Today I’m continuing with my account of my recent backpacking trip along the Tsitsikamma Trail with my husband Jackie and five of our friends. Today, I’ll blog about Day #3 of the trip. I discussed Day #2 and Day #1 previously. On Day #3 we hiked 13.4 km from Blaauwkrans Hut to Keurbos Hut. Along the way, we passed through more beautiful fynbos and indigenous afromontane forest, and we made numerous river and stream crossings.
We started out the day by crossing the stunning, coca-cola colored double waterfall that we could see from Blaauwkrans Hut. Here’s a picture of that waterfall again:
After we crossed over the double waterfall, we hiked up onto and across a fynbos-covered plateau and looked back on Blaauwkrans Hut from above:
We soon came across some more animal tracks:
After an hour or so of hiking, we entered the forest:
While hiking through the forest, we saw many impressive trees. For instance, this tall Yellowwood:
After awhile, we emerged from the forest and walked through fynbos again. We had some beautiful views of the folded sandstone mountains as we walked through the fynbos:
Here are a few pretty fynbos plants:
After a little while, we headed down into a valley to cross the Bloukrantz (or Blaauwkrans) River:
After crossing the Bloukrantz River, we had a steep climb back up onto the plateau, where we again found ourselves in fynbos:
We saw several lovely examples of king protea, which is South Africa’s national flower:
We hiked along the fynbos plateau for a few hours and also stopped for a long lunch break. We were fairly hungry and tired!
In the mid-afternoon we arrived at another patch of forest. This particular patch of forest was my favorite of the trip as it felt particularly enchanting. There are several rusty red colored streams cascading through the thick green vegetation of this section of the forest. There are also many tall, wide green ferns. In this section of forest, I felt as if we would come across Tarzan or maybe a dinosaur!
After we emerged from the forest, we found the jeep track leading to Keurbos Hut. At long last, we arrived at the hut itself:
That’s all I have for Day #3 on the Tsitsikamma Trail. Stay tuned for Day #4!