Cycad hiking trail, Feb 2017

Hikers: Pieter, Nicola, Shirley, Lawrence, Lorraine

It was a blissfully short drive we had to do to Cycad’s basecamp – just 40kms! Just before we left home, Shirley phoned with a request to bring along a gas stove, in case threatening rain forced us to cook inside. Nicola and I arrived at the basecamp almost an hour before the others and discovered that another group would also be hiking the trail – they had the use of the second hut. When Shirley, Lawrence and Lorraine arrived it took us over an hour to catch up on all the news and happenings since we haven’t seen each other in over a year. The dark clouds that threatened earlier turned into nothing and by 5pm we had our braai fire going. A beautiful sunset accompanied our dinner and after, we played our video of Iceland and reminisced about one of our best holidays yet.

 

At the basecamp hut, Lorraine, Shirley and Nicola almost ready to go

Day 1 (18 Feb): We were doing the trail as a basecamp, rather than sleeping over at the Arendsnes camp – the other group was doing the trail as a backpack. It was slightly annoying that there were only two toilets and two showers for all of us together especially when the other group started hogging both sides despite a verbal agreement that each of our groups would stick to one side. Nevertheless, we all finished up and were walking by 7am. It was a very pleasant morning but the trail that was neatly mowed for the first hundred meters, very soon disappeared entirely. It was well-marked though and only occasionally we had to stand still a little to look for the markers. This did annoy me somewhat – if you need that many markers to be able to follow a trail, then it's not a good trail. Good trails you can follow without having any markers. Nicola and I birded as we walked as well. By 10am we had reached the lip of the Olifants river gorge and had nice views up and down the valley. We could see the Arendsnes camp on the edge some distance away but first we had to descend down to the river.

Olifants river gorge, Arendsnes camp perched on the edge in the upper left corner

Lawrence looking down the Olifants

With the trail so badly unkept, it was a little slippery and dangerous in places but we got to the bottom safely. Here another obstacle awaited us though: fields and fields of blackjacks. By the time we reached a spot where we could access the river, most of us spent almost half an hour cleaning off blackjacks while Lorraine took a dip in the river. Soon after we started the climb up to Arendsnes and reached it at noon on the dot. It really was a fantastic location for a camp, perched on a cliff edge, overlooking the Olifants valley. We sat on the braai deck to have lunch and not long after, the first of the other group arrived (this was their overnight stop).

Trail-side butterfly

 Our tummies full, we headed off again, walking through some convoluted boulder fields and grassland, arriving back at our basecamp at about 2pm. Although the morning was cool and pleasant, the afternoon had turned hot and nasty and we all headed for the shade on the hut’s verandah. The rest of the afternoon we rested and started our braai fire again around 5pm. Around 7pm we watched bats leaving the eaves of our hut with Nicola’s infrared phone camera and listened to the Fiery-necked nightjars calling.

Trail-side lizard

Day 2 (19 Feb): The night was a bit warmer than the previous one and sleep didn’t come too easy. But today’s walk was a bit shorter and we were on our way again by 7am, initially following the same trail as the day before. Soon we were at another viewpoint over the Olifants valley and this time descended into a side kloof that was a little more pleasant than the slippery non-maintained path of the previous day. Thankfully our path joined up with the other trail past the blackjack fields but the climb back to the top of the gorge was possibly a bit worse, at least at first, because again there was just no path whatsoever and we just walked marker to marker through the tall glass and scrambling over rocks and boulders. The steepness did eventually ease up as we walked in a side valley that started higher up on the plateau. From here we joined again the same trail back to the hut and reached it by 11am.

African pygmy kingfisher

Middelburg cycad

Looking upstream in the Olifants river valley

It was a pleasant weekend and really great to see good friends. The location and views on the hike were great, but the path, not so much.