26 January 2006    to      29 January 2006

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We decided to go camping for my birthday this year. The only problem was deciding where, as the weather bureau forecast rain everywhere. Eventually we decided on one of our old favorites places again, namely Merry Pebbles at Sabie.

After pitching the tent it was into the hot water pool,

followed by a great birthday dinner.

The campsite at merry Pebbles is very nice except if it rains. Due to the poor drainage system, you may find your tent standing in a pool of water up to 10cm or more after a heavy downpour...not very nice. Otherwise the place is really well equipped with a lovely hot pool, restaurant, shop and even bottle store, not to mention lots of trees and lawns.

As Friday was raining, we headed off to Nelspruit and the movies. Saturday was looking good weather-wise so we decided to do our old favorite again, the Loerie trail. Its a very nice day walk about 14km long.

It actually starts off at the Castle rock campsite next to merry pebbles. A permit is required that you can get at the shop at Merry pebbles.

There where an amazing variety of wild flowers out at this time of the year. We have some more photos under our general section.

The first section actually leads you to the Bridal Veil falls, so for a piece of the trail you follow the road.

After the rains the Bridal Veil falls were looking quite nice.

The geology of the area is quite interesting in that it consists mainly of sedimentary rocks. Here the locals carve figurines out of the relatively soft rock and sell them to tourists.

From here on the trail climbs sharply through indigenous forest.

The Glynis falls. Along the way one could see a number of falls especially now after the rains.

Some fungi growing on the trees.

Eventually you reach the end of the indigenous forest and in true Komatieland style they had cut down the forest and of course the markers with it, leaving the poor hiker clueless as to where to go. Fortunately we had done the trail before and managed to find our way out.

From here the trail runs along forest roads. You can see some of Sabie in the distance in the valley below.

The rains had left a lot of mud. Here's Silvia trying to get around a big mud pool.

Some recent rock falls probably due to the rain.

Some nice views.

Everything was very green with lush vegetation in the gorges.

The trail now leaves the forest roads and heads downwards through pine plantations.

Eventually you rejoin the forest roads again. At this point we came across what looked like a sand-snake.

A bit further on our troubles started. The trail is not well marked in many places and of course somewhere along the way we took the wrong turnoff and got lost.

Knowing the direction of Sabie we decided to do some Bundu Bashing and headed down into a gorge. I got ripped to pieces by all the vines with thorns on them.

Eventually we got to another forest road and carried on in the general direction of Sabie.

Lo and behold we hit the Sabie railway line and from there on just carried on back to Sabie which by now was very close.

That evening we really deserved our "mellow" juice! We had just gotten back when we had a real cloud burst, The water started rising all around us threatening our tent. At one point we were sitting in the water in our gazebo. Fortunately it stopped before getting in. For a few hours we had nice weather again but during the night it started raining, and next morning it was a real mission packing away the wet tent, gazebo and other stuff.