A Ride with a Giant

22^nd September-25^rd September – Days 357-360 – Pietermaritzburg and Northern Drakensberg National Park, South Africa

The aim for a few days was the Amphitheatre Backpackers, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. After the cold of Lesotho didn't induce the more climatically frail of us to go wandering around the Sani Pass, the Drakensburg mountains looked like a better bet. Various pieces of advice let us conclude that we needed to take a minibus taxi to Ladysmith, change there get to Bergville, and then get another towards Harrismith, which would drop us at the Backpackers' turnoff about halfway down the road. Simple, right ? Once again, we managed to make a mountain out of a transportational molehill. Pietermaritzburg to Ladysmith went perfectly well, as did Ladysmith to Bergville. However, it seemed that the final minibus had left towards Harrismith and we were advised to "go to the main road and hike". Hiking is a rather vague concept in South Africa and means getting a lift with whatever passes - it could refer to hitchhiking just as much as it could refer to trying to get into a passing minibus which has any space. The act is the same though (stand by the road and try to flag down passing vehicles) and so we walked out of town towards the main road and tried our luck.

Our luck wasn't really in for a while and M eventually decided that the best course of action was to go to the nearest petrol station and pick up an icecream and some drinks and see if anyone could give us a lift from there. No such luck, but a few minutes later a large pickup containing an even larger man ground to a halt and asked us where we were going. "Sure, I'm heading that way, get in" he said, and we did. Our new friend was a friendly and talkative guy, eager to hear our opinions on South Africa as most people in this country are. He was from Bethlehem, further up the road, he told us, but worked in Durban. "Did you go to Durban ?" he asked. "We did !" M piped up from the back. "We saw a rugby game there a few weeks ago". This seemed to interest our new friend. "Sharks against Western Province eh ? I played in that game". This is when I started regretting not reading up about rugby very much and I had to admit to him that I knew very little about the game, although we promised that we'd cheer for him next time we saw him on the TV. "Haha ! OK, I'm number three for the Sharks". Noted. "And number 3 for the Springboks as well". Aha ! So we were getting a lift from an international rugby player. Great. I asked him name, warning him in advance that I'd probably never heard of him with my limited knowledge of rugby. So our new friend was called Bismarck du Plessis, and he seemed not to mind that he was helping out a pair of rugby ignoramuses. He dropped us off at the Amphitheatre, politely declined our offer of a beer to thank him for his help as he had some business to take care of back home, and took his leave. We instantly called all of our South African rugby-watching friends to brag about what had just happened, and wondered what the chances would be of David Beckham or Zinedine Zidane giving a pair of hitchers a lift in Europe. Probably rather slim.

George the tent gets another workout

The stay at the Amphitheatre itself was a bit of an anticlimax - the guided tours were too expensive for us and another lump was sprouting on my face, meaning that I wasn't feeling energetic enough to go and wander around. M did so for a short time but it seemed that the distant mountains were a lot further than they appeared, and she returned without having left flat ground. These few days, then, were used to relax again. It was a nice little place with a big grassy area for sticking up the tent, a cozy bar and a restaurant that did decent food. We read books, sat around and picked up our energy for the final leg of the trip. Less than a month was left before the flight home and we wanted to make the most of it.

M explores "The Berg"

and this is what she finds.

Another hour of attempted hitching finally got us back to Bergville from where we grabbed another minibus up towards Pretoria in a desperate attempt to find something interesting to do there. We had some things to pick up from Christine's place and aimed to be in big bad Johannesburg within a few days.

Bergville, anyone? I'm not fat, I've just got an abcess...