Images from Blyde River Canyon

Last weekend I went on a fabulous road trip with 2 new girlfriends to Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. Unfortunately these friends are like most of the people I meet here - temporary residents of Mozambique - but we certainly doing what is possible in the relatively short time these girls are in town.

Blyde River Canyon is the 3rd largest in the world and is about a 4 hour drive from Maputo. One of my new friends drove the car on the way there, and I drove most of the way back. It was not nearly as traumatic as my first experience driving on the left nearly a year ago. I actually did quite well and felt pretty comfortable behind the wheel. The experience did loads for my confidence, and I'm at the point now where I could imagine renting a car and driving it myself and not totally freaking out!

As we drove, we stopped at various scenic lookouts along the way. This particular one was called Berlin Falls. I'm terrible at estimating heights but this waterfall was really, really high. The most striking thing was that the river that forms the falls appears to be totally stagnant. If it weren't for the veil of rushing water and the accompanying sound, you'd never know this wasn't just a still wading pool.

We stayed in a lodge inside the Blyde River Canyon national park. It was very comfortable, and cheap - less than $100 for a 2-bedroom chalet with a kitchen and bathroom. The room also came equipped with a fierce troop of baboons outside the front door. As we were unloading the truck upon arrival, my friend left one of the doors ajar while she wrangled with her suitcase. In the front seat, she'd left a partially eaten pack of peanuts. The baboons were able to smell the peanuts and one actually hopped inside the truck, stole the plastic package, and ran off onto the lawn to chow down! At this point the other baboons became really curious and started to try and get into the vehicle. One of them was even cheeky enough to try and attack my friend - who is very petite and managed to defend herself with the lid of a trash bin just outside the front door of the chalet!

After that adventure, we decided it was high time for some calm and we went to the lookout point to catch the sunset. It was amazing, and we were the only people around!!

The next morning woke up at 5:45 and set out on a 4-hour hike called the Leopard Trail. Again we were the only people on the trail. We didn't see any leopards, but we did see their scat. We also ran across a couple of monkeys and some baboons, but they weren't nuisance animals like the ones closer to the lodge. The canyon was full of mist and clouds, somewhat obscuring the view but keeping the air nice and chilly as we hiked. After about 1.5 hours going down into the canyon, we came across this magnificent lookout.

We hiked for another hour or so and almost reached the bottom of the canyon. Since we had to leave for Mozambique that same morning, we had to cut the hike short (otherwise we would have made it all the way to the huge river below). The way up was quite an adventure - we climbed almost vertical walls next to a waterfuall nearly the entire time, getting our feet soaking wet on several boulder-hopping river crossings.

Thankfully we made it back with few casualties. One of my friends cut her shin on a stump, and the other got some blisters from her wet socks rubbing in her shoes. My only problem was that my fingers went numb soon after we started the hike and remained that way for most of the time. I have Reynaud's Syndrome (just like my mom), and my friends got a kick out of seeing my fingers completely white in the absence of blood, then watch as they turned bright pink as the circulation returned about 10 minutes before we finished the hike.

Here we managed to balance the camera on a rock and take a self portrait with one of the canyon's upper walls in the background.

After the hike we packed up and headed back to the border with a very quick pit stop in Nelspruit. We hit the grocery store and I bought 10 kilos of cat chow, 10 kilos of cat litter, several packages of wet kitten food and a family pack of toilet paper. Fun stuff. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to stop by bizarre-o Whole Foods or any of the home decorating shops. No worries, though, I'm headed back to the original land of consumer delights in just 12 days.

Did you get that? I go home in 12 days!! And not only do I get to see my family, I get to see Ricardo!! When I have tough moments these days, all I have to think about is sitting down with family and my love to eat a big plate of green chile chicken enchiladas and all is good in my world again!