Royal Natal Campsite Day 1

It rained persistently all night. We were lucky that we had put the awning and second bed away as they would have been seriously wet when we got up at 6:30am.
We made coffees in the tent and then got dressed and went outside. The first thing I did was get my jacket out of the car while Ellie put the bed stuff away. Then we were ready to take the rest of the tent down which literally took 15 minutes doing it slowly trying not to let water in. By 8am we were ready to go and we engaged four wheel drive to leave the campsite and get up the 20% gradient hill just outside. Once at the top we dropped four wheel drive and started to cruise.
The roads were bad with water and potholes so I stuck to 50mph for the entire 65 miles. We stopped halfway at build it to get some rubber matting for the back to stop the carpet getting crappy but even with that stop we got to our next camp at the Royal Natal in the Drakensberg at 11am. The last 2km were just constant potholes and I didn’t hold out much hope for the camp but we were pleasantly surprised.
We checked in and to get to the camp we had to drive through a river and at the edge was a waterfall. I don’t know whether there is anything to stop us getting washed off but it was already raging underneath and the bit we drove through was 70cm deep and fast flowing.
We found a nice pitch that wasn’t flooded under some trees which we thought would break the rain up enough to have the awning out.
We managed to pitch the entire tent except for the second bed in around 20 minutes. As soon as the top was up we pulled our bed out and while Ellie sorted inside, I put the awning out on my own for the dry space. Then it was time for coffee.
It was only 11:30am and we were done with the weather, but this is rainy season and knew it could be bad so to make the best of it we put on shorts and coats and sandals and flip flops and went for a hike.
We didn’t know where we were going but followed the signs for the cascades. We just marched through the puddles, the rain didn’t bother us now, we were literally soaked through anyway.
We followed the river upstream and after 1.5km we came to the cascades which were more amazing than normal because of the rainfall. We crossed over the river via a very sketchy rock walkway and a bridge that looked like it could be washed away any minute. Then we started climbing on a roughly 20% gradient, the path was lovely rough concrete and my new sandals were great but Ellie didn’t fare aswell in her flip flops as she kept sliding out of them, it was so funny. After another kilometre we decided to turn around, the climb was killing our legs in the wrong footwear and we were now drenched. Getting back down the mountain was a slow process but atleast Ellie was locked in to her flip flops this way.
We got back to camp at 2:30pm, soaked and cold so we stripped off and changed and I went for a hot shower and Ellie put some washing in.
When I got back I found a broken wheelbarrow and carried it back to camp and then lit a fire in it under the awning to hold the heat in. After an hour the wood had burned down to charcoal so I got the Braai grill out and cooked wors sausage in our new Braai and fried some vegetables.
By 4:30pm we were eating a good hot dinner we had cooked on an open fire in a wheelbarrow in the rain, we were impressed with ourselves.
After dinner we put a few more bits of wood on the fire to keep the heat going but by 6:30pm we were done with the rain and headed in to the tent to watch tv for the night.Lue lisää