Links
Brian,
Rhona and Tamsyn spent the night at our place and just after 8am on Friday
morning we left, driving to first to Harrismith via Bethal and Standerton. In
Harrismith we had Nando’s for lunch before spending 2 hours to get to Bergville
on the road past Sterkfontein dam. The road is in horrendous condition and
although there’s some pretense in fixing it (chevrons in the middle of the road
with an occasional Stop/Go section that’s universally ignored), there are
actually kosmos growing through the middle of the road in places. What a
disgrace – it’s going to be a very long time before I’ll attempt driving this
particular route again. Despite the road, we arrived in the Cathkin area in good
time and it was a glorious afternoon as we pulled into our accommodation at the
Bergview estate just outside Drakensberg Sun hotel. After unpacking the cars
and getting settled, we started a fire and soon after Rhona and Nicola’s cousin
Richard and his friend Andrew showed up. Our firewood turned out to be
miserable braai wood and after getting a smoky flavour we had to stick all our
meat in the oven to get cooked. After a great dinner we played 30 Seconds until
past midnight, wished Brian a very happy birthday and turned in.
Tentative
plans to go for an early morning birding walk evaporated quickly in the morning
as we lazed around the house at breakfast and later strolled down to the hotel
and its lake. Around 11:30 we drove to the Waffle hut outside Winterton to
celebrate Brian’s birthday and then visited several craft and souvenir shops on
the R600, eventually getting back home around 3pm. Another lazy afternoon was
followed by an excellent dinner. While Andrew and Richard went to watch a local
comedian at the hotel, the rest of us had our own comedy session while playing
three rounds of 30 Seconds. It was another late night but after 12, not even
the coffee could keep us awake anymore and off to bed we went.
Sunday
morning was definitely going to see some birding getting done. Rhona, Brian and
Tamsyn left to spend the day at Cathedral Peak while Nicola and I took the
trail up to the Grotto birding in the forest along the way. Initially we
struggled a little finding the path but when we did it was nice and easy
walking. Apart from a few common birds on the way into the forest, we picked up
Brown-throated martin, White-rumped swift and Southern boubou. The forest
itself had many parties of Cape white-eyes that seemed to follow us because
around every corner was a group of four or more feeding in the low and mid
stratums. On several occasions these were joined by Yellow-throated woodland
warblers and even two Forest canaries that made a quick appearance. A strange
looking bird had us perplexed for a short while but after browsing the field
guide we discovered it was a ruddy form Olive bush-shrike. We had great views
of this pretty bird sitting at times only 2 metres from us. Bar-throated apalis
and Cape batis were also common but our sighting of day was certainly a short
but cracking view of a Bush blackcap – our first for KZN! Higher up in the
forest we also heard Sombre greenbuls before we arrived at the Grotto around
11am and sat down for a quick bite to eat and some water. Then we proceeded up
the trail, quickly climbing out of the forest where the Canopy Tour starts.
From here it was just a matter of walking down the dirt road back to the hotel
and we reached the house some time after mid-day. A shower and lunch was
followed by a lazy afternoon before getting another braai fire ready for
dinner. Brian, Rhona and Tamsyn arrived around 5pm and we spent the rest of the evening chatting about all the fun we had during the day.
With plans of doing some birding along the way back home, we had to get an early start. At 7am, Nicola, Tamsyn and I were ready to go and after a tearful goodbye, we were on our way. Our first stop was Spioenkop dam Nature Reserve. A few distinctive calls like that from Golden-tailed woodpecker and Chinspot batis greeted us as we entered the reserve and while still on the tarred section we got a nice surprise: Brown-backed honeybird. In the thornveld we added a number of typical bushveld species but nothing of particular interest. The dam itself had very little to offer but as the tracks in the reserve seemed to be much more extensive than indicated on the map, we thought it a good idea to return to the reserve on a future trip. At 10am we turned around and paid a visit to Ladysmith's sewerage works. This was unfortunately quite a let-down. Despite a very helpful lady pointing out where we could watch birds, the place is unsafe, completely overgrown and has zero facilities for birders. After picking up Yellow-billed egret, African purple swamphen, a few White-faced ducks and an African pied wagtail, we left. It was now already almost noon and with a long way ahead of us, we got onto the N11 back home. Between Ladysmith and Newcastle we ran into a 15km section of road works where they forced you to drive 40km/h on average by putting up speedbumps every few 100m. Having bounced over 57 of these in more than 30 minutes it took us to drive this section, we had little pleasant to say about the current condition of SA roads. This was not helped by another stretch of 43km of horrendous road between Amersfoort and Morgenzon. For the past 5 years we have not been able to drive anywhere in the country without running into major road works, pathetic roads or countless Stop/Go sections. We wonder if it will ever end... But there's no point about complaining about this as we had a fantastic time in the 'Berg with friends and family and we look forward to seeing them again, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
