Pain is weakness leaving the body.

at the summit before the hail started

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We left Simon's Town and headed up the coast along the Garden Route.  We spent a night in Storm River (yes we saw the river...and from a very high bridge).  Storm River is the adventure capital of S. Africa...however our eyes were firmly directed at the Drakensburg amphitheatre. 

We finished up our drive at a less than lovely hostel in the mountain range and spent the night charging up for the next day's hike.  The Drakensburg mountain range is huge and runs throughout the country, however, the most photographed and talked about spot is the amphitheatre. 

The next morning we met up with our guide and the small group we were hiking with.  It was an hour ride to our starting point which was half way up the mountain.  We spent the next six hours running straight up to a 4,000 meter summit and then straight down!  All in all a 9 mile hike.  It was an interesting hike.  The last part of our assent was climbing up a steep ravine...it was at this point that dear Carrie's throat closed and she turned bright red and couldn't really breathe all that well because she was having trouble acclimatizing.  We worked that right out and made our way to the summit just as a huge thunderstorm rolled in.  The summit was gorgeous and the amphitheatre was spectacular.  Its also home to the 2nd tallest waterfall in the world...we saw it.  Just as we saw it the hail started coming down.  We were all freezing (the temp at the base when we started was like 70 degrees).  We ran across the top of the mountain to begin our descent which started by climbing down hundreds of meters of chain ladders in the sleet and lightening!  Then we hauled ass down the rest of the mountain via jackknife paths.  Somewhere along the line Carrie rolled her ankle but didn't even realize it until the next day...we were really too in survival mode to notice. 

the amphitheatre

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The adventure was spectacular and wonderful and we wouldn't do it again unless you paid us lots of money.  A hard day.

The next day we finished our drive to Johannesburg and did all our fun errands like going to the post office and buying our Egypt guide book and santa hats.  We flew out of Johannesburg the next morning.