It was a long weekend and what better place to go to than Injisuthi in the Drakensberge for a hiking holiday. Jenny had organised it and got us a cheap price of about R250 pppn and what was very surprising got 20 people together. Ok, at the end we were only 16 due to last minute cancellations.
We used the Friday, starting fairly early, to get us down to the berg. It was me and Eleni in one car, it took us to 16h30 before we got there. That was because passing through Heilbron I noticed the museum was open. Thinking that perhaps my friend Piet Lombard might be there we stopped to have a look at the revamped museum. Piet wasn't there but Quarta Pretorius, who used to be the curator, she has taken over the place again and has given it a face lift.
The weather turned to mist, cold and drizzle by the morning, this didn't stop us from going on a hike. The aim was to go toward the Marble bath and to turn around when convenient. There was a split in the party when some of us wanted to rather go to the Battle cave. That was me included. Battle cave is a place with lots of bushman paintings, but these are secured by a big fence and barbed wire to keep vandals out. This was then our turning point. On the return trip we bumped into others returning from the attempt to reach the Marble bath.
Theoretically we should have stopped for a lunch break but the weather had taken a turn for the worse and nobody felt like having a sit down meal and we just pushed on back to the huts.
The next morning started very leisurely, but eventually some of us got going and went on a short hike, that was around the mountain through the Yellow Wood forest. Very pleasant walk. Here we bumped into Michael, who is a geomorphologist and is here with some students to study erosion caused by humans. He is very enthusiastic and very interested in his field that I asked him for an impromptu lecture. He was very willing and we organised a place and time in the afternoon. We used the TV lounge. His own personal interest is also the philosophy of knowledge and he talked on that until we started diverting him in all sorts of directions. I certainly very much enjoyed the experience and promptly invited him for dinner.
Next day was nothing else to be done, just pack up and return to our dreary lives.