Journey to Maloti Drakensberg Park

We had another very early start, so I got up at 5.45am for a shower, packed my things onto the truck, and joined my fellow travellers for a light breakfast in the communal kitchen. We had all enjoyed our time in this quirky hostel and lodge and in this wonderful mountain landscape. We headed back along the long and bumpy track back to the main road, passing spectacular mountain scenery that we had missed on the way in because of the rain. We travelled through Lesotho and some sizeable towns, including the capital city. Again, we were waved at and met with friendly smiling faces of adults and children along our way. We passed through countryside with the same warm responses from the local people. We eventually reached the border with South Africa and passed through without difficulty.
As we journeyed our way towards the Drakensberg mountains we started to see more fascinating geology in the mountains rising from the flat plains in separated sheer rock faces with flat tops. The views of these isolated mountains was once again spectacular and I just kept looking out of the windows on both sides at them passing by in an endless series of shapes with some having giant rock protrusions on their tops - one such rock looked like an enormous Easter Island head statue perched on top of the mountain. We stopped in a town to buy some food for our cook group dinner that evening and to buy our lunch. We continued on through yet more mountain scenery with sheer smoothed rock faces similar to those we'd seen in the valley with the rock paintings the previous day and were probably formed from the same layer of rock. We passed an area of several dams with more wonderful views of the mountains rising up from the rivers and reservoirs. This was also a wildlife park and we saw zebra, wildebeest and kudu. We then began to approach the Drakensberg mountains which were truly an enormous sheer sided wall of mountains on an epic scale. We could see over to an enormous circle of these mountains known as the amphitheatre. We could also see a huge cleft in the peak of a mountain called 'God's window'. We could see waterfalls falling from the top of the wall of mountains hundreds of metres towards the bottom.. We entered the Maloti Drakensberg Park and drove up to our campsite which was impressively nestled amidst the high mountains all around and with a lovely rocky river running nearby. We pitched our tents on the grass and started to prepare our vegetable curry and rice dinner. However, clouds gathered over the mountains and we could hear distant rumbles of thunder. We put up a tarpaulin tied to the truck to protect the cook group from the spots of rain that started to fall. However, we were lucky as we were able to cook and eat our curry without too much rain. After dinner, and washing up, we saw a bushbuck deer tamely walking in our torch light right by our truck. We then sat in the dark and watched a spectacular lightning show behind the mountains which I was able to film. The lightning made wonderful purple colours in the pitch black sky. We retired to our tents just as the storm hit our campsite. The rain began to fall very heavily indeed and monumental claps of thunder and lightning shook the surrounding mountains which amplified the sound down into our campsite. It was all very exciting and I was lucky that my tent stayed dry apart from the odd spot of water falling onto the floor. We were in the mountains and were receiving a heavy dose of mountain weather. After writing my blog, I slowly went off to sleep with thunder still rumbling in the distance and rain falling heavily on my tent.Read more