Kranskloof

In the heart of North West, that’s where my hiking adventure was, I was with my friend Pumza and her crew. We normally hike just the two of us, but this time she invited me to hike with her crew. It was such a lovely experience and thoroughly enjoyed the company. I never say no to an opportunity of meeting fellow hikers because I know for a fact, I am going to enjoy myself and come back with new memories and experiences. There is an inside joke within my hiking crew (Amigos), they say if I go hike with other people, I am cheating on them. They say I am a side chick to all these people I go hike with.🤣🤣

We were hiking at the place called Kranskloof, near Rustenburg. It’s a bit far from us but it was worth it. My friend Pumza always says, ” if you want to get to the wilderness, you need to be prepared to drive far out”. In this case, it was far out, almost two hours drive from where we live. I must say though, the drive was amazing, a lovely company in the car, beautiful scenery, mountains, farms, and mines. It was also drizzling at some point, and a rainbow came out after the drizzle, a very lovely thing to experience. After a long, beautiful drive we arrived at the place and immediately felt a sense of peace, fresh clean air, and therapy 101 began.

When we got to a place, we waited for everyone to arrive, it was a group of almost 20 people. They have “formalities” for lack of a better word, that they do before they start hiking. They gather around in a circle, greet each other, introduce each other to the guests and pray before they start the hike; it was beautiful to observe.

Let me tell you about this place, I have never seen such a Fabtastic, amazing rock formation. It looked like someone took their time to make art with those rocks. Everywhere I looked these rocks looked like art, it was incredible. I must say I found the hike a bit hard because there were big rocks almost everywhere, my whole body had to work, had to maneuver through big rocks no easy path other than through big rocks. It was fun though, one had to be creative on how to go through those rocks.

It was my first time at this hiking trail, it’s always nice when you get elements of surprises throughout the hike, and I got a few of those. We came across baboons and monkeys; they were seating very high on some rock formation. They were busy watching us and making noise, it was awesome, but I kept on thinking, don’t you dare come down here, don’t you dare. LOL. When I thought nothing could be a surprise anymore, we came across natural pools. OMG, my eyes lit, I LOVE water with all my heart, wherever there is water am the HAPPIEST. What a beautiful thing to experience, it was my first time hiking on the trail with natural pools, always saw and heard people talking about how they even swam in them. It was my turn, I was so excited I got into one of the pools with my shoes and clothes on, it was so satisfying, you have no idea. I didn’t want to leave that spot, I just wanted to seat there forever. We spent almost an hour there, taking pictures, lots of pictures, fooling around, acting like kids. Lol.

We had to leave as we still had to hike a few more kilometers to our finish line. While we were hiking, we came across people ziplining, clearly surprises not ending. The views were spectacular along with those zipline cables. We stopped there for a bit and watched people ziplining up and down. We also came across people riding horses and pick up trucks with groups of people going up the mountains to zipline. I kept on thinking “this is life, imagine if I never took up hiking, I wouldn’t have known that this kind of beauty exists around me”.

Sir Edmund Hillary said, ” It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”.

Until next time Fabtastic people

Moira