All posts filed under: Mountain Creatures

Mom, Dad, I’m Hiking an Extinct Volcano!

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Tales To Write Home About All the mountains I had ever explored before had started with an ascent, a path leading up, up, up. But that day, standing on the rim of Cirque de Mafate, on Réunion Island, looking into a great crater below, our first steps would lead down. Down a steep and intimidating decline. We stood on a cliff knitted with plants clinging to rocks, looking over the immense volcanic amphitheatre of Mafate. On and on the range of peaks went. Mafate was formed when the magma chamber of Piton des Neiges, a massive 3,069 metre shield volcano, collapsed around three million years ago. No roads big enough for vehicles lead to it, only the steep winding footpath. The villagers living down in the lush volcanic crater have lived there for generations. No new people are allowed to take up residence there and many of the ones that already do, hardly leave. They grow much of what they need in their gardens and what they can’t grow is flown in, for a price, …

Grin, Bear and Other Mountain Creatures – Ziplining in Africa

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Some chuckles were recently had at my expense. I’m not blaming anyone. In fact, I encourage chuckles. Chuckling is good for everyone – even the butts of the chuckles. It only helps to break down our egos. And our self-esteem. But who needs self-esteem? I would just like to remind the chucklers, but mostly myself, of if not my bravery, then at least my potential for bravery. The source of the scoffing was a quote I posted on Instagram… a quote from trailrunning god, Kilian Jornet. “The secret isn’t in your legs,” Kilian writes in his book, Run or Die, “but in your strength of mind. You need to go for a run when it is raining, windy, and snowing, when lightning sets trees on fire as you pass them, when snowflakes or hailstones strike your legs and body in the storm and make you weep, and in order to keep running, you have to wipe away the tears to see the stones, walls, or sky.” The scoffing followed me having a (if you ever repeat …

The Land of Mountainous Mountains

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I wouldn’t say that I led us astray on purpose, but I’m sure that, in the realm of Freudian slips, I directed us to Sir Richard Branson’s Mont Rochelle winery instead of the Mont Rochelle Nature Reserve (Land of Mountainous Mountains) in Franschhoek, accidentally, unconsciously. Not because I wasn’t up to hill training, and not because I like wine. But because I just like vineyards. Obviously. The thing about fathers, though, is that they’re very forgiving, and very quick to turn the wheel back en route to the intended daunting destination. They’re helpful like that. For my father and I, one of the best things in the world is to arrive at a new mountain – the quieter the better – with hours ahead to explore. (Seriously, I do like hills.) We’ve become better at this hiking thing with age. When before we would take nothing but our uncharged cellphones and the car key, these days we carry backpacks packed with cameras, lenses, sunglasses, reading glasses, prescription glasses, powerbanks, toilet paper, pepper spray, hot water …

The Infinite Intrigue of Bushman Rock Art

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Once a year, do something you’ve never done before, people will tell you. Just as good, though, is doing something you’ve done many times, but with people who haven’t. Because just when you think you have seen, thought, felt and captured all there is to see, think, feel and capture about a place, a young girl or a grown man come along and offer you a world through different eyes. When it comes to viewing rock art in the ancient caves of the Cederberg, there is no end to new and contrary views… Pointing to a series of painted dots winding across the rock face of the cave we were gathered in, in the heart of Bushmans Kloof Wilderness Reserve & Wellness Retreat, the girl excitedly shouted, “It’s a snake! A looong snake!” Her voice echoed in the enclosure. She frowned and interrupted herself, revealing the difficulty of the task at hand, “Or it’s a whole lot of people standing in a line…” I had never noticed it before – the snake or the queue. (Or …

The Jungles of Jonkershoek

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As published on my personal project over at Mountains Creatures. It went by the name Waterfall One. But it was clear to us that this was not the kind of waterfall you could belittle with a number. This was an individual. This was something otherworldly, a space out of The Lost World, which would make me Julianne Moore, the video documentarian and paleontologist, descending into the jungles of a deserted world, to play with dinosaurs… Dream job, right there. And it would make the man I call both Dad and Mr Standing on One Leg, the mathematician and chaos theorist. As in, Jeff Goldblum, which would make Dad very happy I believe, on account of a crush on the film, The Fly. We had done a fair amount of adventuring to get here, to this cavernous corner of the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve, where water gushed down from the cliff face above, into a cool pool below. It’s not that the trail leading to the waterfall was arduous, just that we had gotten lost. We had attempted to drive …