As the birds started singing, we zipped open our tents and slowly woke up. We ate our camping breakfast of premixed Pronutro, milk powder and sugar and packed our daypacks full of snacks.
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The dawn chorus started with offensively loud and persistent quacking from a pair of Egyptian geese – sweet music to our ears. It meant we had survived our long night of terror! As the early morning light blissfully luminated our tent, we unzipped our door, lay quietly and watched the sun rise slowly over the African bush.
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The Lonely Bull Trail is a primitive backpacking trail in one of the large wilderness areas in the northern Kruger National Park.
The trail stretches over 4 days and 3 nights and we had to carry our own tents, water and food and camp rough in the bush, with two armed guides to show us the way and make sure we did not get eaten.
This was the first multi-day hike for all of us and although we did loads of research, there was an enormous and somewhat scary unknown ahead.
My biggest fears:
So with these fairly serious animal and ablution concerns, combined with my track record as a seasoned unhappy camper, why on earth did we choose to do this?
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My name is Sarah and I am an Instagram travel junkie.
I spend hours pouring over travel photos and dreaming of visiting the most Instagram-able destinations, taking my own photos and adding them to Chasing the Rainbow’s Instagram account. The Grand Canyon’s distinctive Horseshoe Bend, Canada’s pale turquoise Lake Louise, the Faroe Islands’ spectacular waterfalls, Victoria Falls’ rainbow in the mist….. there are just so many enviable destinations.
Top of my South African Instagram wish list is the Blyde River Canyon – the greenest canyon in the world. There is a rock that you can sit on with a view out over the Blyderivierspoortdam with its distinctive azure colour water surrounded by forest clad cliffs and huge rocky buttresses. My sparkly #rainbowtakkies would look oh-so-delicious right there on that rock.
I used to visit Mpumulanga’s Panorama Route every year way back before it was even called that. My parents owned timeshare at Crystal Springs Mountain Lodge and we did a yearly pilgrimage to the area, panning for gold in Pilgrims’ Rest, eating pancakes at Harries in Graskop, checking out all the incredible waterfalls – from Mac Mac to Lisbon, Berlin, Maria Shires, Bridal Veil and Lone Creek – and viewpoints at The Pinnacle, God’s Window, Bourke’s Luck Potholes and the Three Rondawels. But for some reason, in over a decade of visiting the area, I had never seen or heard of that famous view over the Blyde Rivier dam until Instagram popped it into my feed.
So when planning where to go in the week before our trip to the Kruger National Park, and looking for a timeshare swap in the area, Crystal Springs Mountain Lodge seemed like a great idea. Ralph and I had been there and done most of that, but it would be awesome to show it all to the kids with the added benefit of being able to capture it all on Instagram and get that sparkly rainbow nation takkie photo at Blyde River Canyon.
One of my favourite childhood books was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Besides the deliciously fantastic storyline, the ending always fascinated me – when Willie Wonka took Charlie into his glass elevator and headed upward into the unknown.
This is exactly how I felt when we entered Graskop’s brand new glass elevator. The shiny modern structure clinging to the vertical side of a naturally stunning deep gorge is a sight to behold. Instead of up, it transported us deep down into the unknown caverns of the enormous gorge, below the canopy of tall trees and into a hidden world entirely magical and full of sweet and surreal surprises.
