Heading inland

After a couple of days at the Indian Ocean, It was time to head inland, so we spent most of my Father's 70th (the 27th... you can check out his current antipodal travels at peterandmarilyn.blogspot.com) driving northwest. Ends up insurance, vehicle levy, and timing issues will keep us out of Swaziland. So we skirted the border for a few hours, while driving through several million square kilometres of eucalyptus tree farms. Which, much to our excitement 4 hours in, turned into Pine tree farms.

Yep, it was dull. The landscape was nice, there were some cool hills and stuff, but mostly it was hot, hilly, tree-farmy, and we were concentrating mostly on keeping from getting killed by various things on the road.






All this to get to the vicinity of Kruger Park. This is the biggest, oldest, and most famous preserved area in South Africa. If that sounds great, remember that this makes it similar to Banff and Yellowstone: crowded, expensive, and commercialized. Just seeing the sudden increase in prosperity in the towns as we approach Kruger tells you how important the park is to the tourism industry.

We spend our first day not in Kruger, but at the Blyde River Canyon. This is, apparently, the "third largest canyon in the world", which triggers my natural skepticism about anything

that is represented with "triperbole". That is a special type of hyperbole limited to tourism, that is defensibly non-specific, but seems plausible. If anyone ever tell you something is the third ____-est of anything, be skeptical. Here, let me give you an example. The Capilano Suspension Bridge is the third-highest pedestrian suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Ok, back to the Blyde River Canyon. It is big, and it is scenic. No need for hyperbole. The rocks are generally flat-lying quartzites, but many of the original sedimentary structures are well preserved. Note planar cross beds under Tig... Oh, and nice canyon view behind.

We went for a long (4 hour+) hike to a beautiful set of waterfalls down in the Canyon. It was a nice walk, where we did the typical tourist thing of not having a map, and not having enough water, and Tig got a little heat-stroked, but it was a nice blast of the exercise we had been missing for a little while.

And the views were great.

After a long walk, we ended up back at the parking lot, where the Banff-Yellowstone factor came out. The parking lot and adjacent viewpoints were crowded, full of people, too packed for comfort. Be there before 9:00am, or go 500m from the parking, the place is empty.

After a bit of crowded sight-seeing, we returned to our accommodations: a rather nice rondeval on a macadamia nut and lime farm. We walked along the adjacent Sabie River (fresh hippo tracks!), and had a nice Braai.

We ate outside with a cacophony of insects, amphibians, birds and whatever. Red wine helped. Oh, and the local pub brewed their own Pale Ale. Tomorrow, Kruger.