Just Ordinary People: A Midwinter Walk on the Wild Side

Pretty Pink Protea Aurea

We arrived at the Dassieshoek cottage, my two travelling companions and I, at three o'clock in the afternoon. The cottage was in the most spectacular natural setting, a typical old South African farmhouse with a coal stove and everything! We promptly lit two fires, one in the braai outside and one in the stove, so that, by the time the regular crowd shuffled in, we would be all set up, lekker gesellig by die vuur, binne of buite. The top of the coal stove was cracked and had been patched up in a rough-and-ready sort of way, with the result that it smoked a bit at first, but once the fire got going it set up a natural flow through the chimney, so that that problem was at least partly solved.

I am not even going to try to describe the view from the front stoep; the Langeberg Mountains, heads in the clouds, tower above the cottage, rugged and beautiful.

The usual suspects arrived in two carloads, and soon we were braaing, beer, red wine and whisky lubricating conversations, which, as usual, varied from the ridiculous to the sublime! Man, it was good to be back home again.

We arose at an unearthly hour so that we could have a good breakfast before hitting the trail. The 07h00 zero-hour morphed into 07h30 and we were on our way. It was cold in the early morning in the half darkness of dawn and the grass was wet with dew. The clouds had lifted from the mountain tops and there were stars in the sky. In the west the moon was slowly sinking towards the horizon.

We had not gone very far when we were into the protea belt. These beautifully coloured proteas, red-pink-cerise, were growing en masse and were in bloom in this first valley, up to a certain altitude, where they were replaced by Ericas, Restios, various other plants and indigenous trees in the river valleys.

Indigenous forest and waterfalls there were aplenty; how can one describe the magic of a forest to someone? I think Dalene Matthee comes close when, in the novel 'Fiela se Kind', the little girl says, 'Daar's feetjies in die woud' (there are fairies in the forest).

The uphill slog was hard, but not nearly as hard as the downhill leg we would do the following day. When, eventually, the overnight hut hove into view, it was a most welcome sight.

The overnight hut has a fireplace in the middle of the floor, as well as a coal stove in the corner, which was more or less in the same condition as the one at Dassieshoek. There was a donkey boiler outside; one has to make a fire and keep it going to provide hot water. There were absolutely no problems with that, the showers were piping hot for the nine of us and the four people in the other group with whom we shared the hut. The other group were not entirely strangers, as Justin knew two of them from way back when! We got on like a house on fire.

Justin made supper, which consisted of a minced beef-spaghetti dish with lots of onions in it; it was just what the doctor ordered, and there was more than enough to go round. Supper, of course, was complemented by the variety of alcoholic beverages that each of us could squeeze into our backpacks.

After supper, we broke out the cards and had a good old game of Klawerjas.

It was cold at the top. Inside the hut is a digital display coupled to thermometers inside the hut and out. When we awoke in the morning it was four degrees centigrade outside, which in itself is not that bad, but, when coupled to the wind chill factor - and the wind was literally howling - it made things slightly uncomfortable.

After a really good breakfast, we hit the trail at 08h30. The first leg was uphill for about a kilometer to the top of the peak called Arangieskop. If anything, the wind right on top was worse still. It ripped my beanie off my head and launched it into the wide blue yonder, never to be seen again. But soon, as we dropped into the next valley from the one we had ascended, we were on the lee side and the wind wasn't that much of a bother anymore.

Arangieskop

As I said, the downhill leg was tougher. There were the most spectacular cliffs and waterfalls, and, when one got down to that certain altitude, the proteas of the previous day were replaced by a completely different species of protea, a very pretty pink variety that I personally have not seen before.

Mackerel sky

Some of us were a bit tardy on that downhill leg, to put it mildly. By the time it was fully dark I was about 500m from the Dassieshoek Cottage; I made it at 18h30. A cup of hot coffee, five minutes or so to 'recover', and we were ready to head back home.