couldn’t have asked for a more glorious winter’s day. We’ve been hiking and having picnics all day, and now we’re kicking back in one of the most beautifully situated camps in the country.
is your shadow!
The de Wet family looming over the Mahai stream, in the Royal Natal National Park.
“Beneath your feet” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
Today a very popular picnic and fishing spot north of St. Lucia Town in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Mission Rocks is named for a Catholic mission station established in the area in 1888. The path leading from the parking area to the beach opens onto a scene of rugged, rocky beauty, revealing rock pools teeming with life at low tide and impressing with the thundering of crashing waves at high tide. There’s a sandy, open beach 500m northwards of the rocks, with a sea-cave where thousands of bats roost.
On the way to Mission Rocks, the uMziki viewpoints and picnic site, set right in the coastal forest, is a worthwhile stop. From atop the dune there’s views over Lake Saint Lucia to the west and the Indian Ocean to the east, and down below in the forested picnic site there’s an astounding variety of birds that would normally be very shy but here seems quite habituated to having humans around. There’s also usually a couple of red duiker to be seen.
It is hard to imagine a more peaceful mountain retreat than Kgaswane, especially so close to the maddening cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
Kgaswane sunrise, taken by Joubert!
Located in the western Magaliesberg mountain range, the Kgaswane Mountain Reserve forms an integral part of the Magaliesberg Protected Environment, an inspiring collaboration between private and state land owners and agencies to protect this beautiful ecosystem from exploitation. Proclaimed in 1967 as the Rustenburg Nature Reserve, incorporating the farm Rietvallei that once belonged to Paul Kruger (legendary president of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek), Kgaswane today covers an area of 5,300 hectares and is managed by the North West Parks and Tourism Board.
The reserve is a popular hiking destination, with two overnight hikes; the Summit Route of 25km and the Baviaanskrans Route of 20km, each trail with two overnight hutted camps accommodating twelve hikers at a time. For day visitors, the 5km Peglerae Trail and 2km Vlei Ramble (which incorporates a bird-viewing hut overlooking the marshlands below the main visitor centre) is an excellent introduction to Kgaswane’s varied topography and habitats, with wonderfully shaded picnic sites available at the visitor centre. While the road network may be limited, it is tarred and in good condition, allowing for easy game and bird-viewing from vehicles and mountain bikes. There’s three spectacular viewing points along the way into the mountains from the entrance gate. Joubert and I spent a night on one of the twenty-two spacious camping sites and found the ablution facilities well maintained and entirely adequate (just remember to bring your own bath and sink plugs). There are no powerpoints at the camping sites but each site has a braai (barbeque) stand and picnic table and there’s a communal freezer available in the scullery. Best of all, there’s little to no cellphone reception in the camping area so no telemarketers can interfere with your rest and relaxation! Accommodation is also available in a self-catering cottage and two rondavels that sleep a combined 14 people and a group camp that can house up to 50 people in dormitory-style.
The Magaliesberg dominates the scenery at Kgaswane with rocky ridges, stacked boulders and deep ravines. The vlei (marsh) on the plateau is the largest in the Magaliesberg, and an important catchment area.
The reserve hosts good, though skittish, populations of a variety of game animals; we encountered black-backed jackal, baboon, warthog, eland, red hartebeest, plains zebra, oribi, reedbuck, blesbok, impala, kudu and waterbuck. The reserve’s birdlife is even more diverse, with 320 species recorded, including a breeding colony of endangered Cape vultures. Kgaswane’s most prized residents are the herds of the magnificent and rare sable antelope. It was here in the Magaliesberg that these regal animals first came to the attention of the scientific community, thanks to explorer Major Sir William Cornwallis Harris, in the 1830’s. But unlike Harris, we were not lucky enough to find the sable on our first visit to Kgaswane. And that’s just one of the excuses we’ll use to visit again, soon…
Kgaswane Mountain Reserve lies on the outskirts of the city of Rustenburg, in the North West Province, an easy 3km from the R24 offramp on the N4 highway and 134km from our home in Pretoria.
Pretoria to Kgaswane
(map drawn with Google Maps)
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.
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.
The Bourke’s Luck Potholes, at the confluence of the Treur and Blyde Rivers, form the head of the Blyde River Canyon, the third biggest canyon on earth.
“Depth” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
Jumping up from a picnic, while celebrating a special friends birthday, to take pictures of large eagles flying over a major metropolis is not a familiar scenario for the de Wets. And yet that seems to be par for the course at the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens!
Opened to the public in 1987 as the Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden on land donated five years earlier by the town councils in Johannesburg’s western suburbs, the gardens were renamed after the ANC leader Walter Sisulu in 2004. The focal point of the garden is undoubtedly the Witpoortjie Waterfall, the source of the Crocodile River which flows through much of the garden. Apart from beautifully tended and themed plant displays, the grounds include large tracts of natural vegetation and ample lawns under shady trees, very popular for picnics. Several pathways and tracks provide access to various parts of the gardens, and the most challenging of these lead to the top of the cliff above the waterfall, a favourite spot for many photographers hoping for a special shot of the eagles soaring past.
The gardens are open daily from 08:00 to 17:00 and facilities include a restaurant, kiosk, several function venues, a concert stage, an environmental education centre, a curio shop and a nursery selling indigenous garden plants. Guided tours of the gardens can be arranged in advance. We like the garden’s policy of “picnic in, litter out” encouraging visitors to take all their garbage with them when they leave.
The gardens are a haven for a multitude of birds and small animals, many of which are quite tame and obviously used to the human presence.
It’s been more than thirty years since a pair of Verreaux’s Eagles (formerly known as Black Eagles) first took up residence at a nesting site next to the Witpoortjie Waterfall. The current pair had successfully raised a chick to sub-adulthood and at the time of our visit was just starting to let the youngster know that it has to start looking for lodgings of its own. This made for spectacular flying displays over the gardens and against the backdrop of the Roodekrans cliffs.
On the other side of the garden, a dam with a bird-viewing hide at its edge was just one more delightful feature to add to our reasons to return to the gardens (soon!). Here we found an extremely irritable Egyptian Goose laying claim to the body of water and intent on ridding it of anything else that seemed remotely like waterfowl! It probably had a nest or goslings hidden somewhere near.
This was our first visit to these beautiful gardens, and we were wonderfully surprised and delighted by what we found. We spent the entire day at the garden, from when the gates opened until they closed, and yet feel like we haven’t seen most of it. Couple that with a jolly time spent with good friends, we’re sure it won’t be long before we return.
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The Witpoortjie Falls, in the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden, where we spent several hours today enjoying the scenic surroundings, soaring eagles and the company of wonderful friends.
“Angular” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge
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