Pretoria and the mountains

We left Gabs bright and early a week ago and travelled by the rather smart Intercape service to Pretoria. We mooched around a bit here, had a look at the Union Buildings which are impressive and enjoyed the fact that the whole grounds are now used by joggers-loads of people running up and down the steps and around the park.
From Pretoria we travelled to Harrismith where we were picked up by shuttle and taken the the ampitheatre back packers, just over the border into Kwazulu-Natal. We have had a fantastic time here, the accommodation was basic but clean, lots of nice home cooked food a bar (Richard particularly enjoyed the pernod :)) a pool and some lovely people. We did a rather long hike to Africa's highest water fall and had a dip in the pools at the top. This was great but after so many sedentary weeks I really felt the burn, luckily there were 5 doctors and 5 physios also on the trip so I felt safe. We had to descent the mountain on some little metal ladders attached to the rocks...I had a couple of fearful moments but Richard just skipped down, I was impressed. We also did a trip into Lesotho, high up in the mountains. This was great. The village we visited still exists in a semi traditional way-subsistence farming and a mainly tribal system and the backpackers uses money from the trips it runs to fund and rebuild the primary school.  We also had a morning absailing from some local rocks, which looks more dramatic in the photos than reality but was well worth doing.
I've really enjoyed our 6 days at the backpackers. We met lots of lovely people from all over the world-a retired (at 36!!) German policeman, a French Canadian ship engineer, who voluntarily looked at our pictures from the ship and was v impressed by our choice of travel, a nice young couple from Plymouth ( she had the extraordinary name of Kylie Rio !!) who will be in Singapore and South East Asia at the same time as me.... We thought we had put the memories of the safari well behind us until last night when Adrian, one of the main workers of the backpackers decided, unprompted to tell me all about his addiction issues, problems with his daughter and then other friends of his who had died. Richard unexpectedly went off for a cup of tea leaving me wondering if I had a label attached somewhere saying " Please disclose personal issues here" I finally escaped and sckulked in my room for the rest of the day ( actually Rich had locked me out of the room the night before after a Pernod fuelled evening, leaving me to sleep on the grass with a blanket so I was glad of the chance to reacquaint mysef with my bed.) So on the whole a v positive experience although I find the whole transient nature of backpacking a bit tricky, meeting people sharing a good time and then moving on can make you feel a bit lonely...it certainly reminds me of all my friends at home.

friends of his who had died  aughter, friends