We had two days in our spectacular digs for the first time on this tour, so with a full day free I signed up for an all day hike along the crest of the cliffs representing the Drakensberg Amphitheater. Normally people take several days to hike the whole way up and camp overnight on top, but our hostel was offering a single day version in which they drive you most of the way up. There were about 15 of us in total, including several Germans, Canadians, Americans, and Australians.<\/p>\n
That being said, it was still a pretty gruelling hike! The elevation climbed about 800 meters along switchback trails that just skirted the edges of very steep hills and cliffs. The views were amazing and there was a few inches of snow around from that storm we encountered while in Durban. Our route was somewhat unconventional because it suddenly left the trail to make a scramble up a rocky ravine for a 250 meter incline. <\/p>\n
At the top of the scramble was a lunch spot where we could sit with our legs dangling over the edge at 3100 meters above sea level and enjoy the views while we nibbled away. After lunch we hiked along the rim for a little while until we got to the source of and top of the first the waterfall and took another break. Then it was time to hike back across the plateau to get to the side of the mountain we initially hiked up on. <\/p>\n
The descent was very scary because in involved climbing down a 30 meter and another 50 meter chain ladder down the side of a cliff. We were warned about this so I knew to expect it. I just focused on each rung in front of me and didn’t dare look down or up and I finally made it to the bottom of both ladders. <\/p>\n
This was the route most hikers take up to the top. We encountered about 27 students and their university lecturers who were ascending the same ladders with full packs! They were all studying emergency rescue techniques as part of their university degree and were planning to camp up in the freezing cold mountains for three nights. <\/p>\n
Once at the bottom of the ladders, we found our original trail and followed it back to the van. On the long drive back to the hostel, we may well have seen our first leopard crossing the road. On one long straight stretch that dipped down to a river, we saw a pair of red eyes on a long low body slowly cross the road. By the time we got up to it it had disappeared into the tall grasses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had two days in our spectacular digs for the first time on this tour, so with a full day free I signed up for an all day hike along the crest of the cliffs representing the Drakensberg Amphitheater. Normally people take several days to hike the whole way up and camp overnight on top,… Continue reading Drakensberg Amphitheater Hike<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-africa","without-featured-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3sHuW-eJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}