Middle-aged flash packers

Our travel day to Cathedral Peak was a long one , as travel days usually are.

We were up early to get the flight to Durban and make our way through Capetown’s rush hour traffic. A two hour flight was followed by a four hour drive to Cathedral Peak.

The drive for most of the way was quite frustrating as the road we were travelling on was full of trucks and hills, which aren’t a good mix. Add roadworks, and you’ve got potentially a travel nightmare on your hands. Luckily, it could have been a lot worse.

The last hour of our journey was something very different. I imagine it’s what people call the “real Africa.” We passed through Winterton which sounds like something out of a BBC period drama, but was definitely not. It was buzzing, with stalls lining the road and ladies carrying anything from a sack of rice to a dinner plate on their heads.

The road, although tarmaced , wasn’t in great shape with lots of potholes and some bits which had been washed away. Still, nothing we haven’t seen in Turkey or other countries when we’ve been driving.

What I have not seen anywhere else were the hill villages as we drove into the Drakensberg area. Dwellings ranged from round huts where the thatch had been replaced with tin to small brick houses with grand-looking pillars. Some people were growing stuff and had little gardens, others just had rubble. Goats, children, adults, teenagers were all walking and playing on or near the road. There was a sense of lots of interaction amongst the community. Less warm and fuzzy were the schools ringed with razor wire and the scary looking men sat drinking beer outside the liquor store.

Women carried babies tied to their backs. Children waved and smiled at us, some adults did, others didn’t. What to make of it? No idea.

Eventually we arrived at the Cathedral Peak Hotel where we had two checkpoints to go through before entering the hotel grounds.

The hotel is one of those institutions that are a bit faded but full of atmosphere. Once we’d checked into our room, we sat in the bar and positioned our chairs so we looked out through the bifold windows onto the magnificent mountains. A great start to our exploration of the Drakensberg area.

The next day we were nursing our overly stuffed bellies. The hotel’s job seems to be to get you to eat as much food as humanly possible. Breakfast is from 7-10, coffee and cookies 10.30-11.30, lunch 12-2, afternoon tea 3.30-4.30 and dinner 6-9.30pm. It would be easier to say when they don’t feed us. We’ve already over eaten as it is, we are going to burst very soon.

In order to work off at least one cookie, we signed up for the guided walk to see the bushman paintings. It took around 2 hours and was led by our guide whose name I didn’t really understand but he was very pleasant. The paintings were on a rock on a hill and were most impressive. Incredible to think how long they’ve been there.

Our guide also persuaded us to do the Cathedral Peak hike tomorrow. We had originally signed up for this but then cancelled it as we thought we were so out of shape after all our wining and dining that we wouldn’t be able to do it. He said we’d take it easy and if we weren’t up to it, we’d go back. We rebooked it, much to the contempt of the receptionist who literally rolled her eyes at us!

For the rest of the day we took advantage of many of the activities the hotel offers. We had a swim in the pool, ate lunch, went for a walk to a waterfall, had afternoon tea then played crazy golf. All was going swimmingly until we saw a very beefy man sign up for the Cathedral Peak walk too. Wanting to know what we were up against, I got talking to him and let it be known we were on it too. (We and our guide assumed no-one else would sign up at such short notice.) He wanted to start at 5am but the hotel had said no -thank God. He wanted to go on his own but the hotel said no – shame. He wants to speed walk it. WTF?! The is not sounding like our sort of walking companion! He also wants to start at 7am on the dot. (We had agreed with our guide a leisurely breakfast and a start time of 7.30am.) Hmmm. We shall see what transpires tomorrow morning but I have a feeling a gentle hike followed by some crazy golf might be on the agenda. Beefy man can fill his boots if he’s serious about speed walking, but not sure how we are going to manage to eat our picnic we had to order for the hike as well as the buffet lunch…