Amphitheatre (Drakensberg) Jul 2007

I drove to Chris’s place on Friday afternoon and arrived at 3pm. We were in Harrismith before 8pm and grabbed some grub at the Wrap-it-up café before driving off, arriving at Sentinel car park at 9pm. It was a perfect winter evening and not too cold at all. The only thing that spoiled the evening was veld fires all over the place. Because we wanted a good head start for the following morning we had decided early on to go and sleep in Sentinel caves. So we quickly woke the guards up, signed in and showed them our letter from KZN Wildlife which negated entry fees, and then we were off (Chris had a contact at KZN Wildlife and our mission was to do vulture spotting along the Namahadi escarpment, specifically Bearded and Cape vultures). Hiking in the dark up the zig zags proved to be interesting and the fires all around us made for a very surreal experience – it felt like we were Frodo and Samwise walking up Mt Doom! We made good time, took some interesting pictures with the fires and at 11pm found Sentinel caves, immediately going to the larger one on the left. We settled down and it wasn’t long before we were fast asleep.

Day 1 (14 July): We slept in a little and only got going at around 07:30. I had a quick bite to eat with Chris deciding to have breakfast later on. We then packed quickly and made a beeline for the chain ladder. At the ladder we met with a bunch of BASE jumpers who were going to jump off the Amphitheatre at Ribbon falls. As we talked I realized one of the guys was the same guy Darrell and I met a few years ago on Sentinel and who we watched jumping off close to "Here be Dragons" on the north face. We climbed the ladders past the group, got to the top and made our way to the Namahadi ruins where we gathered snow for water. We found a spot close by as an observation point and had a quick breakfast. However, the observation point was not looking out onto any known vulture nests so we soon moved beyond Namahadi pass, over the first saddle and then contoured around until we found a good spot that looked onto a decent cliff face, close to where we thought nests might be. The observation point was a little promontory below a buttress and provided a little protection against the wind that picked up slightly. We sat here for quite a while, scouring the cliffs with binoculars and although I spotted a hole that might be a nest, there was nothing inside. But our efforts were rewarded when two Bearded vultures came flying past and we followed them until they disappeared in the west. We wrote up the sighting and then decided to move onto the cutback below Namahadi peak where there were two nests marked on the map. It was a long walk but we eventually got there and found a good viewpoint. For some reason my stove leaked when I was busy boiling water in Sentinel cave that morning so I was a little concerned about it. Deciding to have our dinner for late lunch I got the stove going while Chris went off looking for some more snow. I figured out that the stove only leaked when the valve of the pump was opened to its absolute maximum, solving it by only keeping the valve three quarters open. While I waited for Chris I melted our ice water, and heated up the mince Chris had prepared for dinner so by the time he got back, we had a decent meal. Although we stayed at this spot for more than two hours, we only saw a few Cape vultures but no Bearded vultures. It looked like there were plenty nests in the large cliff faces close to us but none of them looked inhabited. Finally, at about 16:30 we gave up and walked back towards the Tugela bowl. Soon after we started walking, my left foot packed up again and I winced as I limped along behind Chris. It started getting dark at 17:15 and by the time we reached the Namahadi ruins, it was almost completely dark. We found a nice flat spot right below the ruins and settled in for the night. It was a cool night with actual temperature dropping to -6.5 degrees C. There was also a nasty westerly breeze blowing that probably dropped the temperature to below -10 and also had us zipping our bags right up. Even so, it was a cosy night in the bags and I slept well.

Day 2 (15 July): We got up as the sun rose above Sentinel, packed up and walked over to an observation point on the cliffs about 500m west of the chain ladder. Here we made breakfast and eventually decided to stay there for at least 2 hours. Seeing nothing at first we eventually got rewarded with a spectacular sighting of a sub-adult Bearded vulture, preceded by two Cape vultures and followed by another. It was then after 11am already and we decided to call it a trip. We walked to the chain ladders, descended and then made a dash for the car park, arriving at 12:45. We gave a lift to John, one of the guards at the hut and after we dropped him in Phutaditjaba, we were on our way to some greasy chips in Harrismith.