Midlands Meander

We made an early start on Saturday the 15^th in order to get to the Howick Farmers’ Market. The local folk recommended their breakfast and other goods and one of our resolutions for this trip was to buy local whenever we could. We ended up buying all sorts, from breakfast to meat, bread, cheese, veggies and even two books on Everest climbs (my favourite subject!). It was well worth a visit.

After the market we set out on the Midlands Meander, first stopping in at the Nelson Mandela capture site and museum. The ‘Nelson Mandela Sculpture’ consists of 50 ten metre high laser cut steel poles (symbolising 50 years) set into the landscape at the site of his arrest on 5^th August 1962. The sculpture was unveiled in 2012 and commemorates the 50^th anniversary of his capture. The ‘picture’, a portrait of Nelson Mandela, only comes into ‘focus’ when seen from a certain point and angle. Amazing!

Then we followed the Meander through Nottingham Road and Rosetta to the Kamberg area. We unfortunately got to the Kamberg Nature Reserve too late to spend time at the Bushman Paintings museum. Kamberg does not have camping facilities so we had to get to Highmoor Nature Reserve before their gate closed. The road up to the reserve office was rather narrow and in patches even precarious, taking the width and weight of our ‘train’. We fortunately had no oncoming traffic so all was well. The campsite is rustic but most interesting; no power, a single toilet and basin on one side of the ablution block and a single shower room with two shower heads on the other side of the ablution block. Very nicely done and very quant! The view was breath-taking. I can just never get enough of the Drakensburg.

Of course the first thing on the agenda was to see if the dams had any trout in them. This meant a walk along a path, across a stream and over the rise until the first dam came into view. There Roger tried his hand at some fly-fishing but (sigh!) ‘there were no fish in the dam’!

It was so cold in the evening that it was almost a shock after the heat of the coast. But of course nothing that a bottle of red wine and a down duvet could not take care of! The next morning we looked down on the cloud over the low-lying landscape while snuggled up under the duvet with a cup of coffee. Life could not get much better!

On the way down we encountered a few cars coming up but with an expert code 14 licensed driver behind the wheel we encountered no problems!

We followed a different route back to Ballito, via Curry’s Post and Howick, stopping for a really stunning cup of coffee at Terbadore Coffee Roasters. Of course we had to buy some coffee beans as well. Unfortunately all the lunch places were fully booked so we ended up having pies from the Farmers’ Market (purchased the previous day) for lunch in Ufudu.

Roger’s hat he purchased at Groundcover leather crafters:

We stopped in at Ballito Microlight Airfield to check it out for our flight back from Hluhluwe the next day and were back in Ballito before dark. We chose a different site number this time and unbeknown to us it happens to be directly below a palm tree where 2 Spotted Eagle Owls roost!

We are going to be here for a while and hopefully will get a better pic to show you before we move on. The down-side of being under the palm tree is that it drops dates/berries and that had Roger clambering around on the roof at 23h00, covering the roof with our reflective sheet in an attempt to dampen the sound! It worked, so all is well and we got a good night’s sleep…

Tomorrow (17^th) we will be positioning to fetch Buzz. All about that in our next post!