Sunday 27 Oct 2013

S: We both had a good night's sleep and Lesley was up early tweeting again. I did the sensible thing and slept in late till 7am. We had a cooked breakfast this time and were joined by a duiker and her young grazing across the road from us.


I had a bit of a disappointment when my silver bracelet dropped off my wrist and down the drain while I was rinsing the cups under the tap. Unfortunately the pipe curves at an angle a little way down and I could not see nor retrieve it.


There are a few walking trails in the area and we decided to do two of them. The first was the the Loerie trail, 1km long, and the other was the river mouth walk to the suspension bridge.


The Loerie trail starts just behind our camp site and heads up the hill and along towards the river mouth. So after a quick drive to the gate to pay for another night we climbed the hill into the forest. The trees overhead were so dense that we could only see patches of the sky. There were so many birds chattering but we did not see any to photograph until we had reached the end of the trail and found a male Southern Double Collared Sunbird which allowed us to get close while he chirped, primped and posed.


Shortly into our walk we crossed a stream with a little waterfall. It was lovely and quite out of the wind with only the sound of the crashing waves in the distance and the chattering birds above us. (Lesley still trying in vain to find a bird to photograph.) A lot of the trees are labelled. Yellowwood, Candlewood and Pear being a few we saw.


We took a little detour up another trail and walked as far as the waterfall where we turned around and came back to our original trail. We only met one group of people along the trail and that was toward the end. We got to the road and I opted to go and fetch the car and left Lesley to enjoy the view. I knew we were not going to want to walk all the way back after doing the second walk. We drove to the restaurant and started along the board-walk to the suspension bridges. There are three of them now, one across the river and two shorter ones along the gorge.


It seems there was a fire recently and now the whole path is made out of recycled plastic planks. Lots of stairs up and down and then some really steep steps leading down to the main bridge. You can do the walk in a bit of a circle at the end, going down to the main bridge first. Once you come back over the main bridge then you turn left and do the other two smaller bridges and then back up a very steep set of stairs to join the main path.


On the main bridge there are some padlocks with couple's names engraved or painted on with a date. We suspect some guys popped the question on the bridge and made it public by placing a padlock. Rather novel idea we thought.


After all that walking we decided to treat ourselves to some lunch at the restaurant. Reasonable prices but rather mediocre food. After a quick stop in the shop for supplies it was back to base. We were grateful for the drive back instead of a walk as we were both rather foot sore. It was time for a rest and then a shower, a bite to eat (no braai tonight) and catching up on the blog.


We had another amazing sunset and once we had got up to date with the admin we headed off to bed. Hopefully there are a few people who are enjoying reading about our days as much as we are experiencing them.



Good night.