We've got 7 days here but we could have spent much longer. KNZ is home to the surf beaches (& sharks) around Durban, snorkelling & diving around St Lucia/Sodwana/Kosi, Imfolozi Hulhulwe (pronounced shlu-shlu-wee) safari park, the Drankensburg mountains and as its name suggests this is Zulu-land and home to many wars between the Boers (white Dutch South Africans) and Zulus, and of course the Brits and everyone (seen the film??)
Our first stop was a little town called Nottingham Road which is based in the Midlands Meander region of the DRAKENSBURG. Evelyn's family live here and it was really nice of them to let us stay - Thanks Uncle Sam. It was great to see all the Stevenson Clan (& dogs & cats), though a shame to have missed Aunt Lyn and Iain ;(
The drive to Nottingham was completely different to the rest of SA we've seen so far - its green!!! When we got to the Stevenson's, we were loving the views. This is a beautiful place, surrounded by hills and mountains, peace & quiet. Across the fields and meadows you can see Giants Castle on the horizon. We walked the dogs (Monty & Rommel) and the cat (Libra) followed :-)
On our first morning, the next door neighbour (say 2kms away) wanted to do some controlled burning on his fields (helps prevent uncontrolled summer fires and plant regeneration), so we earned our keep by helping start the water hose with Uncle Sam - We had to hunt down the hose, and Marc gave Sam a bit of electric shock & bath (not at the same time;) when trying to get the thing started...
We also went to with Haley & baby Ben to watch Rachel horse riding. Sam jnr was full of energy and teaching us how to play rugby - he's good, far better than us ;)
The weather wasnt ideal during our stay - we could still see the snow on the mountains, and Sani Pass (the road into Lesotho) was blocked. The day we went to explore, it was a bit overcast, so the visabilty wasnt as good as it could have been, but there were still great views on our drive.
The Midlands Meander is full of arts and crafts shops, of which 75% of their stocks have to be home made. When we got to the mountains, there were some more lovely little cafes to stop and have lunch before our walk.
We originally planned on taking the 1 1/2 hr trail at Monks Cowl (nr Champagne Castle), but ended up detouring onto the 3hr one!! There's loads of beautiful scenery and waterfalls, we saw some buck, and then got a bit scared as the mist started to come down over the peaks!! We kept walking hoping each hill would be the last ;) When we finally made it back to the car, we were one of the last remaining... Our drive home was a bit scarey - the roads were very very misty and we could barely see 1mtr in front of us. Thankfully the roads were quiet (we were the only fools driving) and we made it home safely :-)
We were here for 3 nights, and could of stayed for another 3....
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