We left our group on Wednesday at the Johannesberg airport. Rented our car and braved the roads to our B and B in the south of Joberg (as the locals call it). Just a few wrong turns, Denise working at navigation and John driving on what feels like the wrong side of the road, we found our place for the night. Our host was wonderful about helping us order a pizza while we spent the evening switching gears, re packing our bags for 8 days in a car. We slept incredibly well...both very tired. Ready the next morning for our trek south.
We headed for our hotel in Winterton, 4 hours south in the Drakensburg Mountain area. As we left the city, we drove through lots of farm country, wide open spaces, very different than we had seen before. Slowly the terrain changed and we started to see the beautiful mountain ranges. We arrived late afternoon to find our hotel and discover that most things close at 4 pm. We explore a little, and find a lovely Portugese restaurant for dinner. It's warm ( we found our 80 degrees) so we sit outside on the porch. Within minutes we are treated to a display of lightening AND a beautiful sunset over the mountains. Good food, great company and an unique dinner show from nature.
The next morning we headed out for a day of exploring the Drakensburg National Park. First, Cathedral Peak area and learning about the unique history of their cave paintings by the San's people. An incredible find in these mountains and history of this group that lives in this region. Then we headed for the north end where we found one wheelchair accessible hike! We finally got our hike in. Most hikes we could not attempt.
On our way home we were treated to another incredible lightening show in the mountain range complete with a downpour. Fortunately we were headed back to town for dinner and regroup for our trip towards Durban tomorrow.
