Entabeni hiking trail Aug 2008

After work, I picked up first Liza and then Gordon and Nicola. We left Pretoria at about 16:30 and drove without incident. My petrol was running a little thin as we approached Pietersburg and we decided to drive through Potgietersrus to put in there, rather than risk standing next to the road. Eventually we reached the turn-off to Entabeni and after about 15km on the plantation roads, we reached the hut. We were a little annoyed to find the hut locked, but just as we thought about phoning Tinus, who was still on his way, the caretaker showed up and unlocked the hut for us. We started a fire and it wasn’t long before Tinus also showed up and we had some very late dinner before hitting the bed after 23:00.

Day 1 (16 Aug): We got up early, had breakfast and were on our way before 07:30. The birding was fantastic and we had to stop every few minutes to look for something. We racked up a number of birds and heard both Purple-crested as well as Knysna turacos. We walked past the Ebbe dam and took nice pictures. The path went through pine and gum plantations and lots of indigenous forest. We didn’t rush at all but still made good progress. We stopped next to a little stream for lunch and after that it was 4km or so before we were back at the hut. We decided the map was completely wrong but the written description of the trails were not that bad. At the hut we started the fire for the scones we intended to make. Soon Fossie and Emelia arrived and we spent the afternoon chatting outside and looking for birds. Nicola prepared the scone dough and did a great job baking these on the fire – a little burnt on the outside but with lots of cream and strawberry jam, we didn’t really care! Later we built up the fire again for dinner and had lots to eat before eventually heading for bed at around 20:30. During the night it started to rain and when we woke up, it was still raining.

Day 2 (17 Aug): The area was heavily misted and everything was sopping wet outside. It didn’t take much convincing that we shouldn’t hike anywhere. We decided to see if we could drive to some of the places on the map and packed up. We left by about 8am and first tried to drive to the Vera lookout. However, the road looked a little bad and we turned around. Next we aimed for the Redwood forest but missed the turnoff. At a road junction we heard some Samango monkeys and got out to spot them in the trees. We took some photographs through the haunting pine plantations further down the road and then split up to find our ways home. On the way back we went to Albasini dam and spotted a few birds there as well.