uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park, South Africa

It’s not so easy to get around South Africa without a car. The distances are long and — for once! — underpopulated, with lots of empty space. There are minibus taxis that run to various towns, but they’re infrequent. Long-distance buses run maybe once a day. And even if you get to a town, the interesting places to stay all tend to be well outside of it, requiring odd transfers. Take the Drakensberg, for instance. The places to stay don’t even have proper addresses, since they’re some 15-20 km out of town! There’s a backpacker-oriented bus that runs throughout the country, but it doesn’t run every day, it’s expensive and you may have to pay even more for a connecting shuttle, and without a car, you’re basically trapped at the accommodation they take you to.

That’s not to say that it can’t be enjoyable, though. The Drakensberg range, spanning a whole bunch of national parks, has scenery that rivals the Simien Mountains in Ethiopia in its grandeur. Reaching the northern end after a spectacular bus ride through large-scale farmland, I was stunned by the Amphitheatre, an 8 km cliff wall rising suddenly and dramatically from the rolling hills. The eponymous backpackers’ lodge I stayed at there was a lovely retreat, complete with 10 km of its own walking trails on their estate. Seeing the morning, afternoon, and evening light on the rugged Amphitheatre walls, then the Milky Way at night, was a great way to pass the time, and I spent nearly two days idle there just enjoying the atmosphere without doing any real activities.
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