Road Trip along the panoramic route, Peeing out of Gods’ Window and a Saturday night spent in a one horse town.

My flight instructor is off for a few days, so I have an opportunity to travel around a bit. So I decided to take Hens car and head out on the open road for a few days. I had heard that there is some really good sights to see in a place called Graskop – A town on then escarpment sat above the Lowveld. From Hippo pools you can see the cliffs rise dramatically up by over 1000 Metres I wanted to get up there and check out the view. So off I trundled at about 12, I could have set of earlier but my head was pounding having drunk half a bottle of Tanqueray the night before. I woke up in the morning with a small explosive device lodged in my skull detonating every 30 seconds and a ridiculous porn star tash on my face. I needed to give it a rest.
I filled up the car and headed south on the highway, meandering thought plantations and skirting around the base of the mountains. The cliffs were a sheer vertical wall of different coloured rocks, reds, oranges with dark layers mostly. As I drove along, well under the speed limit as I was in no real hurry I sipped on a cold can of castle. Ha! This was the life: Sucking on a beer behind the wheel of my own portable Cinema screen playing National Geographic’s greatest ever views. My NEW Ipod providing the soundtrack (unfortunately I dropped my old one onto a concrete floor picked it up and immediately dropped it again – completely finishing it off. As you can imagine I was even more pleased when I dropped the new one before I had even turned it on.)

I was pleased to have the company of various animals kept along the way – (herds of cows and goats tend to own the roads here). After I had driven for about 120Km I pulled over into a panorama view point. It did not disappoint. Blyde Canyon, the 3rd deepest and only green Canyon in the world. One of South Africa’s great wonders. I scrambled off the trail and approached the cliff edge. A good 800 metre drop into the canyon below span out before me. At the bottom was a very small river (well from that distance it could have been the Mississippi to be fair). I marvelled at the sheer amount of time invested by this river to wear away at the rock creating this massive expanse of geology before me. Now I apologise to my readers at this point for sounding like a 3rd rate supply geography teacher, but this place was breath taking.
After the obligatory photos I headed further along the canyon road stopping some 50kms up the road at where a sign directed me into “Bourke’s Luck Potholes”.
“Is this the place where I can find the potholes” I enquired at the gate.
The African Guard Beamed at me and responded “The one and only place in Africa!”
“Hardly my man!” I grinned back, “I have just driven over several hundred back there!” He failed to laugh instead he just looked at me confused. So I paid him 22 rand and entered possibly one of the most anticlimacticalTM (I think I may have invented a new word there!) attractions in Africa. The tourist Guide list this place as “where the Blyde (joyful) river and Truer (Sorrow) River join there is a remarkable record of a process of erosion that started thousands of years ago. Thomas Bourke discovered gold here…” Well Whoopidido for that lucky bastard. All I discovered here was that a wooden bridge over a stream is not worth 22 Rand. I was all the more hot sweaty and bothered about my discovery because I had to walk half a kilometre to find out.
When I got back to the car I downed another litre of water and another beer for good measure (purely for hydrating purposes) and set off in the direction of Graskop and “Gods Window”.
I arrived there after another 40 minutes, needing the toilet. I had not been all day and I had been drinking lots of fluids, unfortunately there were no toilets there so I figured I grin and bear it until I found a hotel somewhere. I trundled up these steps in the direction of the look out and came up to this incredible view. A steep valley descending over a kilometre below. You could see for miles in fact you could see the curvature of the earth it was go high up. This was truly impressive and well worth the trip. As no one was there next to me as well I took the liberty of relieving myself out of the “window” while I was there. This made me chuckle. The look out point had several paths so I took one that headed upwards. The air was noticeably cooler here and thinner than it is in Hoedspruit. The Vegetation is more tropical too. The path opened out on the most spectacular view yet, in fact possibly one of the most incredible views I have ever seen, this even gave the salt lakes in Bolivia a run for its money. I just sat there taking it all in, all though this was impossible as there was just too much to see. African swallows flew around the cliff checking out the trees 1.5 Km below. I sat on the cliff edge dangling my feet over, a surreal backdrop akin to being in a plane about to jump stared back at me. I could just about see the tops of trees way below. My ipod selected the blue Danube to as the sound track, this worked well, a very up lifting experience. I didn’t want to leave, but I figured I should go get a hotel and I also promised myself that I would get up at five AM and come back to take pictures of the sunrise. Now that will be special.

That Evening I decided to hit the night life in Graskop. Earlier in the evening I had been set upon by a shop assistant in this clothes shop, I had enquired about where the best places to go out were, she was about 24 and looked like she might know. She just looked at me in shock. “ Erm nowhere” was the response.
Great I thought. Saturday night was looming and I was experience an extreme case of cabin fever having been cooped up in the resort for weeks. I felt like a horny sailor being given one night of shore leave in a town full of strippers the night before a suicide mission.
I chose the venue of the evenings adventures through a simple process of Elimination. The Sign on the street stated boldly
“The Locomotive Pub and Grill – The Only Place to Go!”. Oh the bitter Irony. They were not wrong.
As I entered the pub it was like a scene for an old western. About 6 people sat alone or in slowly looked up from their drinks with just enough enthusiasm to look at me with some distain before getting back to well not a lot it would seem. I lasted approximately 4 minutes before I left having downed the shittest tasting beer in the world. I headed back to the hotel, and got an early night deciding to get up early to go see the view.

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