We set out from our Storms River mouth cottage for the long drive to Hogsback, a popular hiking destination. On the way, street vendors were selling huge bags of oranges (just harvested off the trees lining the road) for ZAR15, about $1.25, which Seong later gave away to some hungry and appreciative individuals.
It sounded as though The Edge was going to be the nicest accommodation in Hogsback, but it appeared to be booked. It turns out, they did have a cottage available due to late cancellation. Had we opted for “serendipity” and just showed up in town and asked around, as we keep promising to do, we could have had a fab view from our room. We thus ended up at Granny Mouse House B&B, despite a few bad reviews including accusations of racism. We asked Ingrid, the owner, about the bad reviews, but she was at first reluctant to address them as she was afraid of yet another online review maligning her. With our promise to not put up controversial reviews, we were able to draw her into a series of fascinating and incredible conversations.
Racist? Maybe. Ingrid is a native South African of German descent, about 70 now, and has lived in SA all her life. She has seen it all, from the simple but poor farming life of her youth in Stellenbosch, the apartheid years, the great dual disappointments of poor governance by the ANC post apartheid and a prospective soulmate whose cocaine addiction was revealed only after the move to rural Hogsback (she had chosen to give up her ophthalmology career to move there with him). She’s smart and outspoken but unfortunately spends too many hours per day (six, by her reckoning) on the internet and has slipped down an extreme right wing rabbit hole. Climate change is a hoax, NASA is privately funded, and do we support infanticide as New York does? That sort of thing. She is lives in constant fear of blacks one day storming her gate to forcibly take away her property, and has a plan to shoot each of her dogs in the head, then shoot herself, rather than be taken alive to be tortured for days on end. This despite her German citizenship, which guarantees her right to move to Germany at any time.
We rented mountain bikes for an afternoon and did a pretty long ride through Hogsback. Then a nearly all day drive to Ardmore Guesthouse in Champagne Valley, central Drakensberg. We had reserved two nights but spent four there, in part because it rained but mostly because we liked it so much. Rustic but tasty meals and staff that anticipated our every need (“shall I build a fire for you in the lounge this morning?”). Here, we ran into a young black South African waiter who told us in fully formed, well worded, well reasoned paragraphs why he has hopes for better future now that Zuma is out of office. It was incredible how polar opposite two persons’ realities in the same system could be.
Next, GreenFire. It was a dramatic and fairly remote spot, requiring us to leave our car about 4km away and get taken by 4WD to the lodge. There we met Jeremiah.
With the help of hand signals from a shepherd sleeping under a bush, later confirmed by local horsemen, we survived a mostly unmarked hike. After leaving GreenFire, we did a really nice hike at Royal Natal. Then on to Johannesburg