High Altitude
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2008
1
12
71
Trip End
Sep 03, 2009
Northern Drakensberg,
Eastern Cape,
South Africa
Monday, November 10, 2008
Shortly after our return the thunderstorm began. Fork lighting hit the open landscape randomly all around us. The storm didn't pass over, but just hovered above us. The thunder exploded so loudly and suddenly that on a couple of occasions everyone in the hostel jumped and ducked as it sounded like we had just been hit by a bomb, even the locals took a quick look round
Pretty lights at the hostel
. The lights flickered as the electricity threatened to cut, but for that night at least, it stayed on. In the morning a group of us set up to hike up to the ampitheatre, a huge mountain range at 3121m. We were already staying above the point of high altitude (1500m), so we knew that the day was going to be a tough one. After a long drive we started with a fairly steep hike up the mountain before, to our relief, the path levelled off a bit. Some of the group struggled, we were climbing very high in a short space of time, which means our bodies didn't get the chance to acclimatise to the altitude.
The final 30 minutes of the walk were the toughest. It involved climbing up a steep stream, over huge boulders. I'd like to point out that there was still a trickle of water running down the stream, making some of the rocks quite slippy, but it did mean that occasionally water would splash onto us cooling us down, which was quite refreshing. We got out of breath very easily as the air was so thin and had to stop after every few steps. Making it up at a slow pace, when we finally got to the top the view was breathtaking.
After lunch I started a trend
Climbing the Ampitheatre 4
. I decided to have a go at a 'jumping picture', which basically involves jumping, funnily enough. It made for quite an impressive photo, as if you cut the ground out of the frame, it looks like you're flying. Soon enough the whole group was jumping, and we managed to get a few impressive shots before we tired ourselves out completely!After all the jumping we started heading down, taking in the impressive sights of Tugela Falls (the world's 2nd highest altitude waterfall). We took different path down as its too difficult/dangerous to walk down the boulder stream. The different path however, involved climbing down very scary chain ladders, some of the rungs of which, were not what you would call straight or evenly spaced. We were told that we had to stick our bottoms out as we climbed down so that we could see where we were putting our feet. However, that also meant we could see the drop below us, which made it pretty hair raising!
Two chain ladders (and a few other smaller but equally dodgy ladders) later, we made it back down to the bus in good time and watched the sun set and lightning hit on the way home.
