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A lie in as breakfast was at 7.30 am and our walk was due to start @8.30. Albeit we woke early I lay in bed and caught up with my blog while John shaved. Walking to breakfast we saw large black crow like birds with a white patch on their neck flying around - these were white necked ravens.
As we were all ready,unsurprisingly, early we started the walk at 8.10am. It was an 18 km circular walk with the first 5km to the viewpoint the only part that was repeated on the final leg. We saw mountain reedbuck, two eland, one of which was unusually white in colour, beautiful, reddy/orange colour, flowering protea, and albeit we couldn't take a track close to the waterfall due to bald headed ibis nesting we did see the ibis while having lunch by the Nkomati River - a whole flock were circling above. The walk down to the river, and our lunch spot in a shady glade, was rocky but nice with great views. After lunch we continued the loop before ascending steeply to one of the vehicle tracks. Half of the group had opted for the zip line canopy tour and this was where they left us - they had completed 10km we still had 8km to do and little did we know the next 3km back to the viewpoint were the worst......it was a 3km uphill slog in the heat of the day with a strong wind blowing towards us but at least as we turned for another uphill stretch it, luckily, went behind us and helped a little. After a rest at the viewpoint we set off back to the cabins - and saw warthog and rock hyraxes enroute.
Albeit we could see the cabins a way off it took a good hour to reach them - but we did arrive at 3pm and well before the zip liners - indeed we were just starting our second cup of tea when they arrived in the canopy tour land-rover! All afternoon we watched, fascinated by the progress of, wildfires burning and spreading across distant hillsides. They seemingly consumed large tracts of land including some forested areas - it however became more concerning when, back in the safety of our cabin, we saw fires on the ridge near where we had been walking, scarily they seemed to becoming ever closer. However after supper the skies had lost their red glow from the fires; so thankfully thoughts of a middle of the night evacuation left our consciousness.
Great day - good energetic walk - great scenery. (Today's picture is from the viewpoint - the smoke is from the wild fires.)
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