03 June 2006     to     04 June 2006

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This weekend it was back to one of our old favorites, namely the Wattles hike at Kaapsehoop in Mpumalanga.

Our traditional Garlic snails on Friday evening.

Next morning we had breakfast inside the railway carriage. Someone had the original idea of using railway coaches for hiking huts and it certainly works very well. I must say, it brought back memories of a distant land where we also had breakfast on the train while watching the mist roll over the hills and rice fields outside.....getting real good at this...hey?!

The area has small deposits of gold that was dug out of the cliff face here during the 1880s till a bit later. This part of the trail runs through a bit of indigenousness forest before reaching the plateau above.

Taking our first break. The sun was still shining, but on the eastern horizon clouds were building.

A stretch of plantation forest. Mpumalanga has vast man made forests.

Some dense vegetation.

The views from the top were great!

A stretch of grassland. The clouds were really getting thick now, so we limited our breaks. By the time we got to the waterfall which is normally a favorite lunch spot it started raining, so we decided to push onto the hut at Wattles.

By the time we arrived, the "Donkey" had been started for hot water and the stove in the kitchen was on. As it was very cold and unpleasant outside, we all moved into the kitchen next to the stove.

The old house at Wattles has been completely repainted and really looks nice now.

The mist had really settled in now!

I must say the old couple that looks after the house really went out of their way to make us comfortable. They started the fire in the old lounge and brought us a paraffin lamp, so we decided to move the mattresses into the lounge and sleep there. They even laid on extra wood for the night. Unfortunately, the fire master (Rob) whose job it was to keep the fire going during the night fell asleep on the job. He was given a dishonorable discharge out of the army next morning! Cant have this sort of thing happening..you'd think this was just a hiking group, not the army!

By next morning the mist had cleared...

and the views were stunning!

THE THINKER........just kidding!

At this time of the year the Aloes are out all over the place.

Schnapps on the rocks!

The trails goes through some old gold diggings called "Bannister's Gold workings". These trenches are a legacy of the 1880's Kaapsehoop gold rush. The gold is hydrothermal in origin and occurs in a network of quartz veins within the Barrets-Berlin quartz diorite dykes.....that's quite a mouthful!

Everyone enjoying the sun before doing the descent again to Barrets coaches and the long way back to Johannesburg. Nobody wanted to get up from here, but I suppose all good things also come to an end again..until next time!