From Berg to bush in March 2015 part one Golden Gate* NP

[Tina]

we went to KTP in September/October 2014 and have planned our next trip for November 2015. Due to fortunate circumstances we were able to book another trip to South Africa for March 2015. As this was an extra trip, we decided to neither visit KTP (would have been too late to book decent accomodation anyway) nor KNP but to go somewhere else. I wanted to do some birding as well while my SO prefers the four-legged animals (to put it nicely ).
It seemed to be a good idea to visit the Drakensberg, some reserves around Johannesburg and KZN. But what to do and where to stay? Consulting the internet, every place claims to be the best for birding. Finally we were cutting it down to 12 possible destinations.
Our problem was – we only had two weeks. Then I received a good advice to not book accomodation but to go and stay wherever we like it and that is what we decided to do. This turned out to be a good decision.
The plan was to pick up the car at the airport and to start the trip in Wakkerstroom, going South and returning via the Drakensberg. Little did we know that that plan was going to be changed enormously...

[Tina]

10.03.2015

Usually we fly Emirates but this time we got a good offer from Air France. Thus, it was our first flight in an A 380 and it saved us some time. On top of that, we had booked premium economy (upgraded a day before we left to business ). That meant that we could sleep a bit on the plane and arrived rather rested at about 11 am in Johannesburg. My SO wanted to go straight to the car rental but I wanted to finish the last errands (buying airtime for the dongle and phone, buying a mouse for the laptop as we had forgotten ours at home and getting money from the ATM) first. That was not a good decision.

We were not very lucky with our rental cars on the last two trips. Thus, this time, we had asked for a diesel, if possible a Hilux. When we arrived at the car rental at 1 pm they did not know about our request and wanted to give us a petrol-driven Nissan again – exactly what we did not want, especially as we had planned to visit Sani Pass.

The lady at the counter was quite relaxed. She checked but told us that there was no other car available. That was it. We called our travel agent in Germany and waited. At 2 pm I had it. We had to drive for about 4 hours and we don’t like to drive after dark. I was really upset by now and called the travel agent again who was not able to help us. Then I went back to the counter. As the lady was still not helpful, I asked to speak to the supervisor. By now we had changed our plans and decided to start the trip in Harrismith which is only about two and a half hours from the airport. The supervisor did a number of phone calls and found us a Ford Ranger which just had been returned but it had to be cleaned first which would take about an hour. I gave the guest house a call and as I was told that we could arrive late, I made a reservation (which was a good decision as it was booked out when we finally arrived).

We went back to the airport and had lunch. When we returned to the car rental at 3:15 pm the car was ..... not ready. We had to wait another 45 minutes until we could finally get on the road. On the way we stopped for a comfort break and in the parking lot I saw my first lifer, a grey-headed gull



When we got closer to Harrismith a thunderstorm approached. The sun set, the rain started and we were still on the road, driving in pitch dark. Then the rain stopped and we arrived ”in” Harrismith. The road goes around town and the only address of the guest house we knew was 3 kms out of Harrismith. But where did the town end? Thus, we exited and as I just was about to give the guest house a call they were calling me. We had taken the wrong exit. Thus, it was back on the road and taking the next one which was bringing us straight to them. At 7: 30 pm we had arrived at our first destination (having left home the day before at 2 pm). We were very tired by now and very happy that the guest house had a restaurant. It was checking in, having dinner and a short chat with some nice Frenchmen on the last evening of their first but not last trip to South Africa, and then off we were to bed, leaving him to watch after the chalet

[Tina]

11.03.2015

after breakfast I went around the La La Nathi Country Guest House. This was our chalet

[Tina]

the view



our car which was worth the wait

[Tina]

and I found some birds as well

speckled pigeon



I saw bokmakierie and speckled mousebirds, another lifer, but I did not get decent pictures.

[Tina]

We went to Harrismith and did our shopping for the next two nights which we were planning to spend in Golden Gate Highlands National Park, although it seems that no one ever saw a bearded vulture there and thus, Giant’s castle would have been our first choice, but the hide was booked. As we had made a mistake when booking KTP we still had a credit in our SANParks account as well. So, we typed in the GPS coordinates and started the trip.

We saw some beautiful common cosmos everywhere along the road

[Tina]

Right after entering the park, we saw blesbok



and black wildebeest

[Tina]

then the GPS told us to make a left-hand turn onto this road



which got worse when we proceeded



after about 300 metres the GPS told us that we have reached our destination - and we were in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to turn around but my SO thought that Glen Reenen was just around the corner. Thus, we proceeded and the road got worse



I did not take any pictures of the worst part as I did not want to stop on a deeply rutted steep road. I was just hoping that we did not get stuck as it was obviously the wrong road and not much used.

[Tina]

But it was a very productive drive and nice scenery

[Tina]

we saw ant-eating chats



African pipit