Another beautiful morning in the park. We set an alarm because we’ve got the horseback ride today at 10, and we want plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast. This morning is cool with a touch of fog so we put light fleece to be sure the ride is comfortable.
After a hearty breakfast we head over to the stables, where they give us helmets and horses. The guide, a Zulu man, helps us climb up on the fine creatures. This is only our second time riding; last time was in Colorado about four years ago.
The horses are great fun, and the scenery is superb. The mist around the mountains clears for us as we ride, and the guide takes us slowly around and over the hills. He says he’s been riding since he was five; he looks about my age now.
I find there’s a certain sense of tranquility when riding on horseback. I feel much more a part of nature than if I did the trails in a man-made vehicle. Hiking and horseback both put me more in touch with my surroundings.
The horses are more interesting too, than man-made vehicles; trained though they are they have a mind of their own. They follow each other down the trail with our guide in the lead, but they’ll occasionally take a slightly different path and often they’ll stop to eat something that looks particularly tasty. We let them do this a bit, but when they tarry too long the guide instructs us to pull up on the reins. They usually continue on at that point, unless what they’re eating is very tasty. Then we have to pull more than once.
If they lag behind, either from eating or walking too slow, you just give them a gentle kick in the sides. It’s not a pointed or painful kick, it’s just using the sides of your feet to give a pat on its flank. That usually triggers a change from a walk to a trot, and occasionally to what might have been a canter. All I know for sure is that at the fastest pace it required effort to stay in the saddle. You can moderate the strong bounce by standing a bit in the stirrups and letting your knees to absorb the shock, but it’s easy to get out-of-sync with the horse and end up with quite a spanking.
We wrap up the ride and thank the guide, and though it’s unlikely to be true, I say “see you later” as we leave. Then we head over to the hotel’s cafe to split a burger on the terrace. To drink, we ask the waitress for sparkling water with lime, but instead of the lime slice we were expecting, she brings us a bit of sweetened lime juice. We mix this in small quantity with the sparkling water and get a light refreshing beverage that we end up ordering several more times during our visit.
We choose a more difficult hike than yesterday’s for the afternoon, to “Mushroom Rock”, which is unsurprisingly a large rock shaped like a mushroom. However we lose the trail and end up hiking randomly, by a small pond and through some plains. We come across another group of perhaps a dozen people on horseback, led by the same guide, for an afternoon ride. As he passes I say “I told you I’d see you later!” and we laugh.
Without a goal, we just hike through the land as time allows. We take in the scenery and Sophie takes some pictures. Sometimes it’s nice having no goal. Because as my good friends Lisa and Steven Tyler often say, life is a journey, not a destination.
After a couple hours we head back to our little house (it’s the one on the right). We freshen up and hit the restaurant for another fine buffet dinner.
Then we sleep our last night in Drakensberg.