return to home page

Stamvrugte hiking trails (25/27-Jan-2013)

Spent two nights in the Kloof hut, that is the one with the pools just below. But these weren't the best pools, read on. We all, that is eight: Allen, Tania, Hester Louise, me, Jörg, Jenny, Janine and Lydia, accumulated Friday afternoon at the hut. On Saturday Jörg convinced us to do the 11km Sunset loop. So, off we went, surprisingly early, that was 7h30. We needed that because it was going to be a hot day. For some reason unbeknown to me we did it the 'wrong' way around. It made it a bit more difficult, spotting the trail markers required an extra effort. Up and down over mostly rocky terrain we went and when we reached the highest point of the ridge it was lunch time.
But the people at the front didn't want to stop, so much so that the laggers eventually decided to have lunch under the shade of the nearest tree. Now the party was split.
We, the laggers, carried on following the trail markers until we lost them and the GPS had to take over. Which it did with fair success, it got us to the game fence. We knew that all we had to do now was to find the crossing point, which was located about 300m along the line. The day was saved, from now on it was straight down to camp. Just before getting back to camp Jörg and I had a big splash into the pool which was a great relief from the heat of the day.
The others also made it back, actually before us, they had also lost the path and to my delight they were lost even more than we did. When comparing GPS tracks they had done 13km and us 12.6km.
Next morning some of us went off to the dam for a swim, a 1.7km hike.
On the way we were entertained by a herd of dung beetles making hay in a fresh heap of dung. Carrying it away in all directions.
The swim was great, a nice deep dam with plenty of room for swimming around, and the water temperature was just right. The spirit was dampened only slightly when Jörg showed us a picture of a drowned rat which he had taken with his under water camera. But that was only after we had finished the swim.
A final excursion to the pools below the hut finished off the day and the weekend. The only other highlight after that was the softserve in Warmbaths.

return to home page