Cathedral Peak to Northern Drakensberg

Yesterday saw us move on from Cathedral Peak to the northern area of the Drakensberg mountains – our final stop before returning home.

We enjoyed our stay at the Cathedral Peak hotel, other than someone denting our car in the car park and not owning up to it. Annoying.

Our journey took us back through the villages we drove through originally, then on to Bergville and finally to the Cavern Resort, deep in the heart of the Northern Drakensberg. The area looked stunning in the bright sunshine.

The hotel is very different to Cathedral Peak hotel. It’s all thatched roofs and lush gardens. It’s smaller and therefore feels more intimate. We appear to have been upgraded to a superior room which we are extremely happy with.

We went for a swim and a sunbathe, where we watched a weaver bird fly in and out of its nest. The bird life in South Africa has been great with beautifully coloured birds flitting about everywhere.

We had a quick potter up to the “dam” (which is basically a small pond) and soon after it was dinner time. Dinner is quite a posh sit down affair. There is a menu offering 3 choices of starter, main and pud with a help yourself cheese board at the end. We have an assigned waiter for all of our stay and there is a “wine cellar” downstairs which is stocked by the drinks manager. He’s incredibly proud of it and rightly so. The prices are ridiculously cheap yet our bottle of wine was very high quality.

The downside is dinner is served between 6.30 and 8pm leaving rather a lot of time to fill after. They do have a pub (called The Cavern naturally) which was showing the England v Senegal match, but we decided to give it a miss and go to bed early instead.

This morning we joined a guided walk to Echo Cave. We are finding that the guided walks very fast, I just can’t get enough air into my lungs. Being with a whole load of men means no-one is going to say slow down and I’m not going to be the useless woman not keeping up so I was pretty pooped by the time I got back. Still, I’m sure it’s good for me.

We saw and heard more baboons on the walk. They are so scary. Unlike Lucy the collie cross who walked with us all the way, overtaking then running back (nearly tripping us over) and giving us all puppy eyes when we stopped for a snack.

The area we are walking in is owned by the same family that own the hotel. It would appear that there is huge customer loyalty to the hotel – the people we have spoken to have returned time and time again.

Another interesting point is that both of the men we spoke to who have older children are moving out of Johannesburg and over to Capetown. They both stated that Capetown is “better run.” I did a little google investigation work and this means “less corrupt”. It really is quite desperate how many of the middle classes are leaving Johannesburg, they don’t see a future there. There were also reports of people abandoning their homes in Johannesburg because the values have dropped so much. I see trouble ahead.

Back to the cosseted and insulated life of staying at the Cavern, and after a delicious lunch and a quick snooze, we had a potter to Cowslip Falls and the Grotto. A bit of admin and a catch up on emails etc and it’s now nearly time for drinks and dinner.

Tomorrow we are intending to join our guide Mike again who is going to put us through our paces up Camel’s Hump. Better carb up tonight then.

Is wine a carbohydrate?