Thursday, April 3, 2008

Drakensberg

So I took this past friday and monday off to make it an extended weekend getaway to the mountains of drakensberg (the highest in southern africa). the weekend was a lot of fun (though my knees and ankles don't think its very funny...), but now i'm back to work and thats not nearly as fun. here is a brief picture description of what happened. you can find the entire picture album at : http://picasaweb.google.com/okunadef/Drakensberg.

we got there sometime friday evening, all smiles, not knowing what was ahead, and this was the view at the "tower of pizza"- where we stayed:

after a good nights rest and yummy pizza, i brush up on my zulu/xhosa/tswana, and we started on the hike for day one:

after 20 minutes, we (cough, marcel) realized it was the wrong route, so we turn around, dodge some trees/bushes/forests and head back to the correct destination:

this next photos are after about 4 hours and multiple stops, we reach the destination (though according to some wise souls, "the destination is the way..."). we relax...not looking forward to the hike back. def not thinking of the next day:





after ~ 6hrs we made it back to the car:


day 2 rolls around (and my battery dies, so there aren't too many pics). we hike (more like climb and crawl) for a good 3 hrs or so, and as i thought we were nearing the end, i look up and see this. this thing was perfectly vertical. and perfectly perpendicular to the ground. and 100+ meters. and, so, this is where i go no further. luckily i had some company...(and btw, we weren't afraid, just cared enough about our friends/family that we didn't want them to go through the trouble of cleaning up the bloody mess when we fell off or making funerals arrangements...):


after another ~6hrs of climbing, we are on our way back down. the road is completely covered in fog, but inside the car...we are warmly serenaded by the much "hollow" cosmo:


monday morning, knees and ankles killing me, we head back to the crazy world of jo-burg. as another wise soul said, "it's tough to work in the south africa..."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So how's the 12% statistics now. After such work out I'm sure you just want to rush to the gym to measure your body fat again, just to make sure it was not all in vain. Good to see you are doing something more physical. That's why I tell my friend here that the best weight loss program is 6 weeks in Africa, better still in Nigeria.