We had read in the brochure, that they have two route potions, a 1 hour trail and a four hour trail. We had first thought that we'd take the 1 hour trail, but then we changed our minds, because the people at the gates told us that the 4 hour trail is much nicer, and that it is not difficult to walk at all and that even old people can walk it within 4 hours. Ans so we started to walk. The picture below is taken from the beginning of the route.
As we walked on the scenery turned more and more to a forest like. Here are a couple of pictures.
It turned out that the route actually took us 400 meters down to the forest surrounded by mountains. From the next pictures you can see how it looked like down there:
What was different in the forest compared to the forests in Finland?
- The climate. + 30 degrees felt so hot in the forest that I'm not sure if we would have survived alive without our 7 liters of water.
- The butterflies are almost the size of a bird.
- The animals. We bumped into to two baboons. The first one was just a small one, but the second one was big, and he was really trying his best to scare us away from his territory by making different scary sounds. We just stood still until it stopped, and then as slowly and as quietly as possible we continued our way.
- The bugs. Can you see the green stick attached to the back bag? Well, it really isn't a stick.
At the half way of the route there was a really small but beautiful natural pool, by which we sat and ate our sandwiches. It was also nice to wet out heads and rinse our faces with the refreshing water.
It started to look like we would definitely not be able to walk the whole way during four hours, but we weren't too worried about it because we still had 3 hours time before sunset. But at that point we didn't know what was still ahead of us.
At one point of the route we had to climb over a fence and walk across a private field and through a dining cattle. I can tell you, that I was more scared of the cows that I was scared of the raging baboon!
Of course, because came down to the forest, we had to climb back up to the mountain. And this time it was really steep, and the burning sun didn't make the climbing any easier. Basically we walked from one shade to the next shade and had to sit down to rest after every 15 minutes. Here is one picture taken from the way up.
When we finally reached the top of the mountain we had been walking 6.5 hours and we still had a couple of kilometers to go. It was getting dim as the sun was just about to go down.
Just before it got really dark, an African man called Elliot, who works for the park, walked towards us and told that him and two other people were looking for us because it was getting dark. And so he guided us back to our car and on the way told us many interesting things about the African nature and its animals. The most "interesting" thing that he told us was, that there are leopards living in the Zuurberg Mountain. When I heard that, I was really happy, that it was only a baboon that we saw!
Elliot also told us, that it happens a little now and then that people don't come back on time from the trail, and then they have to look for people there. And sometimes people are so weak when they finally find them, that they have to come with a jeep as close as possible and drive the tired hikers back to their own car. So we weren't the first ones that they had been looking for there.
Lesson of the day: when an African says that a trail is easy to walk, don't believe him. It may be easy for them, but it won't be easy for an European!
Wow, that must have been exciting trip! I would have been nervous about those huge insects. Did you saw spiders?
ReplyDeleteOverall, you must have been totally exhousted! That´s really nice that they look for missing people.