March 20th and 21st
About 10 kilometers from Stellenbosch University is Jonkershoek Nature Reserve. It’s a relatively small valley, but contains beautiful mountains, great hiking, a few waterfalls and a dirt road the goes in a big circle at the base of the mountains that is great for mountain biking and walking. I can actually see some of the mountains that make up the area from my window in my room. I biked to Jonkershoek one Sunday with some friends a while ago after we had signed up for the Jonkershoek Mountain Challenge which is a race in May (more about that later) just to hike around for the day and see what we were up against. The area is just lovely. Since then, we’ve been talking about when we should camp in Jonkershoek. Three friends and myself don’t have class on Wednesdays and we had a public holiday on Thursday the 21st of March (no school!) so we decided that those days would be perfect to camp for a night in Jonkershoek. We spent the weekend before hand and the days leading up to Wednesday making sure we had everything we needed - like a tent. I ended up buying a tent for under $40 - which is wicked cheap. It’s a great tent and it’s huge! It advertises itself as a two person tent, but we fit four people comfortably.
Daniel, Sam, Ally and I were going to head to Jonkershoek earlier in the day and hike around and then meet up with a few other people who were going to come after their class in the afternoon. I was the only one with a big backpack, so I ended up carrying the tent, two sleeping bags, two sets of poles (for a tent someone was going to be bringing later), food, enough warm clothes for myself and other people if necessary, a water filter, two flashlights and bunch other things that may have been needed. After everything was packed, I’m pretty sure by bag was over 30lbs.
On Wednesday morning, we took a shuttle bus to Jonkershoek and arrived around 11, although we had left Stellenbosch around 8:30. We had to wait for a taxi for about and hour and the drive there took much longer as we stopped and started and picked up and dropped off lots of people. We got through the gate and started hiking around. We didn’t really know where we were going, but we did have a specific trail that we were eventually going to follow. Right from the get-go, things were a little funny. We ended up taking the first wrong turn possible and walked entirely around the valley to get to the trail head. It was fun though, and we saw a lot of the area. We ate lunch on a stream, crossed it and made a minor short cut to get to the trail head. The hike up to where we were thinking we wanted to camp was easy at first, but eventually got pretty steep. It was also pretty hot and it was a darn good thing that I had my water filter because we got water at almost every stream we passed. Daniel and I even had to do some minor down climbing to get to a stream because we were all drinking so much water. We went off the path for a little ways to find a place to camp in the early evening. Then we found rocks to sit on that had a good lookout point so we could see the others coming. We had done some research about what animals we needed to be aware of in the area. There were obviously baboons, but there were also several kinds of poisonous snakes and leopards as well. We didn’t see any wildlife except for birds all day, but when we were finding our campsite, Sam did spot a snake under a rock, but we gave it a wide birth, so I’m not sure what kind of snake it was.
Around 6pm, we got a phone call from one of the people we were supposed to meet up with. They were at the gate, and the park was about to close. Originally, they were either going to pay to get in or just hop the fence, but there was a search and rescue squad at the gate, so neither one of those was going to work. Hearing that there was a search and rescue squad freaked us out, because we weren’t entirely sure if we were supposed to be camping where we were. They had to call us back, so during the brief interlude, we tried to decide if we wanted to hike down and leave before we had to get rescued or if we should just stay. This was all rather nerve-racking and I was not a happy-camper. They called us back and said that the search and rescue was merely training and we were fine, but that the rest of the group wasn’t going to be able to meet up with us.
We watched the sunset. The place we camped was really neat because we could see the ocean on one side and then more mountains on the other. It was beautiful. We ate sandwiches for dinner and then played cards in the tent before going to bed. We got up pretty early to hike down and we got to the gate probably around 11am. Then we started walking the 10k back towards Stellenbosch thinking that we could hitch a ride somewhere along the way. We had been walking for maybe an hour and a half and were a little before the half way point when a truck pulled up next to us and asked if we needed a ride. There were some people sitting in the back and they were clearly all hikers. Sam and Ally took the ride immediately, but Daniel and I decided that we were already half way, so we should probably keep going. We walked for a while longer and got back to Stellenbosch around 2:30. It was great to be able to say that we walked the whole way back, and walking back into the grassy area in between the buildings we all live in was a great feeling. It was, however, extremely tiring and had been wearing my pack pretty much all day so my back was pretty sore. After that, I ate my melted Snickers bar and finished up the rest of my food. I did some yoga/stretching with one of my friends who and got a massage that ended up hurting pretty bad but feeling really good. All in all, it was great fun. The hiking was beautiful, the company was great and I love the fact that I can say I carried my pack the whole way!
I didn’t take that many pictures, but I have some of mine and some from Daniel and Sam.
Our "map" on my iPod. The white line is where our ultimate goal was and we did make it!
The Happy Campers!! Ally, Me, Sam and Daniel
Lunch and a brief cooling of the feet. The water was super cold, but it felt so good.
Break (and a nap) in the only shade we found for hours.
Daniel and I climbing to get water.
This is what the landscape looked like pretty much the whole way up the mountain. It was beautiful and I'm constantly reminded of Lord of the Rings.
Almost at our campsite.
Sunset.
More sunset.
These pictures are from Daniel (he has a pretty nice camera). I was really tired when we had finally found a campsite and we waiting for the others so I took another nap.
The four of us!
Looking longingly into the distance! It's a little staged, but a nice picture.
I really like this picture too (thanks Daniel!). The sunset was so nice and the contrast between the colors in the sky and the black silhouette of the mountains was so cool.
Good mornin'!
Back in Stellenbosch (finally). Daniel took this picture to. My shoulders were extremely tender after wearing my pack for so long and Neil offered to give them a massage. It hurt, but felt really good at the same time.
Hello! This "little" guy was hanging out with us as we were eating. He crawled up and down the table for a long time and we tried feeding him peanut butter - but he didn't want it. I've never seen a praying mantis that close so it was really cool.
Nice blister!
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