Born Again in the Cederburg Mountains!!

Feb. 15 - 17

This weekend, I went with my fellow AIFSers (the study abroad organization I came to South Africa with) to the Cederberg mountains to a nature reserve nestled in a valley.  There are some vineyards in this valley, but most of the area is uninhabited and just beautiful.  There terrain, the rocks, everything really, was just lovely.  Everywhere I go here, I am struck with how beautiful and diverse the landscape is.  We drove about 5 hours north (2 hours of that being on a dirt road) and ended up in a very nice camp ground.  When we go as a whole group, there are about 25+ of us, it takes 4 big vans to transport us all.  The vans are fun because we get to interact with our program director and her assistant more as well as some South Africans who drive the other 2 vans.  We also get to listen to an eclectic mix of music depending on who’s van you sit in.  I was under the impression that we were going to be camping-link in tents, but we stayed in these apartment type houses that had two or three bed rooms each and slept 8-10 people.  We had a nice bathroom (with a jacuzzi tub) and a huge kitchen - not quite the camping I thought is was going to be!

The first night, we had a braai and just hung out in our little area.  We roasted marshmallows, sang songs and just had a good time.  The most amazing thing about the Cederburg area is the stars.  I’m pretty sure it is the second best place in all of South Africa in terms of star visibility.  They were amazing - some of the best I’ve ever seen.  Because we were in a campground and there were lights on in buildings and on the bathrooms, two of my friends and I decided to climb on the rocks behind the buildings we were staying in and find a place with a lot less light.  One of my friends stayed below to take pictures of the stars (she has a fancy camera that can do stuff like that) and myself and my friend Daniel partially hiked up a mountain and found some rocks to sit on.  We had just been to Cape Town the week before and went to the planetarium so we brought up my star chart and headlamp and looked for all the constellations.  We found almost all of them and I’m pretty sure we saw Jupiter (it may have been a different planet, but I think it was Jupiter).  We also saw a bunch of shooting stars.  I had never seen a shooting star until last year, but here, every time I go star gazing, I see at least two or three.

On Saturday, we got up pretty early and went hiking.  We went up a trail called the Wolfburg Cracks and it was one of the most fun hikes I’ve ever done.  The first hour or so was pretty average, just walking up, but once we got up closer to the top, we actually got to climb through cracks and crevasses.  It was like walking through the inside of the mountain.  We had to do a minor chimney climb (see the the photo) and had to crawl, on your backs, under a rock that our program director lovingly calls the birthing canal (hence the title of the post).  When we got to the top, Daniel and I hiked and climbed around, probably a little bit further than we should have gone, but the climbing was really fun and we had to make it to the tallest rock on the top of the huge, flat summit.  That afternoon, we went swimming in a river (I took a shower with my Dr. Bonner's and LL Bean bio-degradable shampoo I got for Christmas from Grandmom), did a wine tasting at one of the vineyards in the valley and then just played frisbee, hung out, and I helped braai lamb and chicken for dinner.  At the wine tasting, I learned that the color of the wine (red, white, pink...) has to do with how long the skin of the grape is in contact with the liquid.  Also, it is the soil and the amount of sunlight that the grapes get that determines its flavors.  When I first saw that there were vineyards in the valley, I was very surprised.  The people who live there would have to drive very far to get supplies or go anywhere.  But I learned that because the vineyards are literally surrounded by mountains, they have no problems with pests so they don’t have to use pesticides and can grow really rare grape varieties.  We tried one wine that the grapes were only grown in Cederburg and I think one or two other places in South Africa and possible the world.  That night, we went star gazing again, but this time, we hopped a fence to get into the nature reserve and walked along a path until we found some other rocks to lay on.  The stars were so beautiful.  There were bazillions and I don’t think I have ever seen the milky way so clear.

On Sunday, before we drove home, we went to see San (Bushman/early native population in South Africa) rock art that was over 5,000 years old.  One of the sites, we had to stand behind a fence to look at the paintings, but at the second sight, we walked right under it.  I could have touched/licked the drawings if I wanted.  These paintings were very cool, one because they are so old (5,000 years is a really long time) and they are still so vivid also because we could actually get really close and really look and observe the paintings.  I think they may have been touched up once or twice, but other than that, they have been left to themselves.  The second site also had some great climbing rocks.  Daniel and I (we’re the only two from our AIFS group willing to do something a little risky, like climb rocks and jump around, so we end up doing a lot of things together as the rest of our groups shakes their heads and warns us to be careful) found a fun face to climb and some interesting cave-type holes to sit in.  The second site was also used to hold secret meetings during the apartheid era and the names of prominent apartheid leaders can still be seen on the walls of one of the caves.

The pictures are way better at showing what we did.  I had great weekend.  It was fun to be outside for almost the whole time and the weather was wonderful, the climbing was cool and the stars were spectacular (enjoy the alliteration - I did that on purpose).  Hope you like the pictures!!

So you know kind of where we went.  I'm not sure how accurate this map is because I just used Mapquest and I'm not sure if I put in the actual location of where we stayed.

Landscape of the area!

My group.  We're mostly from the East Coast, but we have one girl from California, two girls from Wisconsin and someone from Ohio.  We also only have 3 guys in our group.  So we're a lot of girls!

An example of one of the climbs we had to do to get up the mountain.

The path!

The lines that are running all over this face were really fun to climb.

The top!

The view!

On top of the world!

Daniel and I at the top.  Every time we go somewhere with our group, we end up going off and doing all the things everyone else is too scared to do and we take a picture.  So here's the one we took at the top the mountain.

The vineyard we went wine tasting on.  In general, I don't drink anything, but because I'm in the wine capital of South Africa, I felt like I needed to try at least some of what everyone was saying was so good.  To be honest, the 5 or 6 wines we tried were all pretty gross, but it was fun to listen to the guy telling us about each wine and trying to taste the asparagus, the peach, the citrus or whatever other flavor we were supposed to taste.  I didn't taste any of what he was talking about.

Rock art!

5,000 year old hand prints.  These were of grown men, but my hand was still much bigger than these prints.

These were some of the names written on the walls.  DF Malan, in the lower right corner, was prime minister of South Africa starting in 1948 and it was under him and the government of that time that apartheid became much more formal and when racist laws were actually put into place.